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The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers: ---------------- The court found that under th
by lkrubner 9y ago
The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers:
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The court found that under the California tariffs, rules, and regulations applicable to public utilities, and under the terms of the contracts, the debtors had no “proprietary right in the number.”
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f-4e06-be1a-93161aa35804 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f...
Also:
...under Virginia law, the user of a telephone number or domain name does not have a property interest in that phone number or domain name.
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Governments have the right to assign to themselves any telephone number they wish, and reserve ranges of phone numbers for themselves, therefore it makes sense that they can do the same to domain names.
If people felt strongly about this issue, the law could be changed, but as of right now, under current law, this does not appear to be theft.
- onetimemanytime 9y agoNot all courts, IIRC. The Virginia case was based on VA state law. The 9th and 2nd rules that phone numbers are not assets...so maybe domains are like phone numbers?
- lkrubner 9y agoThat is exactly what I said. Did you read what I wrote? Phone numbers are not assets...so maybe domains are like phone numbers?
- onetimemanytime 9y agoNo, you said that "courts," as if the Supreme Court had ruled. We have federal laws, state laws and federal judges making decisions based on state laws. Also even if a Federal Appeals court in a circuit rules one way is not binding on all.
- oh_sigh 9y agoI think OP was saying that you were taking a ruling from the 4th and 9th circuits and expanding it's domain as if it were nationally the case in the US.
- lkrubner 9y agoWhy is this being downvoted? I'm citing the relevant court case.
- dpark 9y agoProbably because you’re presenting a state level case as if it’s precedent for the US as a whole.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoWe may argue that domain names are different from phone numbers because they are recognisable. They carry trademarks, and unlike phone numbers, are often the way we remember of an internet facing person or company. Also, the practical consequences of losing a phone number are much tamer than that of losing a domain name. I'm not sure the courts would hold the same conclusions for domain names and phone numbers. While even if the latter is not property, the former could be treated as intellectual property. Though in this case, that would be one more reason to give the domain name to the French government…
- xkcd-sucks 9y agoSo the domain owner should have registered a business called "France.com"
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jkaplowitz 9y agoHe did operate such a business. From the article: "For over 20 years, Frydman built up a business (also known as France.com) [...]." I don't think we've routinely required ".com" to be part of the business branding of .com domain owners, but Ars Technica says he had that.
- ThomPete 9y agoHe did, but more importantly, the French government isn't a business either.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago> Governments have the right to assign to themselves any telephone number they wish, and reserve ranges of phone numbers for themselves, They don't do that after the fact.
- walshemj 9y agoAnd they don't assign themselves numbers outside their country.
- jack9 9y ago> They don't do that after the fact. They have and do. https://voiceofpeopletoday.com/kim-jong-un-orders-change-numbers-phones-north-korea/ https://voiceofpeopletoday.com/kim-jong-un-orders-change-num... It's unusual for the French government, who has some of the strongest consumer protections on the planet.
- sverige 9y agoWait, your argument is that Kim Jong Un seized telephone numbers, so of course France can seize a domain name from an American citizen 24 years after the fact?
- jack9 9y ago> Wait, your argument is that Kim Jong Un I'm not making an argument. I'm stating a fact, because the gp stated an incorrect fact (a generalization about governments). You can take a look at a number of other world countries that have changed phone numbers for various reasons, amounting the to same thing. A trivial refutation of > They don't do that* after the fact. * = change the ownership of phone numbers/domains Things happen slowly in the EU. That's not a surprise to those who live in it.
- JetSpiegel 9y agoWait, Voice of People Today is registered in Tirana, Albania to a @gmail address? Seems fishy.
- Silhouette 9y agoThe courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers The implications of the current legal position you describe are troubling. These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone. Physical addresses that are inherently tied to their current occupant (and the well-established pain that comes with updating everyone if you move home or office) are becoming secondary. More than that, these IDs are becoming trusted ways to reach a specific person. Many organisations, including the likes of banks and governments, now rely on some form of two-factor authentication using phones for access to important facilities. Many organisations will grant you the keys to (your part of) their kingdom as long as you can respond to an email to the address they hold for you. Many businesses reach their customers through services at their domain, and that domain may enjoy special privileges that a customer has permitted such as being whitelisted for sending important emails or just simple things like being bookmarked in the customer's browser or turning off an ad-blocker to support a site. The law seems to be outpaced significantly by the technology and society's use of it here. If we aren't going to enjoy real property rights in terms of these essential identities that are managed or hosted by third party services, stories like the one we're talking about here today may be the tip of the iceberg.
