Comments

Explaining the Legal Enforceability of the PIC Proposed by Ethos for .ORG

• Comment posted Jul 17, 2020 4:13 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  And who would have guessed that Allen Grogan, "Independent Business Owner" would become "Executive Partner" at Ethos Capital? Gosh, what are odds on that coincidence?

ICANN and Attorneys General: Ends, Means and Unintended Ends

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2020 7:27 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Nearly any proposition one wants to argue within the ICANN community can be advanced by one of these propositions: 1.  ICANN must do [what I want] or else government authorities will make demands. or 2. If ICANN caves to government…

The End of the Road: ICANN, Whois, and Regulation

• Comment posted Nov 08, 2019 2:21 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...to sign employment contracts with registrars and registries, like the NTIA representative un-named in your exaggerated description of what she said during the meeting in question (Ms. Heineman) who is now working for GoDaddy. The "government will do our bidding"…

Portrait of a Single-Character Domain Name

• Comment posted Mar 13, 2019 8:21 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Is Verisign's trademark — USPTO Registration Number 3060761 for "It's a Trust Thing" — dead from discontinued use?" Someone relying on what is known as "naked licensing" as the only claim to be using a trademark for which they bought…

The Hidden Perils of Filing a Baseless UDRP Complaint

• Comment posted Dec 14, 2018 3:59 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  "Yet as a result of RDNH findings and any publicity related to them, potential clients researching an attorney or a firm prior to entering into an engagement may learn of an attorney's or a firm's involvement in an abusive filing…

Why Are the EU Data Protection Authorities Taking Away Our Fundamental Right to be Safe?

• Comment posted Apr 30, 2018 3:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I would not feel secure, nor would most other people, if anyone was able to look up the name, address, email address, and telephone number corresponding to the owner of any license plate. Is license plate data available in your…

In Memoriam: UDRPsearch.com

• Comment posted Jan 15, 2018 6:15 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  A much better search function for WIPO decisions only is at dndisputes.com.

New UDRP Filing Fees at Czech Arbitration Court

• Comment posted Jan 11, 2018 8:00 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Incidentally, the "teaser fee" problem does not exist at NAF, since their three member panel fee is exactly double the single-member panel fee.  So if you are filing a complaint, and you anticipate any likelihood of a competent response requesting…

• Comment posted Jan 11, 2018 7:55 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  You will note the (approx) in Doug's estimate of the CAC fee in dollars. What you will find out, if you have ever had reason to pay a fee to the CAC, which Doug has never done, and I have…

Domain Name Disputes Break Two Records in 2017

• Comment posted Jan 11, 2018 6:10 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Finally, in order to make a quantitative statement about the incidence of anything, you have to normalize the data to the size of the sample. For example, if domain name registrations increased by, say, 10%, and abuse increased by 5%,…

• Comment posted Jan 11, 2018 5:58 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  A third record broken in 2017 is that the 35 findings of abuse of process (reverse domain hi-jacking) in cases initiated in 2017 at WIPO exceeded the number of instances of abuse of the policy than any other year in…

• Comment posted Jan 11, 2018 5:47 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Doug, you are considered an expert in this field.  Perhaps there is a difference in academic perspectives, but my understanding is that when one makes a quantitative statement, then the expert is assumed to be basing the quantitative statement on…

First Do No Harm: Ensuring Compliance with the EU's GDPR While Preserving Access to WHOIS Data

• Comment posted Jan 10, 2018 9:04 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  I'm still stuck on the definitional problem of "what is the service a registrar provides?" in relation to "registration".  The registry puts the name in the zone and provides resolution of DNS queries to the relevant nameservers.  The function of…

Domain Name Disputes Break Two Records in 2017

• Comment posted Jan 09, 2018 8:02 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  "An increase in phishing-related scams (where cybersquatters use domain names to impersonate others as part of an attempt to extract information from unsuspecting victims) also probably contributed to the larger number of domain name disputes." Doug, how many UDRP disputes…

Dot-Com is Still King - of Domain Name Disputes

• Comment posted May 12, 2017 2:52 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "As I've written before, the large number of new gTLDs probably contributed to a record number of UDRP disputes in 2016. But it's clear that" you were wrong. If you want to see the impact of a policy shift in…

Trademark Overreaching and Faux Cybersquatting Claims

• Comment posted Aug 29, 2016 7:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "In none of the above claims of right (complainant or respondent) is there any attempt to prove earned reputations. Bigfoot and CKL Holdings have none." Oh, they're earning a reputation.  Just not one which is helpful to them.

The Impact of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on Supplemental Filings in UDRP Cases

• Comment posted Aug 18, 2016 12:48 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I can't seem to find the statistics on the WIPO site on how many RDNH findings there are in a given year. Would you or one of your colleagues happen to know where WIPO publishes that statistic, or what the…

• Comment posted Aug 18, 2016 12:47 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  "In other words, a complainant cannot know that a respondent would assert an allegation of RDNH until the respondent has actually done so." When a lawyer signs a pleading in US litigation, Rule 11 applies.  It applies whether someone raises…

The Truth About Supplemental Filings in UDRP Cases

• Comment posted Aug 15, 2016 8:16 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  What I have seen in practice, and heard from UDRP panelists, is that unsolicited supplements are almost never helpful in resolving the dispute.  Quite frequently, the complainant is surprised that there was a response at all, and seeks the opportunity…

What Will ICANN Do with the $135 Million It Just Got for .WEB?

• Comment posted Jul 29, 2016 1:58 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Procrastinating?  Over proceeds which likely haven't cleared payment yet? "Many times, the organisation has proven woefully inept at money management." Where has this been "proven"?  Proved by whom?  Do you have a link to support the "many times" it has…

Heritage Holding Anti-IANA Transition Event With Cruz

• Comment posted Jul 08, 2016 1:30 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Phil, the question, broadly put, was whether there is a financial connection between Heritage and Cruz.  It was not about whatever other bogeyman you want to bring up, Clinton's speaking fees, or "organizations on the left". Does Heritage and its…

• Comment posted Jul 08, 2016 1:25 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "I'd want more data on the relevant laws and how that was structured" Well, the way I understand it is that a lady comes onto the stage wearing seven veils.  As she dances, she removes them one at a time.

• Comment posted Jul 08, 2016 1:11 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Was that contribution from the Heritage Foundation or from Heritage Action, its separate but associated political arm?" Yes, the same group of people file another paper with the Delaware Secretary of State, and develop complete amnesia in their day-to-day dealings.…

• Comment posted Jul 08, 2016 1:07 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "And a think tank like Heritage would jeopardize its tax-exempt status if it contributed to a campaign fund." http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000034435&type=P&state;=&sort=A&cycle=2012 Heritage Foundation Among Federal Candidates, 2012 Cycle Total: $77,545 Romney, Mitt (R) Pres $51,800 McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) Senate $5,000 Cruz, Ted…

• Comment posted Jul 08, 2016 12:45 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  In the 2012 cycle, Heritage Foundation donated $4,625 to Ted Cruz, but that's just a drop in the bucket from a very casual search: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000034435&type=P&state;=&sort=A&cycle=2012 That's why Phil carefully phrases it as "received zero compensation from them for his remarks…

• Comment posted Jul 08, 2016 11:42 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  After the opening prayers and the ceremonial fondling of the assault rifles, there was something about building a big beautiful firewall to keep the Mexicans out and make the Internet great again.  Once President Trump gets his tiny hands on…

How Diverse Is ICANN? New Study Explores Organisation's Makeup

• Comment posted Jun 23, 2016 1:08 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Is the reader to assume the legend on the gender pie chart is reversed?

Who Contacts Whom: A Material Factor in Selling Domain Names Corresponding to Trademarks

• Comment posted May 10, 2016 5:09 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "The absurd outcome is that the weaker the mark, the less it is exclusively associated with one company, and the more widely it is used, the more risky it is to reach out to mark holders since it only takes…

FBI vs Apple: A Bit Of Light Reading

• Comment posted Feb 26, 2016 6:46 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  The brief is well worth reading, since there is a tremendous amount of misinformation of what, exactly, Apple was ordered to do by the court on the government's ex parte application.  I liked this line, though: "Apple was shocked and…

The Growing Importance of Language in UDRP Proceedings

• Comment posted Feb 15, 2016 4:20 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  "After English, the most popular languages in WIPO domain name disputes in 2015 were Spanish and Chinese. ... Whether the increase in non-English UDRP proceedings is a result of chance (perhaps registrars in non-English speaking countries are simply doing a…

The TPP and the DNS

• Comment posted Nov 10, 2015 2:57 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...is to make every signatory country's government domain names subject to the UDRP, with the exception of the US, since the US has exclusive use of .gov.

Governments Shouldn't Play Games with the Internet

• Comment posted Nov 06, 2015 6:32 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  "European governments don't like that the American government spies on them..." But European citizens just love it? In democratic societies, Steve, the operative assumption is that the governments represent the people in those societies. Neither European nor American citizens are…

ICANN Compliance Lends a Hand to a Violent Criminal While Trashing a Legitimate Business

• Comment posted Oct 27, 2015 1:29 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "IF" it was for real? Kevin, this type of nonsense goes on every day at every registrar.  The person in question replied directly to the WDPRS notice and confirmed it was his valid contact information.  Somehow, that wasn't enough for…

CADNA: New gTLD Launch to Cost Businesses $746 Million

• Comment posted Oct 26, 2015 1:41 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  One notes that CADNA's last "news" is from 2013.  One would think events since them would have kept them busy, what with all of the millions of dollars going up in flames by now.

ICANN Compliance Lends a Hand to a Violent Criminal While Trashing a Legitimate Business

• Comment posted Oct 26, 2015 1:32 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Whether threatening violence is itself a violent crime is, I suppose, a matter of definition. It could also be pointed out that "ICANN doesn't shut down domain names" which is likewise correct.  What ICANN Compliance does is to provide a…

• Comment posted Oct 24, 2015 5:32 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  This is a good start, on a related attack vector: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/sac-028-en.pdf SAC 028 SSAC Advisory on Registrar Impersonation Phishing Attacks "This Advisory describes a form of phishing attack that targets domain name registrants. The attacker impersonates a domain name registrar…

ICANN Must Make User Privacy a Central Tenet for New Registrations, Says EFF

• Comment posted Oct 09, 2015 9:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Honestly. I doubt I could look at 125 million pieces of data and know what 'the vast majority' or a 'large fraction' of them are doing.  I was genuinely curious to know if there are any sort of recent utilization…

• Comment posted Oct 09, 2015 8:41 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  John, when you say "the vast majority" and "a large fraction", is this in reference to any published numbers on business/non-business domain utilization and crooked/non-crooked businesses? I picture something like "90%" and "1/4" as "vast majority" and "large fraction", but…

Why is ICANN Tax Exempt?

