
As Many as 5K .Com’s Taken Away by Sealed Court Order by Verisign - ESBoston
http://www.thedomains.com/2014/10/02/as-many-as-5k-coms-taken-away-by-sealed-court-order-by-verisign-including-some-of-mine/
======
grizzles
Everything to do with the DNS system is so corrupt and shady. Half the domains
dropping in the new GTLD process are "unavailable", "registered", etc. We
tried to get an _exact_ trademark for one of our companies in the new GTLD
system during the Sunrise phase only to be told by Gandi that the new GTLD
owner rejected it. We pushed it pretty hard and had a back and forth with
Gandi's CEO who was pretty much on our side but the new GTLD owner (Demand
Media) wouldn't budge. We have to sue them if we want it. That's what the
privatized DNS system has come to.

You know who I feel bad for though? Those people who originally registered big
corporate brands .COM in the 90s and had their domains ripped from them. That
shit is ICANN endorsed nowadays.

~~~
icebraining
Is there any law or ICANN rule saying you're owed the domain with the same
characters as your trademark in every possible GTLD? I don't understand what
the outrage is about. It's not even like you have an exclusive claim on that
particular string (multiple companies can have the same mark, eg across
industries, countries, etc).

~~~
nly
His point is he had a strong claim to the name, as strong or stronger than
anyone elses, and he was willing to pay the Sunrise premium to get it... and
still couldn't.

~~~
icebraining
Yes. So what?

~~~
etherealG
I particularly like this argument. It's so full of meaning.

~~~
icebraining
It's not an argument. It's a request for one. What's the argument for
condemning the GTLD holder just because he doesn't want to sell a particular
domain?

~~~
grizzles
The argument is that there's only one Sunrise phase. If Demand Media decide to
sell it later to say a competitor of mine, I'm out of luck now aren't I?
What's the point then of even having a Sunrise phase? It's just smoke and
mirrors.

~~~
patmcc
>>If Demand Media decide to sell it later to say a competitor of mine, I'm out
of luck now aren't I?

That depends - are they really a competitor in the same industry, and their
use of your trademark leads to confusion in the marketplace? Because then
you're not out of luck at all, you have a trademark case.

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jacquesm
Scenario:

A domain is free to register. You register it as per your registrars normal
procedure. In some faraway country (say the USA) a bankruptcy court decided
that this domain that you just registered was part of the original holdings of
the company in bankruptcy.

Even though the company (or the receivers) let the registration lapse
(presumably because they were not doing too well financially).

And so the court will order that domain that you just paid for to be assigned
to some third party.

That's pretty perverted.

If there was an unbroken chain of ownership from the moment the original
company registered it to the point where the domain was levied during the
bankruptcy proceedings I can see the logic of it, but _once the company and
/or the receivers let the domain lapse_ they technically forfeited it and a
judge should not cooperate with them to reverse agreements between two other
consenting parties (you and the registrar) in order to re-assign that domain
to the pile of assets in the bankruptcy, especially not 'ex parte' (so without
hearing either you or the registrar as to how you came into possession of that
domain).

Otherwise from now on there is no such thing as a 'lapsed domain' any more.
And in fact, domains would not longer be 'property'. (I don't think they're
property to begin with and this case is a nice example of why I think they
aren't even though everybody treats them as such.)

~~~
rayiner
U.S. bankruptcy law gives courts great latitude to reverse transactions
involving the property of a bankrupt entity, because a lot of abuse of the
bankruptcy system is possible otherwise.

The problem here is actually with VeriSign. Any time you transfer an asset to
an entity but retain the right to get it back under certain conditions, you
have to think through what will happen if that other party enters into
bankruptcy and those assets get sucked into the proceeding. It's wrong for
them to assume they can resell the domain name the second it lapses.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting reading the comments, seems DreamTeamFinancial.com went bankrupt
and the domains were seized as part of the assets, even though some (many?)
had been transferred elsewhere. I would guess you could get an injunction
forbidding the domain seller who was liquidating the names from selling them
until ownership was more closely established but it does seem like there is an
education gap on domains that are "owned" by a company who then doesn't pay to
renew them so they simply 'lose' ownership rather than selling them.

------
sadfaceunread
I'll be following this case. I don't understand why this would be filed under
seal. I'd enjoy some legal experts comments on the matter.

~~~
fleitz
It's really difficult for anyone to speculate on a sealed court order.

Probably a deal gone bad and the person convinced a judge that if it went
through normal channels the persons owning the domains would liquidate them.
That or the transfer was deemed illegal in the first place.

A quick google for Robert Olea reveals he is a domain broker.

~~~
bhartzer
I know Bob personally, and he is a domain broker. I believe he is just the one
holding these domains until the last sauce can be resolved.

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dlgeek
This reminds me a lot of the no-ip.com case. Did anyone ever find out how that
was resolved? Apparently Microsoft gave back the domains[1], but did they face
any payments for damages or censure?