- lkrubner 9y ago"These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone." That's a good argument for changing the law. However, this is wrong: "More than that, these IDs are becoming trusted ways to reach a specific person." That is something that I would like to see, but that is definitely not the way things work now. If I fail to pay to renew a domain name, I lose it, just like if I fail to pay my phone bill, I lose it. I would like to see ids that belong to each person for life and which can not be sold or transferred. I'd especially like the postal service to offer me that option, so I would no longer need to give my physical address to strangers, but instead could simply give them my postal alias. But no such thing exists right now.
- 9y ago
- deftnerd 9y agoThat's a dangerous precedent. If nobody has the right to a phone number, and governments can assign any telephone number to themselves that they wish, that the Russian government can take over the phone number to the Whitehouse Switchboard? Then the Whitehouse would have to take it back and it would be the start of a perpetual tug-of-war? I assume your response would be that "no, the US has already reserved that number". But isn't that what happened with France.com? It was already reserved.
- 49bc 9y agoTelephone numbers are well delineated between counties with “country codes”. I don’t think anybody is confused about which country owns what number.
- hultner 9y agoBut so are domains, just with a suffix instead of a prefix. You oughta think a .com domain is more suitable for a commercial entity then for a government/state department.
- simias 9y ago.com has become the de-facto default TLD for the net for better or worse.
- gsich 9y agosomewhat disagree, hipster companies use .io for example
- setr 9y agodoing as hipsters do, specifically avoiding the norm/default. a perfect example of the exception proving the rule, i think
- 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
- fasj82 9y agoMaybe I'm weird but I think France.com belonging to France is the just thing. The last thing we need is giving more rights to squatters.
- sneak 9y agoIt belongs to a person born there, who registered it and is using it. How is he in any way a squatter?!
- arkades 9y agoRegistered and used it with, apparently, the blessing of the French government for a couple of decades - they were aware of its existence, and worked with him in providing some content, as I understood the article. It's ... nothing at all like cybersquatting. At all.
- fasj82 9y agoI'm not saying this is a squatter.
- josefx 9y agoHe had the blessing until he went for the trademark in Europe. In 2015 France.com didn't exist as trademark, then was registered by France.com Inc and at that point France declared prior use on the word France and related trademarks. They let him use it until he tried to claim it for himself.
- oldcynic 9y agoTaking it from the guy who's spent 20 years building a business on it, with no compensation, is the just thing?
- greglindahl 9y agoSo if I have a US telephone number that spells out FRANCE, it's OK for France to seize it? 1-800-FRA-NCE1 ?
- 9y ago
- 49bc 9y agoSeems like the right idea for IP addresses, but not domain names. I don’t know why they can say all three belong to the same jurisdiction. I hope there’s an appeal.
- trumped 9y agoWow that's crazy... you buy something yet but you don't own it. It's a bit like cellphones, I guess.
- abritinthebay 9y ago... I own my cellphone. What are you referring to?
- trumped 9y agolocked bootloaders/etc... They claim it's for security but they don't give you a choice.
- abritinthebay 9y agoThat has zero to do with ownership - unless you think the code on every embedded chip should be 100% open and accessible in user-space. Which would be a security nightmare.
- invaliduser 9y agoWhat you buy is a temporary licence to use a domain, the fact that you need to renew it every year or so is a good sign that nobody "owns" a domain name (and that it was designed this way, with a limit on the number of years you can buy)
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoI feel like 1-800-Flowers Inc. and probably any company that employed a phoneword to achieve prominence could probably argue otherwise.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneword https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneword
- dghughes 9y agoWouldn't it be more accurate to say an IP addresses is like a phone number? The DNS phonebook analogy would mean France.com is the name and the IP is the phone number. What was done would be equivalent to taking a man's name from him leaving him with only his phone number.