• Comment posted Sep 11, 2015 8:45 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm not sure how you arrive at a figure of 98% as being unrelated to that function.  Formulating policy in relation to the namespace, administering registry and registrar contracts, etc., all relate in some way to that function.  I understand…

• Comment posted Sep 10, 2015 8:06 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.  The term charitable is used in its generally…

Can Your Brand Afford to Not Have a dotBrand?

• Comment posted Jun 23, 2015 2:25 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  ...your brand happens to have two letters - HP, VW, GE, etc. - or if your brand has any numbers in it - 7UP, 747, 7ELEVEN. Then there is the most famous arbitrarily screwed trademark - 3M - which is…

Law and Disorder: When .Brand Meets .Crime

• Comment posted Jun 16, 2015 2:26 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "That's a very different situation from Barclays' current Internet presence at .com and .co.uk, where it can keep those domains in perpetuity so long as it pays its registration fees and keeps renewing the domains every decade..." That's not what…

Should Barclays Lose the .Barclays Top-Level Domain?

• Comment posted May 22, 2015 4:05 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm thinking Architelos is signing up .isis by now.

• Comment posted May 22, 2015 2:44 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  It's all a joke, George.  All this talk about cybercrime and consumer protection is just minding the petty cash drawer on behalf of the big time criminals. It's perfectly fine to allow an admitted criminal organization to run a TLD,…

In Congressional Hearing, Stakeholders Highlight ICANN's Failures and Need for Reform

• Comment posted May 19, 2015 2:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "ICANN has failed to enforce registry agreements involving trademark controversies and excessive pricing..." Daniel, could you please point to the ICANN registry agreements involving excessive pricing and ICANN's failure to enforce them, or are you just a liar of the…

• Comment posted May 18, 2015 8:54 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  What Mr. Castro is saying is it should be mandatory for the US government to intervene on behalf of EU tax haven companies that don't pay one red cent to the US government.  Let's face it companies like Google, Apple…

• Comment posted May 18, 2015 6:50 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Being outstandingly wrong on readily verifiable facts does not help you advance your argument: "A third point would be that the U.S. government sat on the sidelines when it should have been protecting the interests of a U.S. company." Where…

• Comment posted May 18, 2015 11:48 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  "One of the most striking aspects of the hearing was the list of grievances stakeholders have with ICANN for its history of poorly enforcing its policies and its pattern of putting its own interests ahead of those of the global…

Is Upping the Minimum Wage Good for the Information Security Industry?

• Comment posted Apr 22, 2015 8:39 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Perhaps those whose limited range of skills do not include a functionally literate command of the English language should refrain from attempting to employ it for the purpose arrogant condescension toward those fellow humans considered to be inferior.  But, alas,…

How Much Money Is There in Complaining?

• Comment posted Apr 15, 2015 3:31 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Whether a reason is "observable" is apparently a function of where one does one's observing. One way to observe, is to ask.  And when asked, as quoted two weeks ago on DomainIncite, ICANN has stated: "Some affiliates of Momentous, the…

ICANN and a Lot of Other People Outsmart Themselves With .SUCKS

• Comment posted Apr 13, 2015 8:51 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "The food is terrible, the portions are too small, and the prices are too high!"

ICANN's Auction Piggy Bank Just Got Twice As Big

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2015 4:39 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  I'm curious to know what function the word "obscure" performs here.  Personally, I couldn't name a single Panamanian company, or maybe one or two if I thought on it for a while.  There is a canal there, and perhaps a…

Ensuring Trust in Internet Governance

• Comment posted Feb 18, 2015 11:40 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Mr. Goodlatte favors privatization of military healthcare, social security, Amtrak, the strategic helium reserve, and the postal service, to name but a few. This support of the government actually governing anything may be a career first, as Mr. Goodlatte has…

ICANN: Our Top 3 Policy Priorities for 2015

• Comment posted Jan 24, 2015 7:03 am PST — by John Berryhill
  What penalties do you support against parties who make false claims under these RPMs?

The Real Facts About New gTLDs

• Comment posted Dec 17, 2014 2:02 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  As if Verisign were not also an interested party. It is surprising that a "Senior Manager of Corporate Communications" would employ such a juvenile rhetorical device.

Is the ICANN New gTLD Program a Draft for a V2 of the Internet?

• Comment posted Dec 16, 2014 7:03 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...is that the attorney for the applicant in that application further amended the description of services to registration services "featuring the registration of domain names with the gTLD that appears in the mark". Doh! In other words, "yes, the mark…

• Comment posted Dec 16, 2014 6:49 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "the .web trademark", but if you are referring to Application No. 85/444,900 that is a pending registration application which is under refusal. The attorney prosecuting the application has made a reply to…

• Comment posted Dec 16, 2014 6:34 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...is in your use of the concepts "product" and "name of the product" as if, in this context, those were distinguishable concepts. They're not.  In making this unexamined false distinction of yours, you don't see that you necessarily have to…

• Comment posted Dec 02, 2014 5:49 am PST — by John Berryhill
  The internet cannot be dragged "back to the age of nation states". It's barely past feudalism.

So you want to apply for a new gTLD in the second Round of the ICANN new gTLD program?

• Comment posted Sep 24, 2014 4:45 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Singular or plural? I go for singular IMHO, there is no general rule here.  Most days, I put on "pants" and "shoes", unless I'm in a hurry.

Is ICANN's .IR Response at Odds with the ACPA and ICE Domain Seizures?

• Comment posted Aug 05, 2014 6:14 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Any holding that domains are not property could well be the basis for a challenge to the in rem provision of the ACPA..." ...which would be a foolish challenge for several reasons.  The ACPA does not assume or require domain…

NTIA's FOIA Disclosures Shed Limited Light on IANA Transition Decision

• Comment posted Jul 24, 2014 5:25 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "...but my wish to see a legal analysis providing the foundation for that confidence remains unfulfilled. I have also been told by journalists that NTIA staff has stated that it has a legal analysis on this question, but their requests…

The Essential Ingredient of Politics Is Timing

• Comment posted Jul 01, 2014 4:02 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Is there any other kind these days? The entire business of being a political consultant derives from an exceedingly simple formula exemplified by the character of "Harold Hill" from The Music Man - Find some Mcguffin with which most people…

ICANN is MIA on .XYZ

• Comment posted Jun 16, 2014 7:53 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Henceforth, when the full moon falls on a Friday the 13th, I will step away from the keyboard, lest I too fall victim to rhetorical excess.

• Comment posted Jun 16, 2014 3:29 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Congratulations, Phil, on discovering this idea: "if he is not involved in the case then he does not have full knowledge of the facts at issue" Your recent discovery of this principle is laudable.  Now, scroll up and read the…

• Comment posted Jun 14, 2014 3:25 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Mr. Corwin may, in fact, have no personal knowledge of that litigation, regardless of whether it may be imputed.  But, by the standard of the article above, it is illustrative of how one can construct theories of events which, to…

• Comment posted Jun 14, 2014 1:32 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Is that Mr. Corwin's firm, Greenberg & Lieberman, is defending a client who is being sued for breach of contract by a company associated with Mr. Negari. "Md.org Sells for $555,655" http://en.paperblog.com/mdorg-sells-for-555655-in-an-all-time-record-for-namejetcom-496425/ "Suit Filed Over Non-Payment of MD.Org Namejet Record…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2014 11:12 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm from Philadelphia.  The Eagles play football.  Where the TLD indicates a type of goods or services then, yes, there would be a big difference between Eagles.football and Eagles.music.  With an intentionally-meaningless string like "xyz", it doesn't work as well,…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2014 9:45 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The domainer angle appears to be that if you've ever been accused of cybersquatting, the ICA is going to cast aspersions on you which, given the number of times the ICA's own board members have been sued for cybersquatting, is…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2014 9:39 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  You are okay with the City of Paris, against which a JUDGMENT for reverse hi-jacking was entered to the tune of US $124,000 getting the .paris TLD, but if someone was dismissed from a lawsuit, then it raises "questions"?

Wow. That's a Lot of Reserved Names

• Comment posted Sep 21, 2013 3:30 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The short ones are the interesting ones. That ICANN has decided to bar the Presbyterian Church in America, the second largest Presbyterian association in the US, from getting PCA.church, pretty much confirms what PCA members think about international organizations.

Trademarks for TLDs

• Comment posted Sep 03, 2013 4:38 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Trademark law is most decidedly NOT designed to favor the less well funded over the more well funded.  Among the measures of trademark strength are such things as sales revenue, market recognition, advertising budget, and other parameters which are directly…

• Comment posted Sep 03, 2013 2:39 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  " In the decision Image Online Design, Inc. vs. ICANN it was stated that “The USPTO's prior stance on the function of TLDs as generally not being source indicating is a relic of an essentially exclusive ".com" era, which is…

• Comment posted Sep 02, 2013 6:28 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Intellectual Property protection, like private property, is one of America's most precious institutions. Particularly in the Information Age, the greatest care must be taken to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by providing an orderly and fair…

Mishandling the Registrar Contract Negotiations

• Comment posted Mar 10, 2013 3:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  ...that one party to a contract might actually have a say in what the terms of that contract require? The objection was that the ICANN-registrar negotiation did not include other the stakeholder groups. Yes, the GNSO does include all of…

• Comment posted Mar 09, 2013 10:05 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...is precisely because the registrant-registrar contract may have to change in order to accommodate changes to the RAA, or to accommodate new GNSO consensus policies.  Most of those changes and obligations are passed through to the registrant, since the RAA…

• Comment posted Mar 09, 2013 9:52 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  The RAA incorporates consensus policies passed or yet to be passed by the GNSO.  The underlying contract, of course, is between the two contracting parties, but there is nothing at all which prevents the GNSO from adopting consensus policies which…

Is It About to Get Much Harder to Own a Domain Name?

• Comment posted Sep 28, 2012 12:30 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  The biggest impact, IMHO, is going to be on large corporate entities in which people responsible for actually getting things done are only reachable through a PBX menu after dialing a main telephone number.  Automated telephone verification will uniformly fail…

Who is Keeping TAS Down?

• Comment posted Apr 30, 2012 2:04 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I agree that is a management decision.  The thing is, when the applications are revealed, the first question among many people with contending strings is going to be, "Did the other applicant base their string decision on having seen a…

• Comment posted Apr 29, 2012 5:49 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm not sure what you mean to imply by "as an engineer" when addressing another engineer, unless you believe you are the only one, but perhaps you missed this part: "To do that, we are reviewing internal system logs and…

• Comment posted Apr 27, 2012 7:33 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Awww.... keep your culottes on, Stephane, it's not even the end of lunchtime on the 27th in California.

