Another great example of this being an economic rent problem.
Namecoin is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies, but never caught on because it’s >99% domain name squatters. There’s no mechanism to increase the cost of renewal to anything proportional to the value of the name, so they always renew for practically free. Consequently there’s no incentive for web browsers to support it.
A domain name is like a plot of land. Right now our choices are crony capitalist ICANN with eminent domain, anarcho-capitalist crypto DNS, or sailing the high seas on an .onion address.
Hey hey hey, there’s i2p too.
I always love these shitty “replace the enter key on a keyboard” news thumbnails. Like, ah shit, accidentally hit the “Domain Name Registration” button on my keyboard.
Oh, that’s no biggie:
Hrmm let’s see… am I petty enough today…
Please avoid GoDaddy.
GoDaddy has been involved in many controversies since its foundation in 1997.
I prefer NameCheap, but almost anyone is better than GoDaddy.
*Edit: broken link
Holy $+(+$ even a registrar can’t stay out of trouble
Thanks for the education
I present to you: http://www.slutsofinstagram.com/
What an acid trip of a front page.
But where will we find young sheep passing under a bar videos?
Squatters do this shit every day to regular people and small businesses, but they don’t have the money to convince a judge to hand over a domain.
A squatter is why Valve used steampowered.com instead of steam.com. The owner of steam.com (who has owned the domain since the early 90s!) has consistently refused to sell to anyone, and has never stated a specific reason why.
I see nothing wrong with that. It predates steam and they aren’t attempting to extort large sums of money from anyone.
What the judge should have done is threaten to cut the domain name in half and see who was willing to give up their claim out of motherly love.
Wasn’t expecting to see biblical wisdom on the fediverse today
I wonder how much the city of LA would pay to get La.com back haha.
Why a city would want a .com tld? A .gov tld would be far more applicable IMO
I would guess tourism. It seems like that’s what it’s currently used for.
The city of LA should not get a .com name. They might have a case that la.com should not have a .com either (they look like a tourist .org though if they are not acting like a .org they are scammers) - but this would be a very hard sell in court. The city of LA should have a .gov (which won’t allow them) or .us (which is not organized well - something they should be mad about and pressure to get fixed) name.
I think the initial goal of top level domains having any real meaning is dead.
And that’s ignoring the state of LA.
What sucks is that a lot of commercial companies in L.A. use the .la domain, which is blocked by my company’s proxy.
The court ruled that Blair lacked any right to the name and had only adopted the moniker after buying the domain.
So he wasn’t rich enough to buy the domain that he paid for ?
Let A.I. have the internet. Humans are done using it.
He only adopted the moniker after failing to get Lamborghini to pay the very high price he wanted for the domain. If he wanted the domain to adopt the moniker he wouldn’t have tried to sell the domain in the first place.
I don’t have all the details to the case, but after reading the article I kinda think they got it wrong.
Let that man call himself Lambo and keep the domain. As long as he isn’t pretending to represent another brand, such as Lamborghini.
They got it right because they sided with the wealthy corporation.
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Not sure why others are defending the defendant here. He was just a cyber squatter who had no ties to the name Lambo until after he bought the domain. His only goal was to resell it to Lamborghini for a profit.
I mean, if we are going to capitalism with a straight face we have to start being the whole bitch.
He owned it, Lamborghini wanted it… that made it a valuable asset that he held that Lamborghini should have paid for
it’s easy to see it that way when a big corporation is involved, but average people and small businesses get fucked by cybersquatters too.
On balance I tend to side against the cybersquatters. They are not providing any value to anyone, just leeching dollars from the economy.
We’re not talking about an individual, we’re talking about Lamborghini. I think cybersquatting Lamborghini is fine.
You have to think one step beyond this specific instance. Laws apply to everyone consistently.
So do you want to let cybersquatters fuck everyone just for the sake of fucking Lamborghini? Or is it better to get rid of these leeches who are providing no value to anyone but themselves?
Laws apply to everyone consistently.
I fucking wish!
I wasn’t talking about any laws. I was talking about one specific cybersquatter.
that’s the point, you can’t do that.
I just did.
Greed was hia downfall, nothing else. He started by listing it at 1 million, but then kept refusing bids to buy and kept raising the price up to 75 million.
Greedy bastard got what he deserved.
if we are going to capitalism
Nobody is for capitalism, except as a derivative of classical liberalism. Capitalism might be useful as a tool in economics, but so is the “spherical cow” useful in physics - you can learn a lot but need to be careful as it doesn’t apply to the real world.
Since nobody is going full capitalist we can ask what liberalism things - and that is a branch of philosophy much more complex than just pure economics. In this case Lamborghini is entitled to their property, which we know is their property because the Lambo guy was acting like it was - in many other domain cases there is at least some doubt.
Not sure why anyone would defend a large corporation for any reason, ever.
I will defend anyone when they are in the right, even if I otherwise hate them. I require proper due process for murders and other criminals who have done worse things that large corporations (most large corporations have committed murder - or at least not done it in a way that I can prove beyond any shadow of doubt)
I don’t get it. Since when are similar words and cultural references and nicknames too owned by the trademark owner?
