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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
This is a long-standing debate and I suspect people's minds are largely made up. But first-come-first-served always seemed to be a good rule of thumb to me, unless you're intentionally creating a site that's confusingly similar to that of a trademark owner. For instance, I registered shorten.com in 1997 or so (I was thinking of launching an info-locating site). Sometime in 1999 I had a less-than-pleasant conversation with a fellow who had created compression software called shorten and seemed to want the domain. Nothing ever happened, and eventually I let the registration lapse -- with the predictable result that it's now an links-to-naughty-p0rn site. So by the first-come-first-served test, while we might recognize that our Bible-quoting friend to be a recent convert to the merits of Holy Writ, his registration would not have been imperiled unless he created the "soccer info here" site or something similar. Background: "Bible-quoting Corinthians.com publisher replies to Politech" http://www.politechbot.com/p-02892.html -Declan --- Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 15:42:02 -0700 To: declan@well.com From: Tom Collins <tom@installco.com> Subject: Re: FC: Bible-quoting Corinthians.com publisher replies to Politech >My hope is that this one-sided decision (which also covers my domain >cruzeiro.com, pirated by another soccer team in Brazil) After scanning through the court ruling you emailed earlier, and reading this statement, I'm starting to lean toward the cyber-squatting ruling. Unless Sallen is registering 100's of domains, I find it more than a coincidence that he chose to register the names of two Brazilian soccer teams. According to the court document, it wasn't until after he contacted Corinthians about buying the domain that he started posting bible passages on corinthians.com. I fear that Sallen's "bible-quoting publisher" bit may be a ploy to gain support for his cause. I'd like to know how many domains he has registered (and how many are names of Brazilian soccer teams), how many he has sold to other companies, and how many have been "pirated" by trademark holders as domain squatting. -- Tom Collins, CTO InstallCo Computer Services tom@installco.com <http://www.installco.com/> --- Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 17:50:56 -0500 From: "Mike T" <w3k9b7n6n001@sneakemail.com> To: declan@well.com Subject: Re: Bible-quoting Corinthians.com publisher replies to Politech Ordinarily, I'm not one to bother you. You have far more intelligent and interesting people than myself sending you stuff. In this case though, I'm afraid, you're only getting one side of the story. WIPO has the information about this case at http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-0461.html . According to the case file, Mr. Sallen first approached the soccer club in September 1999 with an offer to sell the domain name, and subsequently established a web site following a notice letter in November 1999. According to the complaint: "Respondents registered "corinthians.com" in 1998. Respondents have not made a good faith use of "corinthians.com". Additionally, the email from Respondents offering to sell "corinthians.com" indicates Respondents' profit motive for registering the domain name. When these facts are considered in conjunction with the number and nature of other domain names registered by Respondents, the conclusion that profit was the motive behind Respondents' registration of "corinthians.com" is inescapable." >From what I see, this is simply a case of a domain squatter getting smacked appropriately. Sure, it's a little more interesting than most in that corinthians has multiple meanings, but the fact that he offered to sell the domain prior to making "use" of it indicates to me that profit, not piety, was the motive for the registration. --- Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 19:51:03 -0500 From: "Mike T" <w3k9b7n6n001@sneakemail.com> To: declan@well.com Subject: Re: Bible-quoting Corinthians.com publisher replies to Politech Sorry for the second email on the subject, but I did a little more digging on the subject. It seems this is the first of two domains he's lost in WIPO arbitration. The other one, another soccer team, was cruzeiro.com (see case @ http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-0715.html). Additionally, he transferred, without having to go through the arbitration process, dowjonesupdate.com and tonimorrison.com to their rightful owners. A previous NIC handle, JDS267, even had the organization listed as "prestige domains (for sale)". J D Sallen is hardly a free speech activist or religious advocate. He's simply a cybersquatter who got greedy. --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------