After ICANN's TLD Application System Glitch, Communication Is the Key

• Comment posted Apr 16, 2012 4:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  If you had a message, then there would be something to shoot at. And, when things like shootings happen, information such as autopsy reports are generally not available for quite some time after the event. Just what is your expectation…

• Comment posted Apr 16, 2012 1:00 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Or perhaps some people with actual engineering experience believe it is important to fully diagnose and understand a problem before putting out speculation as fact. "It hasn't communicated what impact this may have" One might therefore conclude they didn't know…

• Comment posted Apr 14, 2012 9:04 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Apollo 13 was launched April 11 and returned on April 17, which seems to be pretty much the schedule here.  I haven't tracked down the date on which it was determined that the likely issue was faulty insulation on the…

• Comment posted Apr 14, 2012 6:30 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  No, it's computer science. In rocket science, things blow up every now and then. In computer science, you just get bugs in the first run of a purpose-built system deployed to engage with an unanticipated load. But as long as…

• Comment posted Apr 13, 2012 11:52 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Specific information about the TAS is limited to certain staff who, one would guess, have their hands pretty full right now.  ICANN has stated the general problem, shut down the system, and is likely going through the event logs to…

• Comment posted Apr 13, 2012 11:09 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  One might also add that "informed" communication is important.  While it would be wonderful to know all of the details, assessing the actual scope of the issue likely involves a tedious review of the relevant event logs for sequences defining…

Is the New Top-Level Domains "Technical Issue" a Harbinger of Future gTLD Issues?

• Comment posted Apr 13, 2012 12:21 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  You know, Fred, if it wasn't for ICANN, you wouldn't have a job to get paid for peeing on them.  Maybe if ICANN didn't accredit organizations that put so much effort into demonizing ICANN, because their business model is to…

Fake Bank Site, Fake Registrar

• Comment posted Mar 29, 2012 7:50 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  In the context of the RAA negotiations, one of the points has been to verify the identity of a domain name registrant. One suggestion made was to obtain such information as driver's license, social security numbers, passport numbers, etc.  However,…

• Comment posted Mar 29, 2012 7:20 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "...If someone views the registry record and then queries Internet.BS..." Hold up right there.  If someone views the registry record, then they have identified the registrar.  Full stop. By stating the sequence above, you acknowledge that the ONLY record needed…

• Comment posted Mar 29, 2012 7:02 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  ...what other steps did you take to alert browser plug-in maintainers, security software updaters, etc. of this site. When I stumble across these sorts of things, I report them to aa419.org, which gets them into the bloodstream of numerous parties…

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2012 5:53 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  By the way, while you have "stumbled" onto this one, you might consider submitting it to the fake bank database at http://db.aa419.org/fakebankslist.php . Hosted by Internet Systems Consortium, aa419.org publishes an RSS feed of fake banks, so that ISP's and…

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2012 3:50 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I used to look at those tourist maps displayed in various cities with the red dot labeled "You are here" and would wonder, "How do they know that?"

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2012 3:38 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  But since that output was obtained by the port 43 WHOIS mechanism, they must be sure.

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2012 3:24 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  ...then that person has already identified the registrar. However, a registrant or technical service provider who needs to make a change to the registration data is best given a clue as to the reseller, where they can resolve the problem. …

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2012 3:18 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Because of the disparate output formats of whois data from registrars, there are some WHOIS tools which do the two-step automatically.  Win32Whois needs additional TLD support, but spits out the registry and registrar whois along with IP data.

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2012 12:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  ...if one is using the WHOIS output from internet.bs, then it would seem that one has figured out the registrar already.  The registry WHOIS for .com reliably identifies the registrar.  Using a registrar's WHOIS to identify the registrar seems a…

NASA Teething Troubles Teach a DNSSEC Lesson

• Comment posted Mar 27, 2012 12:45 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Is that a warranty?

ICANN and the Red Cross: An Exceptional Exception

• Comment posted Mar 23, 2012 7:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I neglected to point out the irony here: "Today, jeeps and trucks with Red Cross emblems can be seen on the streets of Syrian cities trying to reach people in need of help." Indeed. And what they need help from…

• Comment posted Mar 23, 2012 6:15 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Today, jeeps and trucks with Red Cross emblems can be seen on the streets of Syrian cities trying to reach people in need of help." As can emblazoned trucks be seen around the world on their way to those desiring…

The Case for Trademark Protection for Top Level Domains

• Comment posted Mar 23, 2012 5:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Yes, the Constitution authorizes Congress to fund a navy too.  My question was where you are finding a Constitutional right to trademark registration.  I mentioned that authority for the Lanham Act does not arise under the patent and copyright clause,…

• Comment posted Mar 23, 2012 4:56 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Mary, as I mentioned above, the Constitutional authority for the Lanham Act does not come from the patent and copyright clause.  The section of the constitution empowering Congress to provide exclusive rights for limited times to authors and inventors relates…

Slippery Territory: IOC and Red Cross in the New gTLD Program

• Comment posted Mar 22, 2012 9:26 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Tote up the licensing revenue generated by IRC and IOC, set a threshold number, and if any international organization makes enough licensing revenue above the threshold, they are in.  No complicated legal distinctions required and, at bottom, this is the…

The Case for Trademark Protection for Top Level Domains

• Comment posted Mar 22, 2012 5:09 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Let's see if we can simplify this: Mary, does Image Online Design, Inc. v. Core Association, et al. 2000 U.S. Dist. Lexis 10259, 120 F.Supp. 2d 870 (C.D. Ca., July 21, 2000) count, in your mind, as "existing trademark law"…

• Comment posted Mar 22, 2012 2:45 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Thomas, there is not much to add to your several observations.  You are correct that this notion of gTLD's as marks undermines ICANN's ability to enforce the registry contract.  You are also correct that when the point of a registry…

• Comment posted Mar 22, 2012 2:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  ...and that statement reflects a misunderstanding of how a trademark functions. If a consumer goes to Google.com, they are not seeking any goods and services of Verisign, they are seeking the goods and services of Google.  The ".com" in Google.com…

The Death of TLD Front Running

• Comment posted Dec 08, 2011 9:05 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Again, I never know if you are joking around or serious most of the time. The scary thing is that I often don't know either.

• Comment posted Dec 07, 2011 6:38 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  While there is nary a person or body within the ICANN community which you have not demonized or to which you have imputed ill motivations over the last few years, you really do not address the issue.  You may be…

• Comment posted Dec 06, 2011 5:58 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  The fact that millions of dogs eat "dog food", and millions of people buy "dog food" for their dogs is indicative of a lively market in dog food, and not goodwill in the term "dog food" as a distinctive indicator…

IANA Checkmate - Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice Shame on Me

• Comment posted Nov 30, 2011 7:01 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Some critics will undoubtedly dismiss this article as placating to the GAC, or a last gasp attempt to interfere with the roll-out of the new gTLD process. And what will the other critics say?

Water Supply System Apparently Hacked, with Physical Damage

• Comment posted Nov 22, 2011 12:03 am PST — by John Berryhill
  i.e. not Cherokee, for example, and Americans find the use of "state" to refer to independent territorial sovereigns to be confusing.

Will Anyone Qualify As a Community TLD?

• Comment posted Jul 22, 2011 6:26 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I don't understand Anthony to be saying "it can't happen".  Someone will win the Tour de France on Sunday.  It is more likely at this point that person will be named Schleck, and less likely they will be named Voeckler…

The New gTLD Chess Game

• Comment posted Jun 25, 2011 1:21 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm curious to know what cause of action you believe would be the premise for such a suit.

ICANN Releases gTLD Applicant Guidebook

• Comment posted Jun 01, 2011 7:53 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "policies that might be adopted during the course of the application process" ICANN has released a tutorial video that some may find helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlK-Usd1tBM

A Closer Look at Apple and Location-Tracking

• Comment posted Apr 22, 2011 6:05 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Leaving aside the GPS functions and so forth, how people thought the cellular telephone system operated WITHOUT knowing where you were, prior to now, is what leaves me dumbstruck on the panic reaction here.

ICANN's New gTLD Double Standard?

• Comment posted Mar 02, 2011 2:16 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...and the authority of the ICANN root is still dependent on the consensus of private network operators to use it.

What New gTLDs Mean for Developing Economy Applicants?

• Comment posted Jan 27, 2011 11:28 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  I'm guessing that she means the application fee and any marginal startup cost necessitated by ICANN policy.  Presumably this would include the five year operational cost surety requirement as well, but I can't see how you can do that with…

Wildcarding Subdomains Is OK; Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Isn't - Goforit v. Digimedia

• Comment posted Dec 04, 2010 2:19 am PST — by John Berryhill
  He wanted the domain names. In the parade of attorneys working the related cases that led up to this, you may find some amusement in the "ORDER denying without prejudice 72 Motion to withdraw as attorney. Signed by Judge Karla…

Important Changes in the Proposed Final New gTLD Applicant Guidebook

• Comment posted Nov 15, 2010 1:44 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  "a clear process as to how batches will be prioritised is still under development" Every now and then, Congress will direct the US Patent Office to create a new category of patent applications which the applicant can petition to make…

.YourBrand Now!

• Comment posted Nov 03, 2010 8:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I remain an agnostic on a lot of the aspects of new TLDs, but I owe Joe Alagna credit for the simplest and most compelling case for .brand TLDs that I have heard yet. The way Joe put it was…

New gTLDs and Their Hidden Costs: Part 2

• Comment posted Aug 07, 2010 1:59 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  A super league changes this and medium sized players will have to consider whether it worth spending $185,000 + $25,000 per year with ICANN simply to enjoy the same level of branding and enter the Super league. For startups and…

Taking Back the DNS

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2010 3:27 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I meant "work", but the aggressive iPhone spell check and my thumbs apparently had other ideas.

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2010 8:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Yes, but providing cybersquatters with a minimum 30 days during a UDRP proceeding to "blackhole" a domain name, so that the trademark owner winds up with a domain that won't route, will be interesting to watch.

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2010 5:12 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Most new domain names are malicious." No surprise there.  By July 1996, the entire .net TLD was a "sewer". I can't imagine what it has become since then, but I'm puzzled as to why the stock footage business at footage.net…

• Comment posted Aug 02, 2010 2:13 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "I am stunned by the simplicity and truth of that observation." I am stunned by the lack of supporting data.

