CircleID

California has had a similar law on its books for a number of years.  See California Business & Professions Code 17525-17528.5.  Eric.

Spot on re: the implications. It's also likely due to who-knows-how-many complained of their personal name-domains being taken after being looked up for but not regged on the spot.

One of the guys here just observed that maybe the reason Ms. Little is sponsoring this is because of the fact that:

bettylittle.com

[whois.opensrs.net]
Registrant:
James Wensley
2324 Divot Drive
Saint Louis, Missouri 63131
US

You think?  Wouldn't surprise me…

-david

I can almost guarantee you that's why she's pushing this law through :)

At least she has senatorlittle.com

If you want to put up a website about someone you can always get bettylittlewritesbadlaws.com or bettylittlesucks.com etc. If you like the person you can register bettylittleiswarmhearted.com or Ilikebettylittle.com

But in my opinion when you register just their name it's no different than registering a trademarked product like xerox.com.

If your name is also betty little and you get it first then you deserve the name.

That law doesn't even say you cannot register bettylittle.com, it says you can't register it with the intent to extort money from them to have their own name. There are quite a few betty littles out there besides the famous one who cannot afford to pay a lot for a domain name.

They won't get to have their name because of a person that wants to profit from their name.

The same remedy applies here that I post about often. If ICANN would introduce a lot more tlds, there would be plenty of bettylittle dot somethings for people to register and it wouldn't be an issue.

I rarely think about the big companies that are inefficient at maintaining their domain portfolios, but can you imagine what it would be like for trademark holders if there were thousands of domain extensions?  To protect their brand they'd have to register thousands of versions of each domain.

I know you've thought a lot about this so I suspect you have an answer to this...and I'm eager to hear it :)

There are other articles here explaining my take on that. There are several solutions offered by various people.

1. Creat TLDs that match the classes that trademarks are registered under. This way a company with a trademark would be entitled to their mark in the TLD that matches the class they were granted a trademark for and not be especially entitled to it in any other TLD. This would correctly address the domain name trademark issue. A TM does not mena you own a string of letters in all commerce. A TM grants you the use of a string of letters to do commerce in a specific class.

2. More than one company has the same string of letters trademarked, but under different classes such as Apple Computers and Apple Records. Lets say Macintosh owns apple.com, what even gives them the right to use their TM to give them sunrise rights to early registration in every new TLD in the first place. This is effectively trying to block others who also hold a same or similar mark from having a domain name that matches their mark.

So, yeah, I do have an answer. It's ICANN that is clueless.

Should have edited that but it's a little late to care about misspelled words. Besides, I believe there are typo domainers that follow every post I make so they can figure out what domain names to register.

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 that such person may request the Public Service Commission to bring an action against the registrar.

The real hoot is that damages can be awarded against the registrar, not the domain registrant.

Paging Brett Lewis, red courtesy phone from Albany…

While I like the idea of registrars being held accountable this isn't that way it should (or even can) be done.

Let's see ICANN do something to punish or incentivize registrars instead.

-david

Even if The State of NY can not control domains registered outside its jurisdiction I can say that keeping control over internet piracy would be considered as a good move. The main point however is how to deal with this matter! I think it is too late to make first steps to ban domain registration jobbery! The are too many domains which stay unused, lead to junk or doorway pages.

Hi,

I don't have a problem with NY passing a law to make it unlawful to register the domain name consisting of a personal name of another person for the bad fait intent to profit.

I've actually filed a lawsuit in Cali. under their statute against a cybersquatter that is proffiting off the name of a 12-year old girl I run a site for. The cybersquatter is also trying to auction the domain for several grand online.

I don't agree that the registrar or registry should be liable though unless they violated a court order to turn over the domain name, and there are laws already in place that can punish them for this.

I will admit however, there is a federal law already in place (15 USC 1129 and 1125 C) that is virtually the same.

Take care.