RE: domain name speculation

From: Joel Gehman <joel_at_irant.com>
Date: Fri 27 Aug 1999 08:16:38 -0700

MUHAMMAD LEE WROTE:
>The act of CyberSquatting that is being discussed in
>congress, is when someone registers say....
>DaimlerChrysler.com and doesn't pay for it...they just let
>it sit as long as possible without paying for it hoping that
>the good folks from DaimlerChrysler will fork over the cash
>for it.....

If the would-be violators of the current cybersquatting bill
are merely those who register domains and don't pay for
them, Network Solutions (et al) should just require some
form of payment at the time of registration. Problem solved
without any heavy-handed legislation...

Fact is Congress is painting with a much wider brush and
Muhammad Lee's white washed version of what this bill
purports to do might be giving some of you a false sense of
security. Senate bill S.1255 (visit http://thomas.loc.gov
for full text) is not merely an attempt to get domain
holders to stop playing a loop-hole in Network Solutions'
billing system. This piece of legislation is all about
protecting large, slow moving companies who ignored the Web,
woke up one morning and realized just how asleep at the
wheel they were.

It is the outright legalization of a digital land grab.
It's like McDonalds having the legal right to sue for a
piece of land I own because their restaurant would serve the
public better than whatever I want to do with it. Wrong!
Whoever gets the domain first wins. Period. That a
resource is scarce doesn't give Congress the right to
apportion it.

If the concern is around trademarks, we already have
legislation to protect and enforce the rights of trademark
holders. The cybersquatting bill is not about people who
don't pay their Internic bills and it's not about people who
buy cocacola.com. Those two issues don't need legislation
to be corrected. Existing laws and remedies already exist
for collecting money from dead beats and protecting
trademarks. It's about a much fuzzier set of issues -- all
at the periphery... Read for yourself.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS. "Congress finds the following: (1) The
registration, trafficking in, or use of a domain name that
is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or
service mark of another that is distinctive at the time of
the registration of the domain name, or dilutive of a famous
trademark or service mark of another that is famous at the
time of the registration of the domain name, without regard
to the goods or services of the parties, with the bad-faith
intent to profit from the goodwill of another's mark
(commonly referred to as `cyberpiracy' and
`cybersquatting')-- (A) results in consumer fraud and public
confusion as to the true source or sponsorship of goods and
services; (B) impairs electronic commerce, which is
important to interstate commerce and the United States
economy; (C) deprives legitimate trademark owners of
substantial revenues and consumer goodwill; and (D) places
unreasonable, intolerable, and overwhelming burdens on
trademark owners in protecting their valuable trademarks."

Seems to me that the "use of a domain name that
is...confusingly similar to a trademark" is ripe for all
sorts of legal manipulation. What about companies that all
have similar names. What happens when Saturn Cars, Saturn
Cleaners and Saturn Electronics all want saturn.com, but
some content site about space exploration got there first?
My interpretation of the above legislation tells me the
company with the deepest pockets will sue and win. After
all, wouldn't "public confusion" be minimized if saturn.com
pointed to Saturn Cars? I imagine that's how a court would
interpret this bill.

Finally, Section 3 of the bill amends the Trademark Act of
1946 (15 U.S.C. 1125) with more of the same
"slow-big-guy-wins, fast-little-guy-loses" language. While
at THOMAS I also noted another another bill has been
introduced in the Senate: Domain Name Piracy Prevention Act
of 1999 [S.1461.IS]. No text posted yet, but sounds like
another digital land grab scheme. I've already written both
my senators about this topic, have you???

Joel Gehman
Manager - Ecommerce Marketing
Reliance Personal Insurance
Visit me: http://irant.com




Received on Fri Aug 27 1999 - 10:16:38 CDT