Brand Protection Domain Registrations: There Are More Than You Think

• Comment posted Jul 28, 2010 12:58 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  John, I'm confused by your use of the term "hoster". Are you looking at nameservers identified in WHOIS data, or are you looking at hostname A records in the nameservers? Whois can identify a nameserver that has absolutely nothing to…

KnujOn Releases Internet "Doomsday Book"

• Comment posted Jun 23, 2010 3:47 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Online communications have a depersonalization aspect which sometimes render them to be unduly contentious.  Personal communications are frequently… different: http://tweetphoto.com/28699627

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2010 11:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Garth, There was nothing with which to "comply".  The accreditation is held by the California corporation, which has never been out of status.  They could have allowed the Kansas registration to lapse, and still been in compliance with ICANN, because…

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2010 11:23 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Garth, I simply went to the Kansas Secretary of State website to check a factual assertion in your report, and found that your report was not true in relation to that fact.  A single corporation may have presence in several…

• Comment posted Jun 21, 2010 10:47 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Garth, It is customary to check your facts before publication.  You had earlier reported that Abacus America was "delinquent" - meaning that they were late filing their annual registration fee in Kansas, although it is in fact a California corporation. …

ICANN (TBD): Why is ICANN Always to Blame and What to Do About It

• Comment posted Jun 09, 2010 5:13 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The problem is INTA's own reportage. (You'd be surprised how liberating it is to get off of the billable hour hobby horse.  Every solo with whom I've discussed it says, "I only regret not having done it sooner.")

Registrar Abacus America is in Corporate Delinquency

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2010 8:34 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I am not "coming down" on any "side" of any "case".  I haven't a clue who runs AA and have no dog in any fight. It is a simple question of factual and legal accuracy. Your commentary on the impending…

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2010 7:02 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The entirety of the "annual report" required by Kansas is this form: http://www.kssos.org/forms/business_services/AR.pdf Where do you get "must disclose its finances publicly" out of that?

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2010 6:51 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  A company may operate several corporate entities and, yes, a California corporation may have a Kansas address.  Whether they are simply late paying the franchise fee for a KS entity, or whether they no longer have need for the KS…

• Comment posted Jun 02, 2010 5:58 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/report/biz1.html Abacus America is a California corporation which has been in business since 1992. http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/cbs.aspx Entity Name:  ABACUS AMERICA, INC. Entity Number:  C1808935 Date Filed:  07/01/1992 Status:  ACTIVE Jurisdiction:  CALIFORNIA Entity Address:  7500 W. 110TH STREET, SUITE 400 Entity City,…

When Registrars Look the Other Way, Drug-Dealers Get Paid

• Comment posted May 13, 2010 2:38 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm sure a few Georges have gotten laid.  (Clearly not enough Garths have)

ICANN Documentary Information Disclosure Policy Request

• Comment posted May 03, 2010 4:24 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Since this information could have a material impact on an issue in which numerous parties have a vested financial interest, I thought it best to opt for openness and transparency." Good point.  I look forward to your identification of those…

• Comment posted May 03, 2010 4:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  "I thought the global ICANN community would find this information constructive" I agree.  When you have it, publish it. I simply query the interest of the global ICANN community in the fact of your having requested it.  Your response as…

NAF Panelists and Complainants Caught Systematically Copying/Pasting Nonsense Into UDRP Decisions

• Comment posted May 03, 2010 3:36 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Martin, Your analysis would make more sense if it was necessary to determine all three elements in order to deny a complaint.  However, it is not necessary to do so, since the complainant's failure to establish a single element is…

ICANN Documentary Information Disclosure Policy Request

• Comment posted May 03, 2010 3:31 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Mike, Has your request been denied, or is there some reason why you believe it appropriate to publish the request before you know the response to it?

Should a Domain Name Registrar Run from a PO Box?

• Comment posted Feb 01, 2010 6:25 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  No, you didn't say all of that.  You implied that it was only "partly true" that "all addresses in Cayman are PO boxes".  The assertion, and your characterization, both miss the mark.  The point is that "only PO boxes are…

• Comment posted Feb 01, 2010 3:13 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Yes, Garth, there are street addresses in Cayman, but the Cayman Islands Postal Service will not deliver mail to street addresses.  Hence the problem of publishing a street address is that people will attempt to send mail to it, the…

Top Three Reasons to Just Say No to ICANN’s Current EOI gTLD Proposal

• Comment posted Jan 23, 2010 12:15 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Without re-hashing all views on this thing, I do find your point 3 to be the most intriguing.  It may indeed squelch certain types of FUD, but the makers of FUD are endlessly creative. For example, I admire the drive…

How Not to Develop Public Policy

• Comment posted Jan 10, 2010 6:30 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  David, I'm having some trouble with these two sentences: "Whatever the merits of the GPML, it deserves more consideration than this summary dismissal." And… "If we are going to have an International High Court of Trademark Justice, it should be…

New gTLD Expressions of Interest: Proceed with Caution

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2009 11:27 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Well, color me confused.  The article you attacked is in FAVOR of an EOI process. "I believe the EOI gives valuable information to ICANN." ...which is also discussed in the article. There is nothing in the article which opposes new…

Informal Working Group Publish Report On New TLDs

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2009 7:58 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  On the subject of identifying strings in an application, the report states: "Nor would it know the total number of TLDs to be delegated, because it would not be able to see which submissions were duplicates." It's a little surprising…

A Thought About Not-Quite-ASCII Top Level Domains

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2009 6:07 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Be careful.  ICM Registry may take over an Aegean island, declare independence from Greece, and found the Republic of XXX (Greek chi chi chi - not ascii XXX)

New gTLD Expressions of Interest: Proceed with Caution

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2009 5:36 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Mr. Roussos, I agree with most of your commentary and observations about the ICANN process above.  The Guidebook should have been completed, as one of ICANN's formative purpose was to establish conditions for entry of new TLD's into the root. …

• Comment posted Nov 19, 2009 3:03 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Mr. Roussos, the article seems to be directed toward not letting the TLD process be sidetracked by the "Expressions of Interest" notion which has been proposed.  If the EOI idea is intended to address questions about demand, number of potential…

Contributory Cybersquatting and the Impending Demise of Domain Name Proxy Services?

• Comment posted Jun 10, 2009 2:26 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I agree with Marc that the decision is not a death knell for privacy services. For the life of me, I can't figure out why privacy services identify as the registrant "XYZ Privacy Service Inc." There is no reason why…

HD Voice Really is Great

• Comment posted May 24, 2009 7:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  US Pat. No. 5,195,132, "Telephone network speech signal enhancement"

.vla TLD: Not So Fast, Says Flemish Government

• Comment posted Mar 25, 2009 9:10 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Just have them start speaking Catalan instead of Vlaamse.  The .cat registry is already operational and didn't cost as much. (and anyone who has not seen the movie "In Bruges" should add it to their Netflix list)

WIPO Cybersquatting Report Ignores Real UDRP Trends

• Comment posted Mar 20, 2009 4:42 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The number of cases decreased in 2008 at the other primary UDRP provider - the National Arbitration Forum.  Hence, this is more of a market shift in UDRP providers than an increase in UDRP cases.  It's interesting that the report…

Trademark Owners Should Consider .mp Domain Name Registration

• Comment posted Mar 09, 2009 6:51 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  What's confusing me is that the dotMP site does NOT allow you to register a .mp domain for $20, or if it does the process is very well hidden. You have to create an account.  No worries, though, because the…

ICANN Con Rocas (or 'ICANN On the Rocks')

• Comment posted Mar 03, 2009 5:19 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Nobody taught you the First Rule of Fight Club…

Trademark Owners Should Consider .mp Domain Name Registration

• Comment posted Feb 27, 2009 6:16 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Patishall client, Saipan DataCom, Inc., has a long-term contract with the CNMI that makes this possible. <...> I am providing my clients with an alert regarding registration in the .mp TLD. Okay, well, now I see why you aren't threatening…

• Comment posted Feb 27, 2009 6:07 am PST — by John Berryhill
  I am providing my clients with an alert regarding registration in the .mp TLD. Why not just pre-emptively threaten the registry and all of the registrars with a class action this time around… http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04E3DA1730F93AA1575BC0A9679C8B63 A law firm representing Sun sent…

Domaining Registrar Defeats Cybersquatting Lawsuit: Philbrick v. eNom

• Comment posted Feb 27, 2009 5:55 am PST — by John Berryhill
  I'm surprised the terms of registration with Enom weren't prominently featured. From your description, I had gotten the impression the plaintiff was an Enom registrant, and I would expect the primary line of defense would be the plaintiff's assent to…

ICANN Blows $4.6 Million In Stock Market

• Comment posted Feb 07, 2009 8:40 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Martin, Might you define "principal safety", and map that term onto (a) equities, (b) T-bills, (c) a bank account.  One of these things is quite unlike the others.

Logical Deduction on Why New TLDs Will Not Increase Costs for Trademark Holders

• Comment posted Feb 07, 2009 8:34 am PST — by John Berryhill
  While he did falsely state Directi was in the report, and doesn't earn high marks for reading comprehension, I believe he did imply that you were behavin', Bhavin.

• Comment posted Feb 07, 2009 8:31 am PST — by John Berryhill
  I did not say there wasn't a proportionate analysis in the Knujon report - well "below the fold". Please read what I actually wrote.  Up front and center in the report is a chart based on raw numbers. There is…

• Comment posted Feb 07, 2009 8:28 am PST — by John Berryhill
  You think Wild West being located in Arizona is some cosmic accident. I haven't looked, but I will bet you right now that the primary determinants are: 1.  Price 2.  Ease of bulk management 3.  Language Please learn the definition…

• Comment posted Feb 06, 2009 10:16 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...the Knujon report buries the relative incidence of problem domains, and puts raw numbers up front. In other news, it has been found that 85% of convicted mass murderers prefer Coke over Pepsi.

• Comment posted Feb 05, 2009 1:23 am PST — by John Berryhill
  I spent much of the afternoon reflecting on this comment in a CADNA press release: Vice President of the Corporate Internet Department for CADNA member New York Life Insurance Company, Ken Hittel, questioned the need for such a move. "ICANN…

Domain Name Disputes Doubled Since 2003, Origin of Most Cases in US

• Comment posted Jan 05, 2009 4:13 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  There was also a record number of findings of reverse domain hi-jacking by UDRP complainants in 2008, but you aren't going to read that in the scare news either.  I'll have a final figure later this week, but there is…

Facebook Wins $800M Against Spammer. So What?

• Comment posted Nov 25, 2008 6:19 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  ...and by "conducts activities in the US", I mean to be inclusive of activities which may be physically conducted outside of the US, but which incur injury in the US.

• Comment posted Nov 25, 2008 6:17 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  A US court will find personal jurisdiction over anyone who conducts activities in the US leading to a legal claim.  Believe it or not, if for example, you are in Country X, and you enter into a contract (as any…

• Comment posted Nov 25, 2008 5:59 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  "he'd have a reasonable shot arguing that what he did wasn't against Canadian law" Enforcing US civil judgments in Canada, or vice versa, does not work that way.  A Canadian court is only going to be interested in whether the…

Kentucky vs. 141 Domain Names

• Comment posted Oct 28, 2008 4:15 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The Governor of Kentucky, through his Justice and Public Safety Cabinet Significantly, the plaintiff is not the State of Kentucky represented by its attorney general.  Instead, the governor hired a private firm to pursue this matter on a fee basis…

How Can ICANN Improve Institutional Confidence?

