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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

> After a long and expensive battle, news just dropped that Verisign is retracting its plan to terminate 22,000 domain names and email redirects. Although they will be closing new registrations for 3rd-level .name domains, all existing domains (including this website) and email redirects will remain indefinitely.

This was what I figured SHOULD happen when they did this. Allow existing customers to keep renewing, but nobody new allowed, if a tld frees up over time, reclaim it completely and sell it off.

What they were proposing should really be illegal...

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For it to be illegal I think we would have to have much stronger digital ownership laws. I would certainly support them. But for now a domain you "own" is just an entry in someone else's ledger and control is only enforced by contract for big players willing to pay.

These domains wouldn't be worth a penny if they came with a disclaimer that they can be deregistered or even taken over at any point. With a bit of luck, somebody could snatch popular last name domains and set up a catch-all mailserver.

They do have such a limitation, because of things like UDRP. It's just that there are maybe some forms of restriction on the processes by which domain names can be involuntarily transferred or seized. But it's a real possibility!

People persist in "buying" digital movies e-books, and games despite the fact that they can disappear at any point, without warning, because the seller's license expired or they just feel like discontinuing the service.

License as a SERVICE ™

LaaS

These things have no resale value. That's what the commenter means when he talks about value.

The seven seas have always been there, just a matter of building a ship again

I literally have <mylastname>@gmail.com as my primary email address. I get a lot of email that's not supposed to go to me.

There is a Ninth Circuit decision that domain names are a form of property

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremen_v._Cohen

but it's tricky because the domain name registries and registrars have a kind of thicket of contracts nowadays that subordinates registrants' property interests to other rules and considerations. So I don't think a court would think that a modern-day domain name registrant has property rights in a domain name that supersede all of those contractual terms.

Edit: my recollection is that Kremen v. Cohen interpreted the legal defaults that applied because Kremen registered the domain name in an era when Network Solutions didn't require registrants to agree to a contract that limited Network Solutions's liability and gave it various explicit rights and powers.

I'm not a huge ICANN expert, but I think ICANN broadly thinks the status quo is preferable to one in which registrants had stronger, less equivocal property interests in names.

The Wikipedia summary of the case suggests that the ruling was much more than it was. Courts tend to rule on narrow issues, as it did here.

The question before the Court was not whether a domain name is a form of property. Both parties agreed that a domain name is a form of property; that wasn't in dispute. The Court did affirm their shared position in black letter law, though.

Rather, the question before the Court was whether, as intangible property, a tort of conversion claim relating to the domain name could be made under California law. Previously, cases disagreed as to whether it could be recognized. The Court found that it could be.

Thanks. That was an excellent summary.

> status quo is preferable to one in which registrants had stronger, less equivocal property interests in names.

I suppose the fact we pay for them annually reflects that we're merely the renters, not owners of the domains.

This model also makes it possible for companies/brands to take over ownership of the domains they feel they're entitled to.

Real property is 'owned' but contingent on property taxes and sometimes other obligations being fulfilled every year.

Except for domains it doesn't make sense to record the ledger at the local courthouse, since there need to be a primary authority.

But a local (or other) govt ledger of ownership and xfer might not be a bad idea as a source of legitimate ownership, whether subservient, adjacent, or superior to the ICANN blessed registrars.

And no, it wouldn't require every domain purchase or transfer to be filed at a courthouse, but you could to bolster your proof of ownership or secure state backed property rights, like many states do with property leases (and even sometimes sales).

Agreed, but I just wanted to say that essentially every single thing anyone owns is, and has been from the invention of tally marks on clay tablets, an entry in someone's ledger.

Of all the thousands of things I own, as far as I know, only my car and my house exist in anyone else's ledger as belonging to me. Am I missing something?

The money in your bank account?

Don't forget about the money in your wallet as well since you don't control the printer.

and don't forget about your money in your house you don't control your wife

be careful with your assumptions! not everyone on hacker news is a lesbian

All of your property exists in a kind of implicit ledger that a court can reify when needed. If a court decides your bed isn't yours, then it isn't.

Your phone will show up as yours in some Google or Apple database.

Your credit/debit cards (really your credit card accounts) will show up as yours in some bank database.

Your laptop may show up as your in some Apple/Microsoft/Google account.

Your 401K. Your brokerage account. Your bank accounts.

I would find that hard to believe. You have a bank account, surely. A life insurance policy? Airline points? An account with the government social security office for your pension? There are probably dozens (if not hundreds) of things of value (even if the value is near zero) that exist in someone else's ledger.

But equally hundreds if not thousands of things a typical person owns isn't recorded in any ledger. The personal laptop currently in my lap, my clothes, my furniture, my pen and notebook, the cash in my wallet

Saying all ownership are just ledger entries is just as reductive as saying no ownership can be reduced to ledger entries

I think the GP used "things" to mean physical property. Your bank balance and saved merchant points do not exist as tangible things.

This is too reductive. There's been real development behind what it means to own something. What's written in a ledger is just an inscription it has no meaning outside of its social context.

Our social understanding of property has changed. John Locke's ideas on private property are so fundamental to how we think about ownership that we don't even realize there would have been another way of thinking about how we own things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_property#History

Yes. Otherwise I'd be happy to give you a GREAT price on all the movies I've "bought" from Apple and Amazon as well as myriad Kindle Books.

> for now a domain you "own" is just an entry in someone else's ledger

Well yes, that is literally what you are purchasing after all. Else alternative DNS schemes such as GNS would presumably be made illegal in the event they shadowed any "owned" mark. I don't think anyone would want to live in a world where adding an entry to your hosts file was a crime.

ICANN DNS can be approximately described as renting an entry in a global equivalent of the yellow pages.

That said, strong digital ownership laws would be a good thing. Publishers (games, books, music, etc) shouldn't be permitted to yank titles you paid for on the basis that you only licensed them. Neither should registries of names, ICANN or otherwise.

Now a "{first}.{second}.name" will be really awesome to own.

This is essentially premium real estate now. For us nerds, anyway.

Great job Neil and gang!

Well anyone can buy a second.name if second isn't already registered, and then set up their own first. subdomain, so most visitors aren't going to know the difference in between grandfathered in first.second.name sites and people who just bought second level domains and created their own subdomain.

if you're lucky, you can do something like first.sec.ond

works for many polish people who own ski resorts :)

I remember when delicious.com was just del.icio.us. I miss that site.

My dyslexia would go bonkers.

The documentation site for WLED is https://kno.wled.ge which I've always found to be adorable

I managed to get my name - dhaiv.at

> What they were proposing should really be illegal...

Where?

Everywhere.

Super reasonable proposal.

What a useless comment.

The Berne Convention on copyright is ratified by "182 out of 195 countries". If I were to recite The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in public almost anywhere in the world, I can be sued for it.

Maybe we need a Reston Convention on the right not to have your domain arbitrarily seized and sold to someone else.

I don’t even know where to start rebutting your comment.

You can be sued for downloading NES ROMs, too. Make a point?

PS The Copyright and IP thing is pretty unique, and is often held as an example of the US’ true power and influence to protect its corporate interests.

in countries with running water and elections

Are you aware of some global board we aren’t?

See: the UN

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