[At-Large] Definition of registration abuse

[Derek Smythe]

Karl Auerbach wrote:
> Bret Fausett wrote:
> 
>>> 2. Is illegal
>>
>> Where?
> 
> And to take the next step - there is a tendency in these discussions to 
> jump from a set of actions to a conclusion that it is unlawful.
> 
> Yet in real life legal proceedings there is an intermediary step - a 
> trial - in which the actions are put into context and measured (often 
> quite subjectively) against the rules of law.
> 
> It seems to me that in all of these internet matters that one should not 
> jump to the conclusion that something is unlawful until there has been 
> an a concrete legal procedure that has find that to be the case.
> 
> Thus rather than leaping to the conclusion that acts X, Y, and Z are an 
> unlawful abuse of a trademark and reacting by, for instance, revoking a 
> domain registration it would be better if that revocation had to be 
> predicated on an actual legal process that concluded (and had passed 
> through any appeals process) that an unlawful abuse of a trademark had 
> actually occurred.
> 
> Otherwise we seem far too much at risk of inventing a parallel, but 
> different, judicial system.
> 
>         --karl--
> 
> 
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How long will this process take?
A good scam takes a day and we have victims, many of which will never 
be reported to LE, many not understood by the LE reported to. Nobody 
even knows what the losses are on the fraud on the net!  The promise 
of the Internet is instant delivery. I press a button in Romania and a 
victim sees the content immediately half way around the world. Legal 
process is known to be slow. 15 days.

Who will pay for it?
Banks and other legitimate content owners, trademark owners may 
initiate take downs on phishing sites since this affects their bottom 
line directly. As for 419/advance fee fraud sites, not so since their 
clients are not targeted.

Who needs to initiate it? As we see above, the bank or legitimate 
owner may not. Yet the targets and victims do exist, else we would not 
be posting here

LEA? Will the American taxpayer foot the bill for most of domains 
using American registration details/hosted in the USA? I think that 
would be unfair. In fact Commissioner Jon Leibowitz asked ICANN way 
back to improve the whois accuracy. What we see is more of the same 
and provably so, so what right have we to make it a problem for 
authorities? How can we expect them to clean up if we are just making 
it more complex for them, but refuse to clean up house?


Why go through this process if the same registrant is proven to have 
numerous identities and keeps on repeating this process time and again?

In certain instances the same parties have been at it for up to 5 
years, have built mansions, are driving around in the most expensive 
cars .... safely in countries notorious for scams and a severely 
lacking justice system. They use American debit cards complete with 
American address to purchase domains. In fact providers who sell these 
supply them with access to paid for proxies when they purchase these 
cards from them. This is just one example. Trying to follow the money 
trail is near impossible.

Theoretically yes to what you are saying if we talked about an issue 
in a single country where everybody was law abiding, we had real 
registration details, where had honest registrars, there we no 
criminal resellers. However we are not. We are crossing international 
borders with the average consumer simply being cannon fodder. This is 
the real world scenario.

The problem is simply that if we do not resolve this, at some stage 
authorities will get involved and we may lose a lot, not just only 
privacy. Look at the .US TLD.

Derek