Snowe Bill Threatens Domain Name Registrants – Should Domainers Worry?
Posted on | March 6, 2008 | 1 Comment
Snowe Bill Threatens Domain Name Registrants – Should Domain Owners Worry?
On February 25, 2008 U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe introduced S. 2661, the “Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008” (APCPA). The bill was also cosponsored by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Ted Stevens (R-AK). It has been referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. No hearings have yet been scheduled on this proposal.
At first glance it seems like this bill will actually be positive since it is for “Anti-Phishing.” BUT… Read on…
Imagine owning wood.com and CharliesWoodCo.com feels they should be entitled to wood.com. Normally there would a be UDRP/WIPO process from Charlies to see if they can get the domain–but since it’s generic… wood.com should be fine. Well… with this they can go directly to court and this bill makes it harder for generic domain owners to protect themselves in the case of them parking the domain and not doing anything productive with it. Uhhh… ok… anyone see the huge problem here? This isn’t only for one word generic domains… so that’s why this is such a big deal.
CNET:
But that’s not stopping Congress, which, in the spirit of creating a department of redundancy department, is considering new antiphishing legislation that appears to serve no useful purpose.
Another problem with this is if you are proven to be “cyber-squatting” with a domain that is violating a trademark you can be fined a penalty up to $6,000,000 (6 million dollars). Hmmmm. Hopefully the problem with this “positive” bill is noticeable by now.
A lot of the comments I’ve been seeing about this is that if this goes through, then companies will have the opportunity to sue domain owners for generic domains that they might feel they are obligated to. Since this is an American bill and Verisign is an American company… .com and .net are the main TLDs at threat here right now.
DomainNameWire.com puts what you can do to help stop this bill the best:
What you can do to stop this bill
Sadly, bills like this get passed all of the time. With a title “anti-phishing”, wouldn’t your first instinct be to vote ‘yes’?
Here’s what you can do to stop this bill from passing in its current form:
1. Join Internet Commerce Association. This is the only group that is fighting to protect your interests and is actively fighting this bill. You can join for only $295. If you’re new to the industry and can’t afford that, the organization welcomes any size donation. A percentage of the donation is tax deductible.
2. Write your senator and representative explaining the dangers of this bill. You can contact your senator here or your house representative here. (If it passes the senate it will go to the House.)
3. Contact your registrar and ask them to fight the bill. Registrars have a lot to lose, not the least of which is their cost of doing business will rise dramatically. Odds are your registrar has more money than you, too. Ask them to join Internet Commerce Association (see #1).
4. Write about the injustices of this bill. If you have a blog, blog about it. If you visit forums, post about it.
5. Let the companies that are members of CADNA, which supports this bill, know that you’ll be taking your business elsewhere. That includes:
American International Group, Inc.
Bacardi & Company Limited
Compagnie Financière Richemont SA
Dell Inc.
Eli Lilly and Company
Hilton Hotels Corporation
HSBC Holdings plc
Marriott International, Inc.
Verizon Communications Inc.
Wyndham Worldwide CorporationAn easy way to let these companies know is to contact their public affairs or public relations groups.
6. Did I mention you need to join the Internet Commerce Association?
Lots of people are sending in letters to their senators. I’m going to be doing the same. A bill to prevent fraud is great, but to open a door for companies to wrongfully be able to take STEAL our property (domains are “property”) is absolutely wrong. Some argue that people that are parking domains should be worried–but this isn’t the case. Even if you have a domain that is developed you are still at risk. ACT NOW! If you have a blog, blog about this. This is a pretty serious issue. You can also go to SnoweBill.com and sign the petition against the Snowe Domain Anti-Phishing Bill.
Want more information? These people might have done a better job at posting:
EDIT:
DNForum.com message to members:
Dear DNF members,
We feel it is our duty to bring this to light and make people aware of what’s happening. As you may have heard, Senator Olympia Snow (R-ME) has very recently introduced a bill that could threaten the future of the domain name industry and internet commerce. Snowe’s bill has been introduced as the “Anti-Phishing” bill, but contains provisions that are largely unrelated to these objectives. These provisions radically and unnecessarily expand the rights of trademark owners to essentially provide them with monopoly rights on registered trademarks. This would be to the detriment of millions of individuals and businesses engaged in lawful and legitimate Internet commerce.
If the bill passed through congress, it may allow large businesses to take domain names with little to no effort. Trademark owners already prevail in 85% of all UDRP complaints and nearly 100% of all ACPA cases. Yet some apparently now wish to establish a new regime for contesting allegedly “infringing” domains that is tilted even more in their favor by denying basic due process and substantive protections to domain name registrants – and that provides the possibility that they can use their power and influence to sway public officials to expend taxpayer dollars in defense of private Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).
The proposal unfairly targets domain name registrants for a widespread Internet practice – if it’s aim is to halt the advertising monetization of brand names and typographical variations thereof when consumers engage in direct Internet navigation or in web searches it utterly fails in that endeavor, as this activity is also engaged in systematically by search engines, web browsers and ISPs.
We need to do as much as possible to make sure the bill is revised to serve it’s purpose of preventing phishing scams and not to bury domain name owners. Please sign the petition at http://www.SnoweBill.com to help in the fight and to review all portions of the bill.
Thank you for your time and attention in this matter.
Regards,
DNForum.com Staff
Snow Bill, Snowe Bill, Domain Anti Phishing Congress Bill, Domain petition, Domaining Petition
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"there's nothing like having a vision, imagining it, making it, then having it work, especially if your very being depends on it"
January 7th, 2010 @ 2:16 pm
good information for me….thanks