• Comment posted Oct 16, 2008 4:36 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The great latter Meatloaf Classic: I want you, I need you, But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you. Baby don't feel sad, 'Cause two out of three ain't bad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD_factor Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a…

Cluck, Cluck... ICANN and Contract Compliance Enforcement

• Comment posted Oct 15, 2008 5:53 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I have repeatedly reported the false telephone number in the whois data for wipo.org.  I even used it as an example in a compliance session at the Paris ICANN meeting. Still the domain name remains registered. Why?

Are You Getting Your News From Spam? My Mother Does

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2008 8:30 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  In fact, a lot of what you read in the New York Times and AP or on TV news is full of crap too. ...but it is heartening to know that most literate and informed folk can identify components of…

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2008 8:27 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  While using spam to sell products of dubious quality is bad enough, using spam to promote rumors and false statements is particularly insidious.  Of the rumors to which you refer, one of them is believed as fact by a significant…

How Can ICANN Improve Institutional Confidence?

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2008 5:48 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  We polled the participants and learned that approximately 72% of the attendees expressed some level of fear Did you do a before an after poll of "fear" in order to determine the effectiveness of your efforts to promote it?

Cluck, Cluck... ICANN and Contract Compliance Enforcement

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2008 5:42 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Jon, I've been complaining about the chicken.coop name being owned by an entity other than a co-op for over two years.  It was specifically noted in the public comment forum when .coop was up for renewal.  Ms. Hoover's pretense that…

Georgians Use Spam to Explain Their Situation

• Comment posted Aug 14, 2008 7:04 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  After it's all over, there will be a new batch of widows seeking help in transferring their funds abroad…

June Court Decision Detrimental to Domaining Practices

• Comment posted Aug 04, 2008 4:13 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Obviously, the value and legitimacy of parked pages remains a hotly debated issue. One of my favorite examples in that regard is to compare the website at legal-help.com with the website at legalhelp.com.  At which site is a random user…

• Comment posted Aug 04, 2008 4:08 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Isn't it time we created distinct terminology between those who legitimately speculate in the generic and descriptive domain market and those who set out to divert trademark protected traffic? ...which was the intended purpose of the term "domainer" as a…

• Comment posted Aug 03, 2008 7:20 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Eric, This was one of several suits Verizon has brought on the subject of domain tasting. Considering that most domainers (and their trade organization, the ICA) have been opposed to massive tasting which has only been conducted by a handful…

A Patent for SiteFinder-Like Resolution

• Comment posted May 08, 2008 6:15 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  VeriSign promised never to bring a SiteFinder-like service back They made no such promise.  The settlement of the suit involved (a) the right to increase .com prices each year until 2012, and (b) a more definitely-structured approval process for "registry…

• Comment posted May 08, 2008 11:15 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Well, spelling correction is there whether you see it or not, and it is certainly not limited to the .cc TLD, although Brian Cartmell was of course instrumental in the commercialization of that ccTLD. Claim 1 reads: 1. A method…

WIPO Reports Record Number of Domain Disputes in 2007

• Comment posted Apr 02, 2008 3:15 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  In many instances, the company or individual being squatted does not have the funds necessary to hire an attorney ...and if that company doesn't have a few thousand dollars to file a UDRP, how much can the cybersquatter be making…

• Comment posted Mar 28, 2008 11:05 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  It's interesting that WIPO does this every year - cites the number of complaints - but does not cite stats on the outcomes, nor do they compare the number of complaints to the number of domains registered. In 2000, when…

NSI: "Don't Taunt Them, Kill Them"

• Comment posted Mar 25, 2008 6:01 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Companies such as NSI and other registrars are and should be able to create their own policies concerning the use of their services. By and large, that is correct.  However, what NSI is doing in the case of eelam.com is…

Wikileaks Calls for Boycott of Domain Registrar eNom

• Comment posted Mar 13, 2008 4:35 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Seems like eNom subsequently received a copy of the judge’s amended amended order and restored the .info. That's what it looks like.  So now Wikileaks posts the myspace page of some Enom employee who had no decision making authority in…

• Comment posted Mar 12, 2008 3:34 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  "not so innocent" The order which issued in that case was vague and difficult to make sense of.  The name has been turned back on. Is it at all possible for someone to make an error in good faith without…

Don't Register Your Domain in the U.S. if it's Controversial

• Comment posted Mar 11, 2008 3:37 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Meanwhile, Google apparently pays $350 per year for google.com.cu

• Comment posted Mar 07, 2008 2:05 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Just be thankful that I didn’t really put the cat amongst the pigeons and ask whether ICANN itself is in violation of the law by allowing a TLD for Cuba in the DNS. Indeed that is the 800 pound gorilla…

Telcos Must Become Major Destination Websites, Says Sun Chairman

• Comment posted Mar 06, 2008 9:34 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Yes, the Telco's need to be able to collect even more data to provide to the government in the course of warrantless surveillance of citizens. By all means.

The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008

• Comment posted Mar 06, 2008 9:31 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  It’s only illegal if you use the name to mislead people. Unfortunately, subjective intent can wind up "proven" on circular grounds, as in "The domain name is Anytown.com.  This is inherently and manifestly misleading to anyone looking for the official…

Don't Register Your Domain in the U.S. if it's Controversial

• Comment posted Mar 06, 2008 9:21 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  If the US government starts exerting control farther up the chain, such as on US-based registries, or ICANN itself Neither the registries nor ICANN are similarly positioned here with respect to the way the law operates here, since neither of…

• Comment posted Mar 05, 2008 5:09 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  I don't understand the "worse" part. US law prohibits US companies from engaging in direct or indirect commerce with Cuba.  These and other domain names were put on the OFAC list some time ago, and in fact I notified Enom…

The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008

• Comment posted Mar 04, 2008 7:09 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  The only way we’re going to make legal progress against phishing and spam is not by making bad guys’ actions more illegal, but by changing the rules so that the providers and intermediaries who enable them can’t escape responsibility It…

The Front Running Class Action Suit

• Comment posted Feb 27, 2008 7:03 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  The ICANN counts don’t have any teeth. At a minimum, I expected an argument that NSI was violation of registrar accreditation agreement Para 3.7.4 Even so, the RAA is pretty clear on there being no third party beneficiary rights under…

Federal Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Network Solutions and ICANN

• Comment posted Feb 26, 2008 10:45 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  So by “activation”, does that mean “no longer available in the database” or on record with some registrar as having been acquired by a customer (whether paid for or not)? Figuring out and applying the RAA - a game the…

• Comment posted Feb 26, 2008 10:43 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  NSI has a very good search engine that everyone uses to find domain availability before they go to their very much less expensive registrar. If the point is to feel bad about freeloaders, then you just as well point out…

• Comment posted Feb 25, 2008 11:25 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  lawyers at Kabateck Brown Kellner are tossing Our British friends are going to love that. It is unclear if NSI paid they fee required above 3.7.4 doesn't require that anyone pay a fee.  It says that a registrar shall not…

Typosquatting: A Solution

• Comment posted Feb 21, 2008 7:15 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Um… the relevant phrase in the ACPA is “bad faith intent”. And, Enrico, let's read more of the plain language, since the statute refers to a "bad faith intent to profit" from registration of the domain name in question. Since…

• Comment posted Feb 21, 2008 7:09 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Anyway, I gather Alex understands why his idea is a non-starter. There are those who believe it is unlawful to identify the goods advertised at a website in a domain name - even when the trademark is properly spelled, let…

• Comment posted Feb 21, 2008 7:07 am PST — by John Berryhill
  So you don’t buy the underlying premise of the ACPA that a domain name is more analogous to the company name, the name above the door of the business or any other example of a ‘use’ which suggests, ownership, affiliation…

• Comment posted Feb 20, 2008 12:49 am PST — by John Berryhill
  The funny thing is that if Ty had brought there case before an UDRP arbitrator, they very well might have won. UDRP decisions are all over the map on this issue.  "Which" UDRP panelist matters more than "an" UDRP panelist.…

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2008 6:54 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Absent a specific license, dealers can not use a trademark protected brand name in a top-level domain registration. (n.b. "top-level" domain refers to .com, .net, .org etc.) Enrico, Are you seriously suggesting that if I sell, for example, used Ford…

• Comment posted Feb 19, 2008 2:54 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Another incentive-based solution is to reward the typosquatter for directing traffic from the typo domain to the non-typo site. To a certain extent, this happens automatically if the brand owner is a participant in PPC advertising in the first place. …

Domain Tasting to Go Away for Real This Time

• Comment posted Feb 05, 2008 3:44 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  In 2007 the company that paid $180M sold itself for $11M, suggesting that in the former transaction, it overpaid by at least $170 million. That's not even what that filing says. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=mchx Market Cap:  328.72M It wasn't sold to anyone. …

• Comment posted Feb 05, 2008 3:24 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  If you have a higher-value use for cameras.com, I'm sure it's owners would be happy to work out a deal with you, Tovarisch.

• Comment posted Feb 05, 2008 12:14 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Missing reference from third citation: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2007/d2007-0770.html

• Comment posted Feb 05, 2008 12:13 am PST — by John Berryhill
  Maybe someone sold a fabulous domain portfolio for $180M (keeping in mind that there’s a lot of puffery in this biz) To be clear, the purchase was by a public company, and if there is "puffery" in an SEC disclosure…

• Comment posted Jan 30, 2008 5:51 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Gary, You seem to have conflated domain tasting and drop catching. "Hammer the servers" drop catching of expired names is pretty much dinosaur technology at this point.  Most major registrars do not delete names at the registry level upon expiration…

The Single-Letter Domain Trademark Game

• Comment posted Jan 29, 2008 8:53 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Yes, all of the T.com marks are owned by Deutsche Telekom, and I must have missed G when putting the table together. One can also check the other TLD's, along with non-existent TLD's.  Quite a number of trademark filings were…

• Comment posted Jan 28, 2008 5:07 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Ah… it appears my wildcard character was taken as an html tag.  It should read "X".com where "X" is a single character.  I have fallen victim to a character flaw…

As of Feb. 11, Google Says It Will Block AdSense from Kited Domains

• Comment posted Jan 28, 2008 5:06 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Why doesn’t Google simply prevent ads from being shown on all domains within the 5 day grace period? Since the article is short on specifics, they may indeed be doing just that, since it would seem the simplest implementation.  Of…

Domain Front Running by Registrars Continues to Draw Attention

• Comment posted Jan 12, 2008 4:29 am PST — by John Berryhill
  I have never heard anyone suggest that domain tasting involves unregistered domains That is what domain tasting is.  You have apparently confused it with old fashioned dropcatching or something else.  Domain tasters work off of text feeds that come from…

Defendants Respond to Dell's Anti-Tasting Suit

• Comment posted Jan 03, 2008 6:32 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  What?  No satellite picture of Derek Newman's house?

