Re: [ICANN-EU] first penal court ruling

[lutz@iks-jena.de (Lutz Donnerhacke)]

* Marc Schneiders wrote:
> Well I oppose far less than you do, because I think that a lot of
> so-called protection of names, is a form of censorship. I also do not
> oppose the trading in domain names, as you seem to do (I am getting more
> careful :-)
>
> Extortion is a reason to send someone to jail. Not speculating in domain
> names. Unless "society" outlaws *all* speculation.

You know my position on low level vanity domain names. But they are not the
reason for the difference. You are right in using the term 'extortion'
instead of my 'squatting'. So my argument becomes more valid: The reasoning
of the court was wring, because it is based solely on trademark laws while
ignoring the extortion fact.

> The depiction of those who trade in domain names as villains, originates
> with those large companies that discovered the internet late, and now
> find that names they want are taken. Bad luck. Let them pay for what they
> want, like when they want to take over something else: at the market
> price, not for the WIPO fee.

Ack for the resaoning, nack for the usage of the DNS as a trading good. DNS
is too important to misuse it in that way (legally or not).

> As for personal names: it does not make any difference whether another
> Lutz has registered lutz.de or a speculator. You can't get it anymore.

Not registering it eases the technical maintaince. Please do not ignore that.

> the speculator. This does not make speculation good. It indicates that
> speculation is not the root of all evil in domain names.

Right, the root of all evil are marketing droids with a major oxygen
insufficiency. They provided a market on SLDs.