
France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994 - coobird
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/france-seizes-france-com-from-man-whos-had-it-since-94-so-he-sues/
======
lkrubner
The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead
they are like telephone numbers:

\----------------

The court found that under the California tariffs, rules, and regulations
applicable to public utilities, and under the terms of the contracts, the
debtors had no “proprietary right in the number.”

[https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f-4e06-be1a-93161aa35804)

Also:

...under Virginia law, the user of a telephone number or domain name does not
have a property interest in that phone number or domain name.

\-------------------

Governments have the right to assign to themselves any telephone number they
wish, and reserve ranges of phone numbers for themselves, therefore it makes
sense that they can do the same to domain names.

If people felt strongly about this issue, the law could be changed, but as of
right now, under current law, this does not appear to be theft.

~~~
brownbat
The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the
same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look
things up.

The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my
machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this
decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back.

(I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spawn a movement, but that
response is available.)

.onion and namecoin and various others are a wholecloth attempt at this.

But it goes farther than hosts and alt roots. One of the unique properties of
the internet is that if it gets overburdened with cruft people don't like, we
can just build it from scratch on top of existing systems.

There are infinite namespaces. You could build a copy of the Internet that's
the same but with no Facebook. You could build a copy of the internet where
all domains are mapped right to left. You could build a copy of the internet
that only hosts MUDs.

Adoption isn't guaranteed, or even likely, but maybe widespread adoption is
part of the problem you're running from in the first place.

Here's to the dystopia of unregulatable and unusable internet fragmentation.
Some pros, some cons.

~~~
phyzome
Phone numbers take you to the same phone until...

    
    
      - that person gets a new phone
      - a hacker politely calls customer support and asks to have a new phone activated on that number
      - the area code is split and someone else ends up getting the number
    

The phone system has a lookup table too.

~~~
girvo
In Australia, your phone has zero to do with your number; the SIM card is what
“holds” it (not really. And that’s an oversimplification but oh well). And
there are no area codes for mobiles.

~~~
ajdlinux
And in Australia, for some reason you _still_ get people who change their
number when they buy a new phone, so...

------
dade_
Web.com transfers the france.com they registered for their customer (since
1994) to the government of France without explanation or warning.

"on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to
the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal
notification to Frydman and no compensation."

It is actually just another example proving the warning we have all
known/given for years about SaaS / cloud providers owning your digital
properties.

~~~
indigodaddy
Yeah, I think as soon as he heard any sort of rumblings from those French
entities, he would have been smart to transfer away from web.com to a
real/first-party registrar. Potentially they would have been less likely to
just hand over the domain.

~~~
cft
Can you recommend such a registrar? I also had bad experience with Network
Solutions / web.com. They seem to blur the distinction between being a hosting
company and a domain registrar.

~~~
justinclift
easyDNS (easydns.com), based in Canada, has a reputation for not just rolling
over.

Their UI though is a bit crappy compared to other places though (like hover).
Hover though I suspect wouldn't put up any kind of resistance.

------
dingaling
So the case came down to violating _French_ trademark law. That's because
country names cannot be trademarked internationally ( and why tourist agencies
register names like Visit<country> )

So it's not clear why Web.com even responded to the complaint unless they have
a presence in France. Or was the risk that it could have been escalated to a
European level of penalty?

~~~
tripletao
That part of the story seems severely underexplained to me. Web.com doesn't
seem to have any marketing content not in English, so their EU business is
probably small compared to this reputational hit. Concern that France would
eventually get to them through their payment processors and banks, if the EU
takes its cue from the USA in applying extraterritorial law? (Link to GDPR
enforcement debate here...)

I guess this means we should all ask our registrars what countries' court
orders they'll abide by? What happens if Maduro has a Venezuelan court order
seizing DolarToday.com?

~~~
casefields
It's because someone screwed up big time and when journalists started calling
their lawyers told them to shut up.

------
makecheck
Somehow, despite domains having sufficient differentiation, it has evolved to
the point where the first part seems to be all that matters.

In this case, "something.fr" _should_ be sufficient in France and yet the
reality is that if you don’t also control "something.<foo>" for all possible
values of "<foo>", you might encounter a problem later.

Even worse, it has evolved that we now have to care about certain patterns on
certain _sites_. What if you don’t control "something.facebook.com", or
"reddit.com/r/something" for instance?

It’s crazy. We need to be deploying security technologies further so that
names _alone_ can stop mattering so damned much. All we seem to have in wide
use are certificates, which are still not required and essentially not
understood by users (if they don’t get an entity name and padlock, they’d
probably load the site anyway).

