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DOMAIN NAMES

IP Internet Protocol IPv6 or IPv4 and ARIN

How ARIN and U.S. Commerce Department were duped by the ITU International Telecommunication Union By MILTON MUELLER MARCH 29, 2013
techliberation.com
ARIN is the Internet numbers registry for the North American region. It likes to present itself as a paragon of multistakeholder governance and a staunch opponent
of the International Telecommunication Union's encroachments into Internet governance.
Surely, if anyone wants to keep the ITU out of Internet addressing and routing policy, it would be ARIN. And conversely, in past years the ITU has sought to carve away some of the authority over IP addressing from ARIN and other RIRs.
But wait, what is this? March 15 the ITU Secretary-General released a preparatory report for the ITU's World Telecommunications Policy Forum , which will take place in Geneva May 14-16 2013. The report contains 6 Internet-related policy resolutions “to provide a basis for discussion … focusing on key issues on which it would be desirable to reach conclusions.” Draft Opinion #3 pertains to Internet addressing. Among other things, the draft resolves:

  • “that needs-based address allocation should continue to underpin IP address allocation, irrespective of whether they are IPv6 or IPv4, and in the case of IPv4, irrespective of whether they are legacy or allocated address space;
    • “that all IPv4 transactions be reported to the relevant RIRs, including transactions of legacy addresses that are not necessarily subject to the policies of the RIRs regarding transfers, as supported by the policies developed by the RIR communities;”
    • “that policies of inter-RIR transfer across all RIRs should ensure that such transfers are needs based and be common to all RIRs irrespective of the address space concerned.”

These policy positions thrust the ITU and its intergovernmental machinery directly into the realm of IP addressing policy. But that is quite predictable; the ITU has always wanted to do that. What is unusual
about these resolutions is that they bear an uncanny resemblance to the policy positions currently advocated by ARIN and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
In other words, far from challenging the authority of the RIRs, as it used to do, the ITU now
seems to be supinely issuing policy positions that reflect the interests of the RIRs. And after checking with sources who were at the meetings where these draft opinions were created, I confirmed that it was indeed ARIN staff, other RIRs and U.S. Commerce Department representatives who pushed for these positions. Indeed, some sources complained that the whole discussion was completely dominated by RIRs and the U.S.; hardly anyone else was participating.
This is a rather significant turn of events . If nothing else, it makes you think twice about the claims coming out of Dubai that the Internet's organic multistakeholder institutions were locked in a to-the-death struggle with the forces of repression and authoritarianism in the ITU.
[snip]

Planning to buy a Domain Name?

Introduction: What and Who is ICANN?

ICANN controls all domain names.

HISTORY OF DOMAIN NAMES
John Postal, Internet Assigned numbers IANA and ICANN.

  • ICANN was established in 1998 by the Clinton administration
  • ICANN is a monopoly that enjoys a contract and complete financial control from the U.S. government to manage the internet's “root file” that is key to having a unified internet name system. VeriSign is an arm of the federal government.
  • ICANN chief Rod Beckstrom, said ICANN has “no involvement in the takedown of any website.”

Icann Controls
Domain Names

ICANN

LEARN ABOUT NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAIN NAMES

Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO) oppose the rollout of ICANN's top-level domain expansion program.
87 major national and international business associations and companies have joined forces with the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) The evaluation fee is estimated at US $185,000.oo for a new TLD.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICANN - is in charge of business' that register & owns top level domains - .edu, .org, .com, .net, .us, .kids, .biz, etc.XXX etc.
VERISIGN KEEPS CONTROL OF .COM UNTIL 2012
The market structure does not match the realities of the registration process: this isn't rocket science and domain names shouldn't be a $1b+/year industry. The Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is in charge of accrediting domain registrars around the world. To find alternative providers for domain-registration services, you can visit ICANN's list of accredited registrars .

intellectual property, politics

The unique control the U.S. continues to hold over key components of the global domain name system.

Uncle Sam: If it Ends in .Com it's Seizable domain names registered with a Canadian company, ostensibly putting it beyond the reach of the U.S. government, isn't. Working around that, the feds went directly to VeriSign, a U.S.-based internet backbone company that has the contract to manage the coveted .com and other “generic” top-level domains. The U.S. Government has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman. Control of all-important .com and .net domains with a U.S. company - VeriSign - putting every website using one of those addresses firmly within reach of American courts regardless of where the owners are located - possibly forever. The government usually serves court-ordered seizures on VeriSign, which manages domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv and .name, because foreign-based registrars are not bound to comply with U.S. court orders. The government does the same with the non-profit counterpart to VeriSign that now manages the .org domain. That's the Public Interest Registry, which, like VeriSign, is based in Virginia.Every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc. needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers.