- icebraining 9y agoI'd say the domain is the phone number (the visible identifier used to contact him) and IP address is whatever internal IDs the operators use to route calls to whatever cellphone he happens to be using.
- nmstoker 9y agoYour point seems odd in lumping governments together - they can within their own territories act as you suggest but not extraterritorially. It would seem stange to me if France could forcibly assign a number to itself if that number was a US number (eg with a 212 area code).
- stevenking86l 9y agoCan the US seize google.com at any moment?
- jijji 9y agoThe new law that got signed into law a few weeks ago, FOSTA/SESTA, web sites that allow users to post public messages can be likely taken away. It's a pretty bad time to be a web site owner.
- brownbat 9y agoThe weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back. (I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spawn a movement, but that response is available.) .onion and namecoin and various others are a wholecloth attempt at this. But it goes farther than hosts and alt roots. One of the unique properties of the internet is that if it gets overburdened with cruft people don't like, we can just build it from scratch on top of existing systems. There are infinite namespaces. You could build a copy of the Internet that's the same but with no Facebook. You could build a copy of the internet where all domains are mapped right to left. You could build a copy of the internet that only hosts MUDs. Adoption isn't guaranteed, or even likely, but maybe widespread adoption is part of the problem you're running from in the first place. Here's to the dystopia of unregulatable and unusable internet fragmentation. Some pros, some cons.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoI think that a renaming is something that will happen. The current DNS mutual hallucination has an insane network effect, but I think something else (fuck knows what, could be a toy, could be a tool, could be a protocol), with it's own naming convention will eventually become wildly popular and then make DNS obsolete.
- jolmg 9y ago> The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. Not if I take my sim card and put it in another phone, or call my service provider to cancel my service and then they reuse the number for a new client. Maybe I'm missing the point, but phone numbers, domain names, and ip addresses are all references that requiere looking up in some table (think routing tables for ip addresses and, I imagine, phone numbers).
- phyzome 9y agoPhone numbers take you to the same phone until... - that person gets a new phone - a hacker politely calls customer support and asks to have a new phone activated on that number - the area code is split and someone else ends up getting the number The phone system has a lookup table too.
- textmode 9y agoDid France use bankruptcy laws to get the courts to order that the domain name be transferred? Was France a creditor? Was Frydman a debtor? Did France use trademark law to pressure the registrar to transfer the domain name registration? What if Frydman was not using the domain name to provide information about anything covered by the classes under which France registered its trademark(s)? What about if, e.g., France had registered in some class covering tourism and Frydman was providing information about French tourism. Does it matter? Why or why not?
- TangoTrotFox 9y agoUsing the law to define theft is not a great idea. Governments can and do steal. For instance multiple nations have now passed laws forcibly seizing land from individuals, without compensation, exclusively because of their race. That's still theft. More accurate would be to state that "this does not appear to be unlawful."
- TangoTrotFox 9y agoUsing the law to define theft is not a great idea. Governments can and do steal. For instance multiple nations have now passed laws forcibly seizing land from individuals, without compensation, exclusively because of their race. That's still theft. More accurate would be to state that "this does not appear to be unlawful." And domains are not like phone numbers, they're like entries in a phone book. This would be more analogous to a famous "Joe Blow" getting the phone book to remove every other "Joe Blow" from the phone book since he feels (and is probably correct) that if somebody's looking up "Joe Blow", they're probably looking for him. And that is not an action I think is reasonable.
- Buge 9y ago>Governments have the right to assign to themselves any telephone number they wish, and reserve ranges of phone numbers for themselves, therefore it makes sense that they can do the same to domain names. What if America assigns themselves a.com and Australia also assigns themselves a.com ? Only one can prevail. There needs to be some higher power to determine whose demand wins.
- sarabande 9y agoMaybe ICANN would involve themselves at some point? https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> What if America assigns themselves a.com and Australia also assigns themselves a.com ? Only one can prevail. This one's easy; the US owns .com and Australia doesn't, so obviously the US will win. This makes it pretty mysterious why France would have a claim on a .com domain, though. They own .fr, not .com.