[We have been getting increasingly annoyed with both ICANN and WIPO. Considering there are probably the two most influential bodies on the future of the Internet, do we not deserve better?]

Who the hell does WIPO think it is?
Users come last in ICANN elections scramble

Great story you wrote about WIPO. I am a concerned citizen myself. Also, I got shut out for voting at ICANN. I tried for almost a week prior to the deadline, but I never could get through. I think some internal affairs organisation needs to look into this. I want to vote at ICANN and I can't. ICANN, IANA and WIPO should be stopped quickly. Their motto is "do as I say, but not as I do".

I read your articles about the WIPO and domain names. You say that the organisation favour Goliath over David but I don't find your examples very explicit. In the case of Yahoo, I talked with Francis Gurry (from the WIPO). According to him (which of course doesn't mean he tells the truth), the firm had registered 35 variations of Yahoo and tried to sell it to Yahoo Corp!

If it's right, it is not a good example to criticise WIPO policy. Nevertheless, as I am wondering how this organisation tends to replace national judges, I would like to know if you have other information.

Thanks in advance
Cordially

Edgar Pansu

From talking with the laywers involved in the New York DeCSS / DMCA

They could confirm the following procedure for purchasing federal law:

1) MPAA throws (unspecified) amounts of cash at WIPO
2) WIPO passes a resolution with vague references to protective technological measures
3) MPAA throws similarly (unspecified) amounts of cash at congress reps.
4) Said Reps. feel urged to implement the WIPO treaty -> passes DMCA
5) MPAA sues every nook and cranny on the net, with it's newly bought powers

This information was produce in the discovery phase of the trial, but is inadmissable as evidence. I don't know how much money was spent, but when a NY lawyer calls it "huge", I don't expect it to be just petty change.

Fortunately the MPAA didn't get exactly what they thought they had bought, so I can't wait till they loose the DeCSS case (in the Supreme Court), does Congress have a return policy on faulty merchandise ?

Frank

[Incidentally, we've changed the name of this reader because of the accusation. Christ! Are we getting paranoid? ICANN and WIPO are the Internet mafia we tell you - VDUs in beds, Intel chips in paper: "It means

sleeps with the fishes". But the asterisks at the end are Jeff's own self-censorship. We had a small debate on which four-letter word he was thinking of]

May we see many more articles PLEASE on ICANN and WIPO. It is good to see your article since I had a name taken from me after a friend of the ICANN chairwoman contacted me and said "you
know we can take the name from you through WIPO for US$1,000" so why not give it to us for US$300. Of course they won even though they put in a 2nd and completely different case midway through events and after I had lodged my response, yet allowed no reply.

Of course the complainants said to me "why don't you take a .co.uk you know, com's are for the USA" !!!!

Look at the ridiculous complaints such as "fssr.com" "kis.com" tfl.com, ec.com, japp.com. Does that mean because my name is Jeff Poppins I can use WIPO to obtain "JP.com" ??.

Anyway please keep up the pressure on those *****s at WIPO anmd ICANN

Jeff Poppins

I've been following the WIPO's rulings with interest for some months as I was engaged in one myself (which never made it to the WIPO). I think you'll find that they don't always favour the big guys. A chap won the right to use penguin.org against an appeal by Penguin books purely on the basis that he used to be called 'penguin' at school.

Reading through the findings it seems clear that you can win against the big boys if:

1. You actually respond to the WIPO's request for information - a surprising number of people lose by default
2. Have a legitimate reason for choosing a domain name
3. Have actually been using the domain

Most people who respond and then lose had no legitimate reason for using the domain and hadn't been using it.

The WIPO's guidelines may be late but there's been a summary of the grounds for ruling one way or another on their web site for many months.

Derek Cohen

I've been following the suggestions and letters on cybersquatting, and think the ENTIRE WORLD IS NUTS. But that's a different story.

The problem comes down to having to tell web designers to incorporate someone else's work into their page, which seems to be something like asking the system administrator to run an unchecked binary, or having WIPO have the last say in who owns a name.

I'm from South Africa, and would like to add my two cents from the Real World. There's this guy who owns a vehicle service station, can't remember his name, but his initials are B.M. So he names the place "BM Service Centre". Which naturally attracts the ire of a certain German car manufacturer. At the end of it all, the courts, basing their decision on WIPO standards, screw the little guy.

So what happens if I own the domain "crypt" (which I do), and some company starts up and calls itself "Crypt Inc." because it thinks it knows about digital security. I have no legal claim to the domain other that I got there first. Does it matter that "Crypt Inc." only started later? And then my local morgue goes online and also wants the domain - they were sure around before I was.

Hell no - WIPO likes money just as much as the next guy/government/organisation, to hell with the person in the street.

IMNSHO if a company has a trademark that predates your obtaining the domain, then by all means they have more right than you do - but has anyone considered that registering a domain name equates (except legally) to obtaining a trademark or registering a company name, and gives you the right to it?

Twylite

Loved the headline and enjoyed the story. This is bound to become an even larger issue and I wonder how long it'll be before organizations like WIPO start to apply the same rules to search results. One wonders if we'll see a day when WIPO will force Yahoo to direct visitors to "official" sites when they do searches for products or geographical areas.

Best regards,
Michael.

You hit the nail on the head with your article - I have been saying this for a long time.

Not many reporters speak like you do. Stay free and individual for as long as you can, or until you own your own newspaper.

Denny Hammerton