.xxx to launch porn search engine
Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, operates the .xxx TLD, which is scheduled to launch Search.xxx will give users a more streamlined searching process, help protect them from viruses and malware and help guard their privacy. The search engine has cataloged 21 million webpages from .xxx sites, he said. "It's porn, only porn, all porn," he said. Lawley touted Search.xxx because the .xxx TLD scans each website there for viruses and malware every day using McAfee security products. Some porn websites on other TLDs have been notorious for infecting users' computers with malware.

DOMAIN NAME DISPUTES & RESOLUTION PROVIDERS

You Better Have an Exit Plan for when you no longer want the domain!
Dead Ed Dots Need To Be Buried With Dignity An Educators Professional Responsibility to make sure their web site doesn't end up as Porn. [See CyberSquatting]

Who Owns That Website Domain Name?

Internet domains are uncharted territory in terms of property rights; they can be bought and sold like cars, but are also places where people meet to discuss issues, raising First Amendment and privacy concerns. The author states that though the Justice Department has placed notice of the seizures on the websites, it could also choose to use the site to conduct sting operations. In the 1992 Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. U.S., the justices ruled that police may set traps for people who are already "independently predisposed to commit the crime." http://rss.com.com/2010-1071-990697.html?type=pt&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=new

NEW LAW WOULD CRIMINALIZE FALSE WHOIS INFO
Report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2005 indicates that as many as 2.3 million Web addresses are owned by individuals or organizations that cannot be identified due to bad data in the WHOIS database for .com, .net, and .org domains. The report said
that 5 percent of all addresses have incomplete or inaccurate information about the owner, in effect creating a safe haven for operators of Web-based scams, such as phishing attacks or the distribution of spam and viruses. When authorities try to track down those responsible for such malicious activities, they rely on the WHOIS database to find out who operates suspect domains. When the information in WHOIS is wrong , authorities hit a dead end. The Federal Trade Commission has been urging a clean-up of the database for a long time, but progress has been slow. Data are typically entered into the database through domain registrars, which bear some responsibility for
ensuring the integrity of the information, along with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Despite an ICANN policy requiring registrars to remind domain owners to update their information regularly, a system that tracks reports of complaints,however, indicates that only about 60 percent of problems are resolved.

Indian Tribes Gain Special Domain Name Suffix 04/29/02
Government Computer News reports that "Federally recognized American Indian tribes will gain a special domain name suffix identifying them as government entities under a cooperative agreement announced by the Interior Department and the General Services Administration. GSA grants the .gov domain name to federal agencies, and Interior, through its Bureau of Indian Affairs, handles relations with the sovereign tribes. According to the announcement on Friday [April 26], a tribe's domain name will include a hyphen, the letters nsn - for native sovereign nation - and the .gov designation. The tribes' sites now follow their names with .nsn.us... Interior said the special designation for the tribes is a step toward providing information about American Indian programs and agencies, as well as transactional functions, via the Internet."

Cybersquatting

From ICANN's UDRP info page
The registrar of the name (not to be confused with the registrant) will be bound by the decision of the UDRP.
[... To invoke the policy, a trademark owner should either (a) file a complaint in a court of proper jurisdiction against the domain-name holder (or where appropriate an in-rem action concerning the domain name) or (b) in cases of abusive registration submit a complaint to an approved dispute-resolution service provider]

" Abusive registration " refers to cybersquatting ...
Word to the wise, fighting through the UDRP process may be more expensive than your domain name is worth.
[...
b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith. For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:

(i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or
(ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name , provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or
(iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor;
or
(iv) by using the domain name , you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.