More on Dell's Anti-Tasting Suit

• Comment posted Dec 04, 2007 6:39 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  As with Verizon, there's another game in town, of course: http://searchengineland.com/070523-083042.php Last year, Google signed a landmark deal to become the default search engine on new Dell computers, plus to bundle Google software. Now, people are noting anew that a…

Google Testing Option to Block Domain Parking Sites

• Comment posted Nov 12, 2007 6:54 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  it’s important that we don’t aggregate all domain traffic into the same category. I believe the advertisers will figure that out in short order, given the option to include or exclude domain traffic.  If you sell boxes and don't want…

• Comment posted Nov 12, 2007 12:32 am PST — by John Berryhill
  I've heard that in the next six months, both Google and Yahoo plan to offer advertisers the option of not advertising at all.  Woo hoo!

Verizon Spreading DNS Redirection Service

• Comment posted Nov 05, 2007 10:12 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  So, now Verizon is making money off of Neiman Marcus typo URL's. Too funny. Any Verizon customers out there care to share screenshots of visits to: I-Want-To-Buy-a-Sprint-Brand-Cell-Phone.com I'd love to see what Verizon is advertising there. If you liked the…

Gmail as an Email Honeypot

• Comment posted Oct 30, 2007 7:08 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  be sure to only use your address book Depending, of course, on how your address book works.  Many users of Outlook, for example, have auto-add-to-address-book, auto-lookup and auto-completion turned on.  This opens up an interesting type of spoof attack. Let's…

The "Internet of Things," the Internet and Internet Governance

• Comment posted Oct 23, 2007 3:49 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  There appears to be a leap between the governance of the Internet and the RFID deployment Umm… no.  One of the objectives of the EPCGlobal RFID standards project is to have tag ID's resolved through DNS.  If the project proceeds…

Short Domain Names Threatened by Proposed Policy on IGO Dispute Resolution Procedure

• Comment posted Oct 04, 2007 2:19 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  It is long past time to put to bed the downright intellectual dishonesty involved in citing Article 6ter of the Paris Convention as prohibiting the registration of domain names of any kind. Let's read the operative section - it is…

More on WHOIS Privacy

• Comment posted Sep 11, 2007 3:53 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Look, for example, at what Geotrust does when you buy an SSL certificate And Geotrust then publishes the confirmation telephone number where, exactly? An individual signing up for a new service under ruleset A is distinguishable from an organization having…

• Comment posted Sep 11, 2007 5:37 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  It would not be terribly onerous to require at least robotic verification of the phone number and e-mail address. Let's start with the phone number for these jerks that use bad whois data: Domain Name:WIPO.ORG Created On:16-Jul-1993 04:00:00 UTC Last…

• Comment posted Sep 07, 2007 3:07 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  And there is EXACTLY where the problem is: it’s all about the money. Well, some of us are not independently wealthy, and must work for a living. You are free to believe that a registrar's offices are like Ali Baba's…

• Comment posted Sep 05, 2007 5:16 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Jeez, guys, can’t you just read what I wrote? Reading hard.  Hurt brain. I entirely agree that more accurate WHOIS data would require actual work costing actual money. Well, that's what makes the registrars seem prickly and defensive on this…

Spamhaus Appeal: They Win on Substance

• Comment posted Sep 05, 2007 4:56 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  As I said, the appeals court reminded the trial court that E360 has to documenthis damages Right.  But there is no drawback to trying.  Given the possibility of getting "something" with no downside, opting for "something" in those circumstances would…

• Comment posted Sep 04, 2007 11:12 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I wouldn’t be astonished if they just gave up. I would be surprised if they gave up.  The decision doesn't say that E360 is not entitled to monetary damages, and a customer list is cited to have been included in…

More on WHOIS Privacy

• Comment posted Sep 04, 2007 9:51 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The data for spews is completely bogus, and we all know it. How do we know that?  That's my question.  I have no idea whether someone associated with Spews receives mail from a post office box in Siberia, and neither…

• Comment posted Sep 04, 2007 5:09 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The biggest problem with WHOIS is that much of the data is wrong Care to define "much"? I see situations pretty much every week in which someone is complaining "The registrant didn't answer my telephone call, respond to my email,…

Dispute Over Western Sahara's .EH

• Comment posted Sep 04, 2007 5:02 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  .eh should be re-delegated to Canada anyway, eh?

If WHOIS Privacy is a Good Idea, Why is it Going Nowhere?

• Comment posted Aug 29, 2007 2:29 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm confused, John. If you see domain registration as analogous to automobile registration, I have to wonder whether auto registration is available to the general public in your state. Automobile registration, in most states, is readily available to law enforcement,…

Another Whois-Privacy Stalemate

• Comment posted Aug 26, 2007 5:33 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  We need more consultants to AT&T;and Verizon to preach to us about privacy. They've been pretty good about protecting the privacy of illegal government surveillance programs.  Maybe they can share the love.

Temporary Restraining Order Issued Against Domainer's Use of "mylennar.com"

• Comment posted Aug 22, 2007 7:56 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Evan and Derek, We could all do with less umbrage. As we all know, stories about legal actions can be misleading to the general public.  While you, Derek, and I are all familiar with decisions on temporary restraining orders, a…

ICANN Investigating Domain Tasting

• Comment posted Aug 16, 2007 2:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm not sure the point was made clear.  What is the point of a UDRP, or anything else, relative to a domain name which existed for five days, received no traffic, and was de-registered. If you want to talk about…

• Comment posted Aug 12, 2007 9:20 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  That might be the case if the domains in question aren’t getting any traffic, but if they are then they’re not going to be deleted by the registrar… Traffic = revenue, which is why the tasters do it, or did…

Google Buys VeriSign (not really)

• Comment posted Jul 13, 2007 3:33 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Sell" data to government agencies? Nawwww.... you think? http://www.verisign.com/verisign-inc/corporate-overview/Board_of_Directors/page_DEV029893.html William A. Roper, Jr. Corporate Executive Vice President, SAIC William A. Roper, Jr. has served as a director since November 2003. Since April 2000, he has served as Corporate Executive Vice…

Google Sued in Domainer Lawsuit: Vulcan Golf v. Google

• Comment posted Jun 29, 2007 8:57 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Can we all agree not to use "404 error" incorrectly? A 404 error is "file not found" at an existing address.  It is an HTTP-level error message generated by a web server operating at the domain name in question. A…

Domain Speculation: Attack of the TechnoPinkos

• Comment posted May 26, 2007 7:02 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  That’s different. I agree with you.  It is different. I'm just curious about your comment above which suggests that the majority of domain conference attendees were domain tasters.  I really had no idea that many people were doing it. How…

ICANN Says Registerfly Domains Moving to Another Registrar

• Comment posted May 25, 2007 9:26 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  All is to be unveiled next week. In the meantime, read the comments on the blog entry about domains that are expired, domains that have gone into the redemption period and eNom (for whom RF used to be a reseller)…

Domain Speculation: Attack of the TechnoPinkos

• Comment posted May 25, 2007 5:24 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Suresh, Please explain the mechanism by which portfolios of registered and paid for domain names would "vanish" if the add grace provision were eliminated.  I wouldn't lose any sleep over that either, but I'm trying to figure out what you…

ICANN's At-Large Process: Exit, Without Voice

• Comment posted May 24, 2007 2:18 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  By what mechanism has any relevant public authorized any of ICANN’s activities since ICANN killed at-large elections? Indeed, it is the same question.  The take-away here being, I suppose, that there is some collection of guardians of the public good…

• Comment posted May 24, 2007 11:45 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  ICANN needs these people. They have good ideas about how to respond to the public interest in domain name management. By what mechanism did any relevant public authorize these people to act as their representatives in the ICANN process?

UDRP Good for Trademark Protection, Not So Good for Political Process

• Comment posted May 24, 2007 4:54 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Since campaigns are noncommercial organizations Oddly, the notion of a political organization, rather than an individual candidate, is absent from the article. I'm itching to know who has the "greater right" to socialist.com, labor.com, democrat.com, republican.com, socialdemocrat.com, and so forth,…

Dot Asia: First TLD Awarded to a Transnational Entity Without Formal Government Structure

• Comment posted May 24, 2007 4:20 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  The egalitarian spirit of having a TLD assigned to a geographic region such that the TLD string is not a word in the native language of any culture within the very region is admirable. "ASIA" is equally incomprehensible as a…

UDRP Good for Trademark Protection, Not So Good for Political Process

• Comment posted May 23, 2007 9:29 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Forgot the best highlight.... On page 47, she calls a registrar a "cybersquatter" because she apparently can't tell the difference between a registrant and a registrar in a whois record.  There's a great start for a policy analyst.

• Comment posted May 23, 2007 9:21 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  This paper is a "must read" for fans of the "cybersquatting means whatever I say it does" line of thought: One obvious answer to this problem, and to some other associated problems, would be to legislatively ban all forms of…

ICANN's WDPRS Report and Plan to Clean Up Whois Records

• Comment posted May 03, 2007 2:27 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I think I hold the record for longest continuing report of a single domain name. From the DNSO list in 2003: http://www.dnso.org/dnso/dnsocomments/comments-whois/Arc02/msg00017.html worldteleport.org Registrant Name:  World Teleport Association Registrant Organization:  World Teleport Association Registrant Street1:  2 World Trade Center Suite…

ICANN to RegisterFly: We Really REALLY Mean It This Time

• Comment posted Apr 22, 2007 10:28 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  it’s hard to imagine a reason that Registerfly would have given them some of the data but deliberately held back the rest. Some reasons arise from the sorts of games that Registerfly was playing.  Here are two examples from among…

Splitting the Root: It's Too Late

• Comment posted Apr 13, 2007 2:16 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  It is not to the ISP to decide on behalf of the user what root the user will use (except indirectly through the recursive DNS service provided by the ISP, service where opting out *must* be possible). Ms. Bortzmeyer, your…

Verizon vs. iREIT et al Court Documents: What Can We Learn?

• Comment posted Apr 11, 2007 3:45 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  One mark per letter of the alphabet? Hmmm… So Verizon wants Verisingn.com and Verisin.com.  Now there's a conflict that's just been waiting to happen.

XXX Comes to a Head

• Comment posted Mar 23, 2007 6:43 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  What are we doing as an industry that involves governments, big businesses, great legal minds, and highly intelligent technologists to keep decadent pornographic materials out of the hands of little children? Oh, I thought I had addressed that question.  What…

• Comment posted Mar 22, 2007 8:58 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Joe, I assure you I am honest. If one reduces .xxx to "safeguarding children", then one is making something of a strawman argument. There is a public swimming pool near your house.  It has no lifeguards, and parents allow their…

The Real Problem with dot-XXX

• Comment posted Mar 20, 2007 1:36 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Brett, I agree that rational debate is one thing.  Mr. Roberts suggests that the .xxx proposal is the gauntlet of a "moral contest".  The "Real Problem" with the .xxx proposal is that it is the playground of a "pathological fringe"…

• Comment posted Mar 18, 2007 9:18 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Another entry on MR's list of "freedoms we need to fear", along with voting and universities.... http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc08/msg01410.html "Terrorists do vote; they infiltrate democratic institutions and processes while they are putting their attack together.  The openness of free universities plays into…

Help! My Domain Name Has Been Hijacked!

