The domains are an interesting asset because the annual renewal fee.
If business A owns the domain and becomes insolvent, then dissolves, the registrant of the domain no longer exists and there is no longer a business bank account to pay the renewal. This likely leads to what you’ve described, the registrar or a domainer/squatter benefiting.
But you can at least buy the domain from the squatter afterwards, so the deadweight loss is limited. This is analogous to proposals for Harberger taxes on IP, or requiring copyright registration/fees for renewal after a few decades - if the rights are lost or so low value, then this elegantly restores it to the public domain, rather than locking it up for the next 100+ years.
I’m strongly against Harberger Taxes - I see them as an attack vector by market incumbents - but you just made them sound as non-objectionable as I’ve ever seen.
On the domain side I’d like to see a small extension of ICANN UDRP to cover trademark owners against unused/forwarded domains irrespective of the domain being registered prior to the trademark registration.
At the scale of these tech companies and the number of customer service issues the courts would be overrun and this hurts the other cases. Courts can’t scale, even at $100 per small claims case filing fee they are losing money, Courts aren’t meant to be profitable businesses nor even self sustaining, they provide a public function and service paid for by tax dollars.
I recently wrote an Ask HN post[1] about obtaining my trademarked X & YouTube handles (neither is registered by a user/both are being “protected” from being registered by the respective platforms).
Since 2022 I’ve worked with legal/support teams and successfully climes my trademarked handle/username from:
Meta (IG & Threads)
Microsoft (GitHub)
Reddit
TikTok
Amazon (Twitch)
Kick
Similarly, no user had registered my trademarked name on those platforms either, but I couldn’t register it because they were all “protecting” the name/brand from being registered.
Of note, Meta’s legal team was the most responsive and transferred me the accounts within 24 hours of sending my Trademark Notice, following a couple back and forth email confirmations.
Unlike every other platform a Discord user did in fact register my trademark and is holding himself out as “CEO of {trademark}” with the “TM” trademark emoji following the trademark. After authenticating me as the owner of the trademark Discord’s legal team concluded they could not determine who the actual owner was and informed me I would have to sue the user and give them a copy of the Court Order. Really bizarre they would throw their user under the bus, not consider I could also name them a defendant, and that Discord was confused as to the owner of the trademark meets the legal burden of proving trademark infringement (likelihood of confusion standard).
I detailed my frustration in the post of not being able to actually speak to a human at X or YouTube, which would no doubt immediately resolve my requests like every other platform. I even noted in a comment the likelihood I’d have to file lawsuits to actually speak to a human which I believe would result in an immediate resolution/settlement.
Perhaps I will sue X, YouTube and discord, but I really shouldn’t have too and these companies should pay damages when a customer can show no human support was ever given.
If you sue them, what kind of tort is it? I wouldn't think these sites are under any obligation to give you the name, as long as they aren't assisting someone else to use your name?
In my case I would file 2 claims: 1) trademark infringement, and 2) trademark dilution. However, I’ll take a look at these cases and see what claims they filed and maybe supplement if anything applies.
Trademark infringement typically requires “likelihood of confusion”, except where the trademark is famous then there can be trademark dilution even when there is no “likelihood of confusion.”
My trademark is famous, and it’s evidenced by the fact that YouTube and X (and all the other platforms) reserved and protected my trademarked name from being registered and used.
The legal argument would be these platforms are infringing by reserving the name and diluting the famous trademark by not allowing the trademarked account to exist on their platforms.
YouTube and X don’t want to be in Court explaining why they reserve trademarked names and don’t release them to the trademark owner, so it’s just a matter of getting a human involved to get it resolved.
How are you detecting the reservation? I have a couple of trademark names and on some platforms there are no users with those names, yet they won't allow registration. Is that the trademark reservation at work? Or are there other reasons the registration would be blocked? (assuming the trademarks are very normal and not something suitable for censorship)
Each platform has their own rules for names, off the top of my head I don’t think X will allow registration of 4 (maybe 3) characters or less any longer, even if it’s available. So without prying I couldn’t give you my opinion about your mark(s).
In the case of X, I can use wayback machine and show the username did exist for a month when the platform launched (2006 I think) and then was removed from that point to the present. YouTube handles are a new feature only about a year old, and I have been trying to register it from day 1, so I have personal knowledge the handle has never existed, and they also prevent registration of any variations @{trademark}001.
I also have evidence that the other major platforms (Meta/Instagram/Threads, GitHub, Reddit, Twitch, TikTok, etc…) were reserving this trademark and released it to me upon showing I’m the trademark owner.
It’s strong enough to bring a civil lawsuit where the standard is “more likely than not” anyway. Again I doubt they’d want any employee of consequence being deposed under oath and testifying why they reserved it and refuse to turn it over to the trademark owner as many others have done.