It was pretty normal for most of the age of trademarks’ existence to use such derived references, including commercial use.
"He tried to claim … a word play on “lamb” and not … " - why would he have to?
I’m (ok, not really identifying as a fan of anything, but it’s good) a Star Wars fan and I can point out plenty of such references there to other authors’ creations, and George Lucas notably doesn’t hide or deny that, actually the opposite.
They are owned by the trademark when the person owning/using the name is acting like the trademark. Trademark law is generally based around would someone be confused if they say the other one. I could start a house construction business can call it Lamborghini without a problem so long as I was very clear in all advertising that I’m only building houses and not in any way related to the cars - but if I start putting Lamborghini cars in my advertising I could get into trouble for creating confusion even though my competitor Joe’s houses has cars in his ads. (this is obviously a made up situation)
From the article “didn’t develop the site, had attacked the company on more than one occasion, and tried to profit from its established reputation.”
If he had developed that site in what looked like good faith he would have kept it. However all indications were he didn’t care about Lambo as anything other than a get rich quick scheme and that will fail to trademark since the name is only valuable if it is confused with the trademark. A parody site (obvious parody) would have been fine. Obvious star wars fan sites as welll (though this could infringe on other trademarks so care is needed). Even adopting Lambo as his nickname could have worked - but if that was his intent he wouldn’t have tried to sell.
so long as I was very clear in all advertising that I’m only building houses and not in any way related to the cars - but if I start putting Lamborghini cars in my advertising I could get into trouble for creating confusion
That’s fine. But suppose your brand is Lambozucchini and you have cars kinda similar to Lamborghini, but with the brand clearly different, just with homage, a bit like Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola, where in the world is the problem with that? That should be legal, from common sense.
EDIT: Also nobody confuses Lambo with Lamborghini, a nickname is not confusion and trademark owner doesn’t own nicknames. And they don’t own everything in the world connected to their trademark.
That judge is a dumbass and any precedent that ‘justifies’ this ruling should be reviewed and struck down. This is called theft. And do eminent domain too while we’re at it.
Fun fact some states took this into thier own hands
https://www.nh.gov/glance/state-constitution/bill-rights
[Art.] 12-a. [Power to Take Property Limited.] No part of a person’s property shall be taken by eminent domain and transferred, directly or indirectly, to another person if the taking is for the purpose of private development or other private use of the property.
A domain name is explicitly not property.
Cornell Law disagrees.
Property is anything (items or attributes/tangible or intangible) that can be owned by a person or entity. Property is the most complete right to something; the owner can possess, use, transfer or dispose of it.
The point isn’t that intangible objects can’t be property. The point is that domains are not legally owned by people or corporations. You can pay for the right to use one, but you don’t own it.
Why not? You can’t hold it, but why should that be a limit?
Note, phd’s can easially be written on this subject defending either side. Some of those will say things like domains are not generally property, but for some situations we should treat them like property and in other situations not. I’m not expecting a response. I’m expecting everyone to think about the question.
This isn’t about an intangible thing being property. This is about the way domains are controlled. Nobody owns a domain, they register the right to use a domain. All domains are controlled and “owned” by ICANN, which allows registrars to handle who can use domains.
They are not anyone’s property.
That is part of what a phd can argue about…
I would argue that the registration cost is just a tax and you own it. But remember I’m arguing as a philosopher and not someone who can’t see both sides or even thinks there needs to be one correct side.
Theft is when something you own is taken away. The squatter never owned the domain, only registered to use it. In this case, ICANN owns the domain and allows a registrar to handle who can use that domain. ICANN sets strict rules on how domains can be used, and the squatter broke those rules.
Maybe the judge is a little smarter on actual laws than you are.
Stupid greedy asshole got what he deserved. Could have made bank by selling it for 1 million already. But the greed rulebook said to keep raising it to 75 million.
Fuck Lamborghini too.
Yes, fuck poor people for trying to screw over corporations.
He bought the domain for $10000. Not sure what your definition of poor is, but in my opinion someone poor isn’t “investing” in expensive domain names.
Eventually the precedent would just become ‘poor people’ fucking over everyone, including other ‘poor people’ just trying to start their own business. I get what you’re saying but allowing squatters to create entire catalogues of domains for the sake of sticking it to corporations is probably a shitty answer
Is that what you call scalpers, scammers and thieves, “the poor”? I agree that in most cases they are poor, but they are also assholes that deserve it.
He raised the price higher than the cost of going to WIPO to deal with it. If he set the price to $1 or 2 million they likely would have paid it. $75 million is bonkers.
He also set precedence. A few more cases like this can the cost of going to court becomes cheaper for everyone.
Don’t have much sympathy for this person but no company has any more right to a domain name than any of us and this sets a scary precedence.
The person who owns a trademark or copyright has a right to use that trademark and the onus to defend that trademark from other people using it. We used to allow anyone to call themselves anything they way, and it turned out badly.
I don’t really feel any sympathy for this guy.