• Comment posted Jan 23, 2007 10:18 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Add to Brett's list: Avoid accessing your domain registration account from internet cafe's while travelling. Hackers love to leave keyloggers on public computers.  It's even better when the hackers run the local network.

Google's Top-10 Search Terms Dominated By Trademarks

• Comment posted Jan 23, 2007 4:17 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  If a user goes to Google, or any search engine for that matter, and queries a well known business name, such as BEBO, they are likely searching for one of two things: (1) BEBO.com itself, or (2) more information about…

Domain Tasting in the Spotlight

• Comment posted Jan 01, 2007 10:16 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  Without that information it is not possible to reach conclusions. Nail. Head. Bang.

• Comment posted Dec 20, 2006 4:50 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  One of the great ironies here is that Verizon has, at its fingertips, a perfect mechanism for identifying verizon-bearing typos and other non-existent domain names that may be getting traffic.  As Mr. Schilling points out in his comment, that traffic…

Where Do Country Code Domain Names Go to Die?

• Comment posted Dec 16, 2006 9:03 pm PST — by John Berryhill
  The issue is that ISO-3166/MA is telling us to stop using it ASAP. "Us"… oh, please.  The ISO-3166 list became relevant when Jon Postel determined that he was not in the business of determining what is, or what is not,…

ITU Expressing Its Own Claim to Legitimacy

• Comment posted Nov 14, 2006 8:04 am PST — by John Berryhill
  It is important not to misinterpret these remarks by the ITU. You see, internet governance should not be left to those who merely "border on" arrogant.  The ITU believes that internet governance should belong to those who are completely arrogant.

Is ICANN Producing Jewels?

• Comment posted Oct 26, 2006 2:37 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Now there's a teaser.  I am looking forward to your next article. Brandon has been working on systems for developing consensus which merit rapt attention.

ICANN Board to Vote on Domain Tasting Measure

• Comment posted Oct 23, 2006 2:50 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  All analogies are limited in their application, but they should act as a limited aid to understanding. The only thing I understand from your analogy, John, is that you are so completely and utterly sold on the idea of free…

• Comment posted Oct 23, 2006 12:47 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I frankly fail to understand why there shouldn’t be some cost for every domain registered, regardless of its final disposition. I walked into an auto dealership the other day because I saw a car that I liked.  I asked the…

• Comment posted Oct 20, 2006 4:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  No registrar I have ever visited offered a refund if you ordered the wrong domain Then perhaps you should visit more registrars… http://manage.gi.net/kb/servlet/KBServlet/faq459.html If you already have a Domain Name Registered, you can delete it from your Control Panel within…

• Comment posted Oct 19, 2006 8:29 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  there’s nothing to stop other registries asking for the same change if it can be shown to work. ...except their own self-interest. First things first.  PIR is not really a registry in the same sense that Verisign is.  Afilias runs…

Spamming the News Cycle: Spamhaus Non-Story Goes Viral

• Comment posted Oct 17, 2006 4:18 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  hold yourself out as an expert. This story didn't require an "expert" to get it right.  Any US attorney with a pulse can log onto the ECF/CM system for that district court, spend three minutes looking at the docket, and…

• Comment posted Oct 16, 2006 6:47 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I was surprised when I saw the story was taking off - especially when it was only a proposed order for ICANN But, Kieren, IT'S NOT EVEN THAT. The proposed order is directed at Tucows.  ICANN is only mentioned in…

• Comment posted Oct 14, 2006 1:27 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Wendy, Having gone through the filings on PACER, it seems that Spamhaus has chosen an odd way to challenge jurisdiction. Howevever, I would reject the proposed order sua sponte for defective service.  The Certificate Of Service states that it was…

ICANN Ordered by Illinois Court to Suspend Spamhaus.org

• Comment posted Oct 10, 2006 12:10 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I assume US law has some discretion for judges to say “this is the wrong person”. The court has discretion to do whatever it pleases.  Here, the court is being asked to issue an order upon Tucows, which was never…

• Comment posted Oct 07, 2006 9:01 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  For accuracy, Gadi, what you are looking at is not a court order binding on ICANN, and in fact is not a court order at all. The document you are looking at is a proposed order that has been submitted…

Another View of the New ICANN-DoC Agreement

• Comment posted Oct 03, 2006 12:50 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  If ICM Registry sued, ICANN could simply point to the public comments, and rest its case. George, I believe you missed Milton's point.  The Board already approved the .xxx proposal and instructed staff to negotiate a contract.  The final vote…

Response to Inaccurate .travel Wild Card Assessments

• Comment posted Sep 27, 2006 4:31 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Can we all agree to stop referring to "404 error" when we are talking about "server not found"? A 404 is returned by a web server when the file requested is not found.  When there IS no web server associated…

Tiered (Variable) Pricing Compromise?

• Comment posted Sep 08, 2006 3:01 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Afilias is just waiting to get their registry renewal and then they will either steal them for themselves or (if they get their variable pricing) auction them off also. Yes, I am aware of various categories of .info names in…

Summary Judgment Denied in a Case of Creative Typosquatting

• Comment posted Sep 08, 2006 1:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  What is being litigated here are about $7500 in commissions paid on $190,00 in sales. That figure is really worth reflecting on. First, if the affiliate contract forbids what the defendants did, which is likely, then of course the defendants…

EarthLink Criticized for Redirecting Nonexistent Domains

• Comment posted Sep 07, 2006 11:34 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  This is perfectly fine, so long as Earthlink doesn't send any of the profits from non-existent *.cm names to anyone in Cameroon. Alternatively, if I understand some of the other comments, it is unobjectionable as long as they use some…

Summary Judgment Denied in a Case of Creative Typosquatting

• Comment posted Sep 07, 2006 3:10 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The full decision for anyone not having a Westlaw subscription who might care to read it, btw, is here: http://www.wiwd.uscourts.gov/bcgi-bin/opinions/district_opinions/C/05/05-C-368-C-09-01-06.PDF The story could just as easily be "Cybersquatting defendants prevail on Lanham Act and Wisconsin State Law Claims", as the…

• Comment posted Sep 07, 2006 2:46 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I read it perfectly well, Mr. Brown.  However I doubt most non-lawyers understand what is meant by what you wrote, as the comment to which I was responding indicated that he believed this was a final disposition rather than a…

• Comment posted Sep 07, 2006 1:45 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  If only the UDRP decisions were as reasoned as ACPA ones. What Mr. Brown neglects to explain is that no judgment has been reached in this case.  This was a ruling denying an early motion brought by the defendant.  The…

Tiered (Variable) Pricing Compromise?

• Comment posted Sep 05, 2006 11:17 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Paul, whatever one's view of this matter, calling out an individual in that manner is thoroughly inappropriate.  Simply because an individual may choose to provide useful commentary on a variety of topics does not make that person your personal punching…

Will Splogs Kill .INFO Domains?

• Comment posted Sep 01, 2006 6:10 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The registrar Registerfly has an interesting twist on this practice. They register hundreds of .info domain names for splogging, and instead of using fictitious whois data, they use the actual contact data of people with whom they have had any…

Tiered (Variable) Pricing Compromise?

• Comment posted Aug 31, 2006 4:14 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  who defines what “best use” is for any given domain name? Why, Sotiris, I'm surprised you don't follow the logic here. You see, under a fixed price system, what happens is that speculators register all of the good names, and…

Why We Need to Find Solutions on Internet Governance As Soon As Possible

• Comment posted Aug 29, 2006 3:35 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  After we tackle the problem of how to govern "the internet", we really should decide whom we should put in control of the weather.

Nation of Cameroon Typo-Squats the Entire .com Space

• Comment posted Aug 18, 2006 9:04 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  how much if any of the amount that gets to Cameroon is spent on something useful Yes, the last people who should be deciding what to do with money in Cameroon are Cameroonians.  It's a good thing the world is…

• Comment posted Aug 18, 2006 5:10 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm not surprised that someone figured out the FAQ: This service is specifically authorised by the sovereign Republic of Cameroon, and will be used to produce revenue for the Republic of Cameroon. ...which is certainly a laudable purpose, and which…

• Comment posted Aug 10, 2006 12:28 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Mr Noumbi, One must keep the perspective that the internet is simply a computer network.  As a social force, it is what people choose to make of it.  Human nature remains more consistent than technology, and some professions are much…

• Comment posted Aug 09, 2006 10:08 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Typo correction: I meant "what is happening in .cm", not "what is happening in .com". Of all of the embarassing mistakes to make in this context…

• Comment posted Aug 09, 2006 10:06 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Each of you must help me to change what is wrong. Mr. Noumbi, "Wrong" can be a very subjective term.  It is not clear that anyone is doing anything "wrong" here. There are some people who believe that the practice…

Nominet Takes Action Against Domain Name Tasting

• Comment posted Aug 08, 2006 12:16 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  "Tasting threads" - that's a great way to look at it Ram. In order to distribute the tasting load, you basically then have each registrar count 19 end-user registrations, and then draw a string from the input tasting stack on…

• Comment posted Aug 07, 2006 10:51 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  If you read the notice carefully, you will observe that Nominet intends not to limit the "number" of domains that can be tasted, but to limit the "proportion" of domains that can be tasted relative to those registered. The upshot…

Nation of Cameroon Typo-Squats the Entire .com Space

• Comment posted Aug 07, 2006 9:05 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  These are not “registrations”, so specific trademarks are not being singled out for treatment.  Every string is being treated equally, whether or not it is recognizable in a written language somewhere as a trademark. But, Tom, that is also true…

• Comment posted Aug 07, 2006 9:01 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Ram, You might check the TTL on existing .cm registrations (of which google.cm is a rare exception). As George points out, other metrics suggest monster traffic: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Searches done in June 2006 Count Search Term 27189 myspace.cm By way of…

New Findings Show More Anomalies in .EU Registrations

• Comment posted Aug 05, 2006 3:38 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Some data: http://www.zooknic.com/Domains/Domains_by_country.pdf As of the year 2000, the Netherlands ranked 7th in the world in domain names registered. http://www.zooknic.com/Domains/Domains_per_capita.pdf On a per capita basis, in 2000 Luxembourg outranked Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and several other EU countries.  So at…

• Comment posted Aug 05, 2006 2:31 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Why not compare registration of domains to annual beer consumption or some other equally stupid metric. What would make more sense would be to compare domain registrations by registrant country to such things as (a) rank of registrant country by…

Conflict of Opinion

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2006 2:33 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Harrison, I am sure Mr. Isenberg's rates are reasonable.  He can be reached via www.gigalaw.com. John

• Comment posted Jul 27, 2006 2:22 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  This is not the appropriate forum for these questions, as they do not relate to the article under discussion. The simple answer is that if you cannot prove cybersquatting with respect to the domain name under dispute, then a list…

• Comment posted Jul 26, 2006 10:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  You file against the identified registrant.  The registrar is then required to provide the registrant data.

