[NA-Discuss] Domain hijacking story

Seth M Reiss seth.reiss at lex-ip.com
Mon Jun 17 07:41:40 UTC 2013


Not really, but thanks for trying :)

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Brunner-Williams [mailto:ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net] 
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 5:41 AM
To: Seth M Reiss
Cc: na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Domain hijacking story

On 6/13/13 8:23 PM, Seth M Reiss wrote:
> I don't get it. Can you explain Eric?

Seth,

Assume the assertions offered in the complaint are factual: a domain
registered for the maximum allowed period to which no disclosed use was
made, and some act by a third-party, and a consequent act by the registrar
of record, the eventual loosing registrar, and a consequent act by another
registrar of record, the eventual gaining registrar.

The second half of the fact pattern existed when the domain panix.com,
serving the dial-up and later broadband-independent users of the City of New
York was briefly under the control of a third party in 2005 (if memory
serves, I acted to notify Marty Hannigan, then of Verisign, and Bruce
Tompkin, of Melbourne IT, the morning after I learned from Steven Bellovin
that "panix was down").

Where there is substantive public use, the chain of custody of a name to
address association is a public interest.

Where there is not, as in the instant case, the chain of custody of a name
to address association is not a public interest.

Are there "more" labels with no address association, or an address
association upon which no public reliance exists? Obviously, 63 octets
taking on values from {a..z,0..9,-} with only the rule that "-" not begin or
end or occur in two adjacent octets, the potential label set with no
beneficial resolution properties is vast.

So this can "get big", or be "wow", or "prove there is no law", but sharing,
without benefit, the compulsion or speculation of registrants of labels with
no published use detracts from the existing since the beginning of the
shared registry system (to which I also participated) practice of allowing
transfers between "competitive registrars" and ensuring that the interests
of registrants of labels upon which public reliance is made take precedence
over the interests of registrars.

It is the existence of reliance which creates an interest in the stability
and security of that reliance, not punters slapping $6 down on the outcome
of roulette wheel over a generating set of alphanumerics plus a hyphen with
conditions.

I hope that helps.
Eric


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