~~~
return1
.com is a good compromise. i believe the average user assumes the .com domain
to be the most legitimate / canonical.

~~~
gnulinux
I think it's the exact opposite. .com websites are very rarely legitimate,
canonical whereas .org, .edu, .gov etc... are more legitimate and trustworthy

~~~
jpambrun
All of those are US only, making .com the next best thing in this case I
guess?

~~~
gnulinux
All countries have their respective .edu, .gov, .org etc and if you consider
them I think my point still stands.

~~~
nightcracker
What do you mean? .edu and .gov are US-only.

~~~
gnulinux
E.g. France has .gouv.fr which is equivalent of .gov. All countries have their
respective replacements, if needed.

------
TipVFL
I'm surprised the article didn't mention the value of the domain.

I used to work for a domain name marketplace where we sold kittens.com for $6
million dollars. France.com has to be worth a few million.

Painful.

~~~
gtirloni
I can't detect if you're joking but that seems pretty messed up. I guess from
the looks of it today, kittens.com didn't turn a profit?

~~~
TipVFL
Not joking. Single word domains under the .com tld are worth a lot, especially
very common words.

I don't know that kittens.com was ever turned into anything, they may have
just bought it betting on it being worth even more in the future.

~~~
gtirloni
That's impressive. I need to re-calibrate my assumptions about this. Thanks!

------
ill0gicity
This seems somewhat familiar to me...
[https://domainnamewire.com/2009/11/30/paris-wins-parvi-
org-i...](https://domainnamewire.com/2009/11/30/paris-wins-parvi-org-in-
disturbing-domain-name-arbitration-decision/)

Hopefully it turns out well for Mr. Frydman as it did for me (even though
Paris still hasn't paid up): [https://domainnamewire.com/2012/09/17/city-of-
paris-ordered-...](https://domainnamewire.com/2012/09/17/city-of-paris-
ordered-to-pay-100k-for-reverse-domain-name-hijacking/)

------
pg_bot
Why would the Paris Court of Appeals have any jurisdiction in this case? I'm
surprised web.com didn't have their lawyers review the request and then throw
it in the trash.

~~~
forapurpose
If web.com wants to do any business in France, or possibly if its executives
ever want to travel there, then the French government has leverage over them.

------
scriptproof
[https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-
names](https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names)

I have read the entire judgement and beside the fact you can not register the
name of a country, he had not also the right to register a trademark from the
beginning.

~~~
djrogers
Wait a sec, “France” is a trademark?

~~~
jkaplowitz
It certainly could be a trademark, just not an exclusive one like Coca-Cola.
If you wanted to market a "France" brand of chairs in the US, that'd be
allowed most likely, but wouldn't prevent a "France" brand of dish towels from
being registered by someone else.

You'd still need to avoid a false impression of origin for your chairs, but it
could work if they're actually from France, you provide an alternate
association for the word France in your context ("From Mr. France himself,
your Kentucky neighbor since 1993!"), or just include in your
branding/advertising enough clarity on where the chairs are from.

~~~
rrix2
FTA:

> Defendants knew that they did not, and do not, have a right to the word
> "France," as evidenced by Defendant Atout France's US Trademark Registration
> No. 4027580, filed in 2009, in which Defendant expressly disclaimed the
> exclusive right to the word "France."

~~~
jkaplowitz
Yup, agreed. Exclusive being the key word there. They were using the word
France as a reference to the country, and couldn't prevent others from doing
so. That's different from using the word to reference something else like
chairs.

------
llcoolv
The first thought which came to my mind was "Thanks god I don't have anything
registered with Web.com". In case anyone does, right now might be a great
moment to consider migration.

------
misev
Germany doesn't seem to care much about
[http://germany.com](http://germany.com) :)

~~~
ada1981
Or UnitedStates.com - a spam site

Or America.com (a godaddy page).

Could this guy sue Web.com?

Maybe he can win the fight to Web.com on behalf of the WWW.

~~~
libria
Back in the early 2000's whitehouse.com used to be a patriotic-themed adult
site. So I'm told...

~~~
hliyan
You are correct. Accidentally went there once when I was supposed to go to
whitehouse.gov. Needless to say, there were images of many interns...

------
esterly
A stroll through archive.org shows there was a small business sending people
to and blogging about France:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160805122924/http://www.france....](http://web.archive.org/web/20160805122924/http://www.france.com/)
as .com is short for commercial it appears the owner was using the domain
correctly before transfer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com)

------
walrus01
Does anyone remember [http://www.nissan.com](http://www.nissan.com) and its
long, drawn out legal battle?

------
gaius
My memory is hazy now but I recall in the mid-90s Gap (the clothing company)
suing Genesis Access Point (an ISP) over gap.com and winning. First come first
served is the only fair way to run domain names.

~~~
mercurial
Also known as "enabling domain name squatters".