From: Paul Levy
Date: August 24, 2005
I want to call your attention to a very important Internet free speech decision, perhaps the most significant of our domain name cases from the past several years. In Lamparello v. Falwell , the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held today that the use of the domain name www.fallwell.com for a web site devoted to denouncing the views of Rev. Jerry Falwell about homosexuality neither infringes Falwell's trademark in his name nor constitutes " cybersquatting. " The court chose not to address the issue of whether the non-commercial character our client's web site was
sufficient to excuse it from the coverage of the trademark laws, because it was so clear that his web site did not create any likelihood of confusion about whether Falwell sponsored it. The court ruled that, where the web site is clear about being adverse to the interests of the trademark holder, the fact that the domain name for the web site resembles the trademark is not a reason to find infringement, because the domain name must be considered in the context of the web site.
The decision is important for two other reasons. First, it is a decision by the same court that ruled against the web site operator in the "People Eating Tasty Animals" case, PETA v Doughney. There, the operator of a web site at www.peta.org (now accessible at www.mtd.com/tasty) was found guilty of both infringement and cybersquatting . It has always been my feeling that the case turned on the fact that Doughney was plainly trying to hit PETA up for a payment for the domain name , but the case has been widely if incorrectly cited in briefs as standing for the proposition that a domain name in the form www.trademark.com was impermissible for a
gripe site . That the same court that issued PETA has now made clear this construction of its opinion was erroneous - and Judge Michael, a member of the panel in Falwell, was also one of the judges in PETA - could well signal the end of the line for lawsuits of this kind.
Second, this opinion contains some welcome skepticism about the doctrine of "initial interest confusion," a trademark law analysis that some courts have deployed rather carelessly over the past several years to find trademark infringement even though there was no
consumer confusion about whether a product or service was sponsored by a trademark holder. Trademark law has always protected against only a substantial likelihood of confusion by the reasonable consumer, and not against "temporary confusion" or confusion caused wholly by consumer carelessness. In some of the early Internet infringement cases, there was some tendency to "baby" consumers by assuming that Internet users are stupid and that domain names can easily mislead them way from the web sites of trademark holders. By holding that "initial interest confusion" is not present here, in part because of flaws in the doctrine and in part because it does not apply to non-commercial criticism anyway, the court has written a decision that may play an important role in the development of trademark law apart from the issue of domain names and the Internet.
The opinion is available on the our web site
It will be posted on the Fourth Circuit's web site later today.
Our local counsel in the case was Ray Battocchi. of McLean, Virginia. We are also grateful to Richard Ravin, a New Jersey lawyer who was of counsel in the district court, to Rebecca Tushnet, Phil Malone and Bruce Keller who led the preparation of an amicus brief for a group of twelve law professors in the intellectual property field, and to Rebecca Glenberg who wrote a separate amicus brief for the ACLU and the ACLU-Virginia.
Here is our press statement:
PUBLIC CITIZEN PRESS RELEASE
Aug. 24, 2005
For Immediate Release: Contact:
Valerie Collins (202) 588-7742
Paul Levy (202) 588-1000

Rev. Jerry Falwell Loses Bid to Shut Down Disapproving Web Site
Falwell Sued New York Man to Shut Down Web Site
Criticizing Stance on Homosexuality
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a victory for free speech on the Internet, a New York man ordered to transfer the domain name www.fallwell.com to the Rev. Jerry Falwell will be allowed to keep the Web site, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled.
Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy represented the New York man, Christopher Lamparello. Lamparello runs a Web site that criticizes Falwell's views on homosexuality. Falwell sought to transfer the domain name, and after a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy panel ruled in Falwell's favor, Lamparello sued in federal court in Virginia to keep his domain name . Noting that for a period of time, Lamparello's Web site had praised a book and linked to
Amazon.com where the book could be bought, a trial judge decided that the site was sufficiently commercial to be subject to the trademark laws and ruled in Falwell's favor. Lamparello appealed the decision, and the case was argued in front of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in May.
Public Citizen, which has been a strong defender of First Amendment rights on the Internet, argued that Lamparello's speech is indisputably protected and not applicable to trademark laws because the site features noncommercial speech. Levy also asserted that the District Court's opinion should have been reversed because viewers of the Web site were unlikely to be confused about whether Falwell sponsors the Lamparello Web site.
"Lamparello's website looks nothing like Reverend Falwell's," the court ruled today. "Lamparello clearly created his website intending only to provide a forum to criticize ideas, not to steal customers."
"This is a victory for First Amendment rights on the Internet ," said Levy. "We are pleased that the court agreed that Mr. Lamparello has a right to use Falwell's name when criticizing him, and has every right to do so on the Internet."
The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and Intellectual Property Law Faculty defended Lamparello's Web site with "friend of the court" briefs. Local counsel was Ray Battocchi of McLean, Va. The court's decision is available at https://www.citizen.org/documents/ LamparellovFalwellFourthCircuitDecision.pdf.

###

Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy
organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org .

Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
https://www.citizen.org/litigation

Fact: life *can* go on without domain names . This is a really good perspective on the subject, from an Illinois bar lawyer. Information about this court ruling can be found on Spamhaus's web site .

CSTB has a report available online about the "Internet Governance" issues surrounding the DNS.

IP NETWORK INDEX - An index relating IP network numbers to network names and identities, for
CLASS A (0.x.x.x to 127.x.x.x)
CLASS B (128.0.x.x to 191.255.x.x)
CLASS C (192.0.0.x to 223.255.255.x) networks

See: DIHE IP INDEX Dynamic Network Services, Inc. and E-Mule Project Net