Your Whois Search May Be Monitored by Third Parties

• Comment posted Jul 24, 2006 7:36 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Should be part of a registrar code of conduct. Agreed. This can still happen even if a registrar believes it follows a code of conduct, though.  Some registrars outsource their 'name spinning' function (whereby a prospective registrant is provided with…

Tom Cruise Wins TomCruise.com, Hardly Unpredictable

• Comment posted Jul 24, 2006 6:00 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  While there are some differences in the way panelists approach certain issues, Kieren goes off track by comparing outcome percentages of various panelists. Those numbers are simply more reflective of the types of cases that are assigned to the panelists,…

Your Whois Search May Be Monitored by Third Parties

• Comment posted Jul 24, 2006 2:35 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I don't know how "savvy" one has to be about not communicating a purchase interest prior to being prepared to make a purchase. For example, anyone can set up a webpage that says, "Thinking about purchasing stock?  Type in the…

• Comment posted Jul 23, 2006 8:55 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Doing a metasearch through a service that then queries numerous other parties in order to determine whether a name is taken from a unique source seems like an odd way to go about name availability searching.  By definition, it is…

Why I'm Standing for the ICANN Board and Why I've made My Statement Public

• Comment posted Jul 11, 2006 7:20 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I'm surprised at the surprise of the empty public Board sessions. What would be the point of attending them, for anyone?  The Board does not hold meaningful public discussions.  It is one thing for Board members to publish their reasons…

OpenDNS: It's Not SiteFinder for Obvious Reasons

• Comment posted Jul 11, 2006 5:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  David, That's a neat idea.  Are you planning to make some sort of a differential resolution mechanism available to other domain registrants?  What you could do is to forward schwinnbicyclepumps.com to schwinn.com in "vanilla" dns, and forward to your parking…

• Comment posted Jul 11, 2006 12:57 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Interesting bet-hedging going on: Domain Name: SCHWINNBICYCLEPUMPS.COM Registrant: Freedom Networks Domain Manager (miked@opendns.com) 50 Fremont St. 16th Floor San Francisco California,94105 US Tel. +001.4153443140 Creation Date: 10-Jul-2006 Expiration Date: 10-Jul-2007 Oh… I get it… So instead of getting a blank…

• Comment posted Jul 10, 2006 11:54 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  The startup hopes to make money when users type in a nonexistent domain name, such as schwinnbicyclepumps.com. Currently, web surfers simple get an error message when they attempt to navigate to an unused domain. OpenDNS users will instead be routed…

Why Senator Stevens is Right on Net Neutrality

• Comment posted Jul 06, 2006 11:54 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I agree strongly with the last quote.  Net neutrality legislation of some kind may eventually be needed, but I am uncomfortable with the idea of Congress getting its hands on these issues on the basis of hypothetical harms, rather than…

ICANN Must Clamp Down On Domain Name Abuse

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 6:13 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  And lawyers and domainers, now that works. Watch it fnord, I've heard that jerks have rebranded themselves as "lawyers".  There are even conferences catering to them.

Conflict of Opinion

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 2:15 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Brett, This is the passage under discussion: Today, cybersquatters have rebranded themselves as "domainers." Popular blogs and news sites track their activities. Industry conferences have sprouted to serve them. Kindly associate the indefinite article "them" with a preceding noun in…

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 2:03 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  It may well be “scummy monetization abuse”, but it’s hardly a problem, any more than sitting on a thorn is a problem. You fail to realize that the registrar engaging in this practice is monetizing third-level typos of untold numbers…

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 7:24 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  That’s the sort of thing that usually gets regarded as a “crime against humanity on the internet”. There are lots of bad things on the internet, so let's just confuse the issue by lumping it into one ball and blaming…

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2006 2:20 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Why don't TM owners register all those typos? It isn't practical for a trademark owner to register every typo variation.  One solution that works for some trademark owners is somewhat non-obvious, but I have heard from those for whom it…

Domain Tasting Target of US Federal Cybersquatting Lawsuit

• Comment posted Jun 17, 2006 3:55 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  And it is not clear whether any of these are the precise hook that the tasters are hanging their hat on. Why not try actually getting to know some of them?

• Comment posted Jun 14, 2006 12:40 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Karl, I believe the issue is certainly clear, and likely a lot clearer to the accounting department at Verisign, so you may have the last word on this thread, which has strayed far afield from the original article.  First, you…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2006 2:41 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  You keep asserting that these 5-day speculators retain “massive” numbers of names.  What do you believe is the order of magnitude of “massive”?  And where does that number, assuming you have it, come from? You can watch it happen by…

• Comment posted Jun 13, 2006 1:17 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Those who end up retaining registrations rather than abandoning them after 5 days are paying their fair share, that’s why the fact that some speculators do that is irrelevant. Some?  Karl, it would be good to at least attempt to…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 10:19 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  if we presume that the intent of the 4 graces was to correct errors Karl, we are talking here about one of them, not all four.  The periods were established to serve different purposes. enormous system costs incurred by Verisign…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 6:38 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  While I am not familiar with the business practices of the several hundred registrars, I have to tell you I am shocked, shocked, that registrars are cost shifting the price of domain registrations from those customers who only register domain…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 5:58 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I’m skeptical of that statement.  My guess is that something else was said or that the statement was misinterpreted. No need to guess, you can listen to it for yourself. As promised: http://www.johnberryhill.com/steele-drt.mp3 When the question was broadened to trademark…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 2:50 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  What would be really fascinating to know, and which Verisign in all likelihood knows perfectly well, is the proportion of new .com registrations attributable to domain tasting.  My guess is that proportion would be substantial.  If you pay, today, to…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 2:43 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Many registrars do offer volume discounts in the sense that you pay less per year if you register for more than one year, and I have taken advantage of this offer from time to time. ...and many of them offer…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 1:10 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  You suggest that those who are using the 5-day grace period deserve to pay $0.00 as part of a volume pricing discount. I suggest no such thing.  Those who are using the 5-day grace period are paying thousands of dollars…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 1:00 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  The “Add Grace” was never mentioned, not even hinted at.  Add Grace, which is the hook on which all this stuff hangs, is a creation by ICANN’s staff. hint: http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-appc-16apr01.htm There are four grace periods provided by the VGRS Shared…

• Comment posted Jun 12, 2006 12:47 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Thus, the pricing structure results in the long-term registrants subsidising the short-term registrants, and that is unfair, abusive cost-shifting. Considering that the registry fee is orders of magnitude above cost, I would guess that you are against any sort of…

• Comment posted Jun 10, 2006 3:39 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  And, looking at what Verisign makes on the financial float, kindly consider that at $6.00 per year, a domain name costs a little over $.016 per day.  So, maintaining a credit of $600K at a 5% annual interest rate for…

• Comment posted Jun 10, 2006 3:29 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I don't understand the "free ride" argument at all.  If Joe tests 100,000 domain names, and keeps 10,000 of them, then he's paying $60,000 to the registry.  How on earth is that cost-shifting.  Indeed, having to keep a credit of…

• Comment posted Jun 09, 2006 10:14 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  when both registries and ICANN have the ability to stop it under existing policy That is debatable. For a publicly held company to define a revenue net-positive practice as "abusive" would not be responsible. Certainly the entire practice can be…

• Comment posted Jun 08, 2006 3:37 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  In any case the throwaway domain problem is very real, and cloaked whois services, and tasting, are being massively abused by these people as well, not just typosquatters. Suresh, can you document a single tasted domain used to send spam? …

• Comment posted Jun 08, 2006 1:59 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  This then implicates either the registrar as a spammer, or their reseller as a spammer - since I know of no registrar who makes the 5-day grace period available to any old registrant. Correct, which makes the entire works readily…

• Comment posted Jun 07, 2006 11:18 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Where is the connection in this article between domain tasting and spamming? Why would it be any more advantageous to spamvertise a tasted domain than a paid-for domain? It certainly sounds interesting.  It would be nice to hear one example…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 2:01 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  Most domainers are pretty religious about .com. As you know, "domain tasting" would cease the moment that a registry made its TLD zone server error log avaiable.  TLD zone server operators know full well which unregistered domain names receive traffic. …

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 1:28 pm PDT — by John Berryhill
  I believe that domainers and their registrars will modify their tasting algorithms and practices as a result of this lawsuit, regardless of its outcome. Agreed.  It is not a simple task, though.  A common word like "shell" can of course…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 4:33 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  The contours of fairness remain to be worked out.  However, the Geico v. Google decision drew a distinction between competitive ads which were merely triggered by a trademark search term, and ads which misleadingly indicated availability of the designated product. …

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 3:57 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  And, yes, there are several cases on the keyword issue, but far from a consensus result. For some reason, if you walk into a store and say "I am looking for X brand", you will be directed to a shelf…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 3:54 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Two weeks and a couple days is all we are talking about. Which is more than twice the length of time that a "tasted" domain name is registered.  By definition, "domain tasting" involves registration of a domain name for less…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 3:15 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I’m skeptical of that statement.  My guess is that something else was said or that the statement was misinterpreted. I will obtain permission to post the audio from the mp3 of that session, then.  The simple fact remains that each…

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 2:39 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  I am not sure if NM would have been too happy if VRSN had stuffed those sitefinder’d typo domains with ads for Macy’s, or for mortgages for that matter Just what do you suppose was indeed at these domain names…

New York Passing New Domain Name Law

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 2:20 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Much ado about nothing here. This piece of legislation is brain-damaged in a couple of ways.  First of all, you will notice that it does not provide the aggrieved person with a right to sue anyone.  What it says is…

Domain Tasting Target of US Federal Cybersquatting Lawsuit

• Comment posted Jun 05, 2006 2:13 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Ram, could you please explain how "Domain Tasting" is the "target" of this lawsuit? The lawsuit refers to 27 domain names which were typo's of various Neiman Marcus trademarks.  It wouldn't matter whether the domain names were registered for one…

Report on Reaction to Zuccarini's Arrest

• Comment posted Sep 10, 2003 1:29 am PDT — by John Berryhill
  Looking at the criminal complaint, it appears that the operation of Zuccarini's domain name had changed in a subtle, yet potentially significant way, since the Truth in Domain Names Act took effect. While all of the UDRP, ACPA, and FTC…