~~~
themaninthedark
Perhaps so. But how would you have the issue resolved? Should the domain go to
the most well known party? The product a reasonable person expects to find
when they type in the address?

What happens if I register icar.com for product that syncs your car to the
cloud. Then Apple decides they want to compete with Elon Musk, with their new
Icar. Who will get the domain?

What happens when a large company decides to rebrand it's self and wants the
domain?

What happens to Nissan? [http://www.nissan.com](http://www.nissan.com)

~~~
dfxm12
Going by iPad.com as an example, you'd play a game of chicken with Apple,
because the moment you try to monetize that site in almost any way, they'll
sue you for trademark infringement. You'll hope they offer you a ton of money
for it, but Apple's brand is strong enough that they don't need it.

Mr. Nissan is lucky that he had an existing business that wasn't car related
and he only registered his name...

~~~
onetimemanytime
Very dumb of Apple IMO. Just pay the guy. So what that he wants $x million?

~~~
jakobegger
Then they would also have to pay millions for applewatch.com macbook.com
ipadpro.com macpro.com iphone7.com iphone8.com iphonex.com ...

~~~
onetimemanytime
_> > applewatch.com, ipadpro.com macpro.com...iphone7.com iphone8.com
iphonex.com_

UDRP cost a few thousand dollars. iPad.com, IIRC, was registered before Apple
came up with iPad. Plus, iPad is an entire product line.

------
onetimemanytime
I think he will win according to US law. At least there's no bad faith, simply
a site about "France"

~~~
mr_toad
I doubt he’ll get anywhere by suing the French government. They’ll either just
ignore him, or assert sovereign immunity.

He’d probably have better luck suing web.com or the new registrar in a US
court and forcing them to hand it back.

~~~
onetimemanytime
I think a Fed judge can order--US based--Verisign to transfer the name back.
At least they were able to...

------
Shinkei
I'm pretty disappointed by all the armchair lawyering in this thread that
isn't defending the individual/citizen in this case.

.gov, .fr, etc were created for a reason. Trademark law is intended to protect
people from intentionally misleading branding.

These two items taken together should make it obvious that France.gov is the
only name the government of France 'should' be entitled to. If you are willing
to say that France.com should be available to the French government... then
it's a slippery slope. Are you going to give them to right to take down
critical websites with titles like Francesucks.com or Francegenocide.com.

These lawsuits have played out before between private individuals like Madonna
et al.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting)

Why should a government be privileged to seize any .com that they deem to be
in their interest? There is no evidence that France.com was not being used in
a nefarious or misleading way.... in fact it sounds like the government had at
least unofficially endorsed the site's usage and contributed. It was being
used for a bonafide business.

I really think anyone defending a government's 'right' to seize this domain
name is forgetting the underlying liberal democratic principles of the
internet. Rights are for people, not governments. I don't see how France
acting in this way serves its people constructively.

EDIT: It seems like all people care to comment on is the fact that they (and
I) already know that .gov is for the US government, while other countries have
their own TLDs.

Let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment to hopefully make you think more
critically about this decision.

What if you owned a famous China (dishware, cups, etc) company and registered
China.com back in 1994. Do you think China should be allowed to take that
domain?

Or another, what if a new country were formed that were suddenly the same name
as a pre-existing multinational corporation.... Government wins? Always?

~~~
pavlov
.gov is only available to the United States government. There's no way for
France to get france.gov.

~~~
Shinkei
I edited my post. I meant to say that governments have assigned/protected
names like .fr, .de, etc.

~~~
geezerjay
No, they have not. Each country can manage country-code top level donains, but
that's just it: a specific top-level domain they are free to use. That doesn't
negate them the right of using other domains, just like if you buy a domain
name you don't lose the right of using a second or a third one.

It boggles the mind how anyone in their right mind can believe that a cyber-
squatter shoud somehow have the right to hold the domain name of a sovereign
nation for ransom.

~~~
ada1981
Except he wasn’t a cyber squatter — he built a business around it.

It’s seems uncommon for countries to actually own COUNTRY.com -
UnitedStates.com, America.com, Germany.com and many more are privately held.

~~~
thaumasiotes
germany.com isn't in the same class as the other examples; France's claim on
france.com is arguably more similar to Germany's hypothetical claim on
deutschland.com . Why assume that what governments really care about is the
English name for their country?

~~~
ada1981
Germany doesn’t care about deutschland.com either.

So, unclear what your point is.

Mine, is that countries generally don’t seem to care about the .com (of any
variation) of the country name.

------
gremlinsinc
This sounds like a case maybe EFF would be interested in backing.