[1] [http://www.noip.com/blog/2014/07/10/microsoft-takedown-
detai...](http://www.noip.com/blog/2014/07/10/microsoft-takedown-details-
updates/)

~~~
sadfaceunread
Out of court settlement. Microsoft and No-ip both issued press
releases/updates to their original blog posts about it.

No details about the settlement were released but No-IP certainly got paid.

~~~
dsl
Details are obviously not public, but noip did not receive any money as a
result. Regardless of popular opinion on the matter, Microsoft managed to get
a lot of harmful malware shut down.

~~~
the_ancient
and the ends justify the means right?

Who care how many innocent people are victimized in the process, as long as
Microsoft can get some good PR it is all A-OK

I bet Microsoft could shutdown all kinds of malware if we all just allow them
to continually monitor all of our computers at all times....

------
sidko
Another incident that tells us we need to move towards something more
decentralized. Namecoin is an excellent concept and idea, it's a pity it is
not used and supported more widely.

~~~
dsl
What if the 5,000 domains were seized and shut down to prevent a massive worm
that had compromised millions of computers and would result in massive theft
against millions of consumers?

In the vast majority of cases law enforcement and court actions against
domains are justifiable and benefit the internet.

~~~
mcintyre1994
In that case why would it be a sealed court order? Also if sealed court orders
are involved and we assume we don't know about all of them, how can you
possibly make claims regarding "the vast majority"?

~~~
dsl
Personally being involved in a lot of domain takedowns.

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methodology
That's a very interesting website. It also features for example analysis of
companies and what domains they did/should buy. It really shows how there is
really an entire economy over domain names, not just in buying/selling but
also other secondary fields like regulation.

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lorddoig
That situation is just about as maddening as that site's scroll behaviour.

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gergles
While this is obviously a perversion of justice, I'm not shedding many tears
over shady domain landgrabbers losing their 'property'. It's unfortunate (and
clearly shouldn't have been filed under seal) but the histrionic comments on
anigbrowl's link about how this is going to kill the domain squatting
'business' just make me think "good."

~~~
joelrunyon
Given that we don't even know why they were seized (or how many were seized by
each person), it seems like you have an amazing hostility towards domainers in
general.

What makes you so mad towards them?

~~~
michaelt
Imagine a shopping mall car park where it costs $0.20 a day to park. Except
you can't park anywhere near the door, because people turn up at the start of
the day, park their cars across three prime spaces, and offer to sell them -
for $20.

You'd have to be a big fan of the coase theorem to enjoy paying $20 for a
$0.20 parking space, when the only thing the seller has done to add value is
get in your way.

~~~
joelrunyon
Or - if you simply look at it as real estate - they bought that land when the
supermarket was being built (and no one else thought it was valuable).

In this space - it's akin much more to having parking spaces near a sporting
event or concert. In which case - there's lot of happy people willing to pay
$20 for the privilege of parking.

Also - you should know that pricing goods based on "what they cost" isn't the
proper way to valuate a property, service, etc. If that was the case, every
user past 1,000 in most SAAS apps should just ask for their subscription to be
free.

~~~
wpietri
No, the mall bought the land and made the parking spaces. They are merely
squatting on parking spaces that other people created. And the reason those
parking spaces were created was to enable actual, productive business to take
place, not to feed parasites.

~~~
joelrunyon
Technically - the land was free. You're looking more at a hypothetical that's
similar to settling new land.

Also - calm down. There are businesses that are way worse than domainers.

~~~
wpietri
Ah, the "I'm not the _biggest_ scumbag in the world so it's fine" argument.

That might be a reason for you to not do something even worse. But it doesn't
make you less of a parasite.

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cssandjs
Well that can't be good - my "name" on the web can be snatched out from under
my feet?

~~~
jacquesm
There are now several 'known' ways in which this can happen, all of them seem
to involve a US court at some point in time so if you're running a legitimate
business on a .com and you acquired the domain as first registrant from a
registrar.

If you acquired that domain through the 'aftermarket', especially if it had
lapsed we now know that if that entity should ever go bankrupt there is a
potential problem.

And even in that case I assume you could object against this in some way
(though the story does not detail any of that so far, we'll have to wait to
see how it all plays out).

I'll be following this quite closely, to say that I'm surprised here is an
understatement.

There is even potential for a chain of bankruptcies causing repeated clawback
of the same domain!

~~~
turbojerry
Would it be possible to transfer the name initially to a front company, resell
it on to the intended company with a clause that says it cannot be clawed back
and then bankrupt the first so creating a legal firewall?

------
tobhahn
I wonder, is David J. Steele the John Steele of Prenda Law or is this just a
weird coincidence?

~~~
spacemanmatt
Just a coincidence.

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anigbrowl
Better to submit the original article, per HN guidelines. There's a lot of
useful info in the comments: [http://www.thedomains.com/2014/10/02/as-many-
as-5k-coms-take...](http://www.thedomains.com/2014/10/02/as-many-as-5k-coms-
taken-away-by-sealed-court-order-by-verisign-including-some-of-mine/)

~~~
sadfaceunread
Yes the comments of the original blog post have been really interesting to
read.

The domain name community looks to be all over the comment section of the
original post.