> I don’t have to go to France to see the Mona Lisa, there are pictures of it online.
True but the Mona Lisa was painted around 1500, so it was about 500 years before the work was digitized and widely available online. There were prints before the internet, but that’s not exactly the master’s work.
I think the music/art should be freely available, but I’ve also been talking about this album for 10 years and until yesterday hearing the 5 minute sampler for the first time, I had never heard a second of it.
Interesting, I’m trying to apply this to domains and it seems a decent fit or at least a lot of overlap.
Domains are sort of the digital land for the internet, and the websites hosted on them are the value add.
Domains are practically infinite, though like some of the land examples some domains are far more desirable than others. Individually domains can be divided into practically infinite subdomains and/or subpages.
The ~1500 TLDs all have their own rules and fees (taxes). They fall under a central governing authority, ICANN pursuant to ToS/EULA/rules/policies, as well as intellectual property laws which vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and may also fall under one or more international treaties. Nevertheless, speculation proliferated and domaining is an entire industry driving prices up, but in practice I don’t think prohibits “new players.”
There is enough difference between land/virtual worlds and domains, I don’t think a LVT or harberger tax would be well suited for domains, but it’s interesting to think about.
I always hoped that somehow the Internet would find its way back to personal websites in lieu of the social media sandboxes that dominate, or at least adopt the Bluesky approach where users can bring their own username/handle/identity via a custom domain.
Part of the wild history is that following Shkreli's conviction for securities fraud the album was seized and the DOJ had it for 3 years until they auctioned it for $4M (2x Shkreli paid at the original auction).
I posted because the entire thing is so fascinating from distribution, legal rights, to the unimaginable chain of custody/ownership (which included the Department of Justice who auctioned it to the current owner).
In addition to what you quoted it is said it was also inspired by musical patronage in the Renaissance. I’m sure there is some truth to all of the above but also just marketing.
It originally sold at auction for $2M, and I would imagine/hope they could have made multiples that through a standard release.
> It originally sold at auction for $2M, and I would imagine/hope they could have made multiples that through a standard release.
It is my experience that once folks achieve wealth thru copyright, they fixate on controlling their IP. Both money and control override nuance-based sense and social good but control will commonly trump money.
I don't know WTC and am not speaking to their specific motivations - beyond suggesting this copyright profile could be in play.
Thanks, I emailed Dang to update the url to the “lore” subpage.
The linked website is the official site of the Album owner. The homepage simply shows a countdown clock to the release date of the album originally scheduled for 2103, but the release date/clock is being reduced in real-time based on album purchases.
This Album is the highest selling album of all-time, it only had 1 physical copy made, and the ownership history is just as interesting. For more info on the Album here is the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin
Thanks! I tried clicking around the various links and nothing seemed to happen apart from popups trying to get me to enter my wallet information, so I assumed it was just some kind of crypto-scam leaderboard.
I've now read the other article, and it's fascinating. Somehow I missed the story about the arrest and this album at the time...
Ah yes, an amazing source where you can only read it if you're duped into signing up for a 12 month commitment to them for the pleasure of watching your pocket book sucked dry.
Both the /lore page and the wikipedia article provides more information about it for free than the NYT does.
Back in my law school days I was part of our school’s Immigration and Human Rights Clinic that won a $22M judgment under the Alien Tort Statute Act on behalf of Liberian torture victims against “Chuckie” Taylor, son of Liberian President Charles Taylor.[1]
The background is the stuff of movies, Charles Taylor was a high ranking official in Liberia that fled to the US after being accused of embezzlement (principally from US contracts), he was arrested in the US and “escaped” from Federal prison, fled back to Africa where he was armed and funded by Gaddafi, and became President of Liberia after a coup. His campaign slogan was "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”
In fact both Charles and Chuckie are depicted in the Movie Lord of War, where Chuckie was the one who asks Nicolas Cage for the Rambo’s golden gun. Their brutality was also depicted in Blood Diamond, in neighboring Sierra Leon where they were behind Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and would cut people’s arms off (long sleeve/short sleeves for above/below the elbow) when they voted in elections, because voters hands/thumbs were inked as evidence of voting.
Chuckie interestingly was actually a born in the US and a private school kid. Then went to Liberia after Charles became President and became head of his anti-terrorists unit called the “demon forces”, the rest is the stuff of nightmares they leave out of the movies.
If you can read between the lines, this stuff goes to the highest levels of government and intelligence which is another reason the ATS Act is under attack.
If business A owns the domain and becomes insolvent, then dissolves, the registrant of the domain no longer exists and there is no longer a business bank account to pay the renewal. This likely leads to what you’ve described, the registrar or a domainer/squatter benefiting.