------
shiado
He should consult the guy that owns nissan.com.

~~~
sloxy
why? nissan.com is owned by Mr. Uzi Nissan so there is a reasonable defense
that he has a justifiable claim to the domain. seems a lot more clear cut than
this.

~~~
Cyph0n
So you're saying that if the owner of france.com was a Mr. James France, the
French government wouldn't have done the same thing?

~~~
mcny
The website claims that Nissan (the guy)'s business existed before Datsun
became Nissan. I think there ought to be some kind of prior art for trademarks
as well. It is not fair that a business suddenly not be allowed to use their
trademark (even if they fail to register it) just because someone else
registers it.

------
hazeii
Some of us remember the issues with mtv.com
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Internet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Internet)).

------
jhallenworld
Is France a company? Wouldn't they want france.gov?

As an owner of worcester.com, this is the argument we had with the city of
Worcester, MA in the 90s. They did in fact want worcester.gov.

~~~
detaro
No, they would not want france.gov, since they are not a government entity of
the United States.

~~~
jhallenworld
Ah, I did not realize how much of a mess this had become.

------
RomanPushkin
Also worth watching
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevVt5sHDNA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevVt5sHDNA)

------
PunchTornado
How can one sue the French government in a Virgina court.

Should the French government waste tax money in hiring American attorneys and
representing itself? I would say no.

~~~
YawningAngel
Since the French government has assets in the United States, yes it very much
should.

------
SeanLuke
Why is web.com not party to the lawsuit?

------
petraeus
canada.com is not owned by the government, its owned by postmedia the parent
of rogers

------
return1
between this and the various DNS hacks, maybe we should consider a trustless
solution.

------
mortdeus
whats messed up is that they now have the website redirected towards france.fr

------
lspears
Domains on the blockchain?

~~~
kardos
[https://namecoin.org/](https://namecoin.org/)

~~~
znpy
I was about to get some namecoins and register my .bit domain name but I
decided to dig a bit more before going all in.

Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously, please do) but it seems to me that
namecoin being (technically) a fork of bitcoin, shares most of bitcoin's
problems, in particular regarding mining and exchange.

Here was my doubt: suppose that I get namecoins and obtain .bit domain name,
how do i keep it registered? Do i have to mine? Do i have to renew by
"spending" namecoins? Can i get namecoins on exchanges? (spoiler to last
question: yes).

Here is how it might just fail: given that namecoins has mostly the same
cryptographic properties of bitcoin, if namecoin was to become widely adopted
then _everybody_ would start mining and selling namecoins, making namecoin
price skyrocket at the point where 1) mining namecoins to keep your domains
would become super expensive 2) people would burn "real" money on gpu mining
and asic miners, accumulating large amounts of coins and keeping them hostage
(that is, hoping to sell them for a lot of "real" money).

------
justherefortart
I transferred my domains off web.com after continually being forced to call to
get anything done. They started sending me spam trying to trick me to
switching back. Terrible company. They are register.com FYI.

------
phereford
I know we are talking about this in the digital realm, but this also exists in
the property realm too. Imminent Domain is used be governments to acquire
land, generally below its actual valution, for building of infrastructure.

I wonder if this concept will ever make it to the digital world.

~~~
gattafrettolosa
I am against emi ent domain but at least it is justified by the fact that
there are no alternatives. A road between two points must pass through some
land, but if a domain name for your website isn't available don't be a bully
and buy another one. Also you have to compensate with eminent domain, you
can't just take. Not in decent societies anyway. What we have here is maximum
statism. A bunch of french bureaucrats had some stupid idea on how to spend
stolen taxpayers money to "improve" society, and they used their position to
steal a domain name from a guy who was minding his own business. In this case
bureaucrats should be condemned as if they were thief.

~~~
mcny
> In this case bureaucrats should be condemned as if they were thief.

I don't think the public gets to go scott free in this. France is a democracy.
If the French government does something, all French people are responsible for
it. That's what the world says about us, why not France?

------
jsjohnst
Tangential to the core issue, but seems kinda weird to me that he claims he
bought it from web.com in 1994 and he’s had the domain for 24 years when
web.com has only existed for 19. A quick Wikipedia search would’ve clearly
shown this. Further, in 1994, there’s only one place he could’ve registered
this domain as it wasn’t decentralized until the late 90s.

I guess Ars was sleeping at the wheel when posting this.

~~~
lkrubner
Network Solutions was started in 1994, and was later bought by Web.com. It is
correct to say that he got a domain name from a registrar which is now the
property of Web.com.

~~~
jsjohnst
Yes, but he wasn’t a Web.com customer for 24 years. Web.com didn’t exist until
1999 and further didn’t buy Network Solutions until 2011. It’s fine for a
consumer to not remember, but Ars should do better in their reporting!

