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signup292
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Post by signup292 »

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Last edited by signup292 on Sun Feb 22, 2015 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

biolizard89
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by biolizard89 »

signup292 wrote:Ok so here is my non-technical partial policy proposal that I think would help shut me up, and possibly others about trademarks, and kind of squatting. And this is somewhat unique to decentralized TLDs, and not just piggy backing ICANN policy. Sorry again if some form of it has been stated already, I just think it needs to be explicit in this way. Even if its not all you said, all I heard was, stuff is impossible, and that's not easy to resolve on.

Trademark .bit's don't really matter, not because the law doesn't matter, but because there should not be an expectation that anyone with a trademark should be so attracted to USING a decentralized TLD to begin with. If anyone says Namecoin is trademark infringement, then tell them so is http://www.nissan.com/, and hence VeriSign. For example, the hope is that FreeSpeech.bit will eventually, and then always be, more attractive than FreeSpeech.com, as well as any other "trademark" .bit, because .bit will come to represent something, not just be a cheap TLD. Microsoft is not going to find some reason to start using ALL the new TLDs that are coming out like .club .land, whatever. microsoft.limo? They're probably going to just buy it and not use it, just like they did http://microsoft.xxx/

This is only a partial policy solution because even though microsoft most likely won't ever actually want to use .bit, they probably would want to prevent .bit links floating around the internet as misrepresentative scam. This I'm still uneasy about, but so far this next part is my other non-technical partial policy proposal:

.bit should stay psuedo anonymous. This will not hurt the free speech decentralized idea because the idea of .bit is not to break law, its to enjoy the limits of free speech. If you own microsoft.bit, and you start mimicking microsoft and blatantly abusing it, there is a reasonable chance law enforcement will come after you, because registering .bit leaves traces does it not?

This almost leaves just the issue of people having squatted 'good' .bit names left. My opinion, don't give a shit, leave it up to the market, reward the early bird.
There is certainly a tradeoff between the benefits of anonymity (protecting people from snoopers who might want to harm them), and the drawbacks of anonymity (making legitimate law enforcement more difficult). In the case of Bitcoin (and financial tools in general), I can see a significant debate here, because money can be used to cause significant harm (e.g. buying weapons for terrorists). (For the record, I'm still on the pro-anonymity side of that debate, but I can see both sides.)

However, for a primarily speech-based system [1] like Namecoin, I think it's pretty clear that the benefits of anonymity outweigh any potential harm. I'm not sure where you live (nor is it my business unless you feel like volunteering that info), but there are a *lot* of countries where speech is routinely criminalized, sometimes punishable by death. Anonymity is the *only* thing that keeps dissidents alive in those countries. I think the benefit of keeping dissidents alive in repressive countries is several orders of magnitude more important than enforcing trademarks by force in democracies.

Also, keep in mind that Nakamoto blockchains aren't just non-anonymous to governments. They're also open to your neighbors, or your boss, or your grandparents, or your ex-girlfriend -- anyone from whom you might want privacy, can see everything you do with a Nakamoto blockchain. This is described in detail in the Zerocash website, as well as Ian Miers's talk at the Bitcoin conference in 2013. I would go so far as to say that the primary goal of blockchain anonymity in democratic societies isn't to hide from governments; it's to hide from everyone else.

Here's a challenge to you: find me a credible case where a trademark owner tried to buy a squatted .bit domain of their trademark at a reasonable price, and was denied. I'm personally squatting on about a hundred domains for organizations that I like, and will happily hand them over for free if contacted by any of those organizations. Most squatters will benefit more from a high-profile company adopting Namecoin, than trying to extort a lot of NMC for a domain.

[1] Before someone claims that "money is speech" by citing Citizens United: no, only money being spent on speech, is speech. Buying advertising time on TV is speech. Buying weapons is not speech. Too bad the media can't seem to read a SCOTUS decision before making claims about it.
Jeremy Rand, Lead Namecoin Application Engineer
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DyName: Dynamic DNS update client for .bit domains.

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domob
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by domob »

biolizard89 wrote: Here's a challenge to you: find me a credible case where a trademark owner tried to buy a squatted .bit domain of their trademark at a reasonable price, and was denied. I'm personally squatting on about a hundred domains for organizations that I like, and will happily hand them over for free if contacted by any of those organizations. Most squatters will benefit more from a high-profile company adopting Namecoin, than trying to extort a lot of NMC for a domain.
Thanks for this statement, it is exactly what I think, too. I really don't think that squatting is such a huge problem as people always claim. I'm sure that much more .bit sites would be live instead of squatted if there were just some people interested in running them yet. And I'm also holding some domains, and will give them for free to anyone who actually wants to set up a real site there (i. e., the trademark owner).
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sudoquai
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by sudoquai »

domob wrote:
biolizard89 wrote: Here's a challenge to you: find me a credible case where a trademark owner tried to buy a squatted .bit domain of their trademark at a reasonable price, and was denied. I'm personally squatting on about a hundred domains for organizations that I like, and will happily hand them over for free if contacted by any of those organizations. Most squatters will benefit more from a high-profile company adopting Namecoin, than trying to extort a lot of NMC for a domain.
Thanks for this statement, it is exactly what I think, too. I really don't think that squatting is such a huge problem as people always claim. I'm sure that much more .bit sites would be live instead of squatted if there were just some people interested in running them yet. And I'm also holding some domains, and will give them for free to anyone who actually wants to set up a real site there (i. e., the trademark owner).
Squatters nature is to reserve goods, not using them (yet), and selling them later for profit.

Here is the solution:

1) Renewal fees (a squatter has to decide if he wants to hold or just abandon)
2) Give him what he wants: Domain Trading (Safe Name Trading) https://forum.namecoin.info/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1701

What is successfull in the centralized ICANN world, can't go wrong at decentralized Namecoin. This is a game changer.

I will donate for this system, after finishing.
NameID: id/sudo.wonder >>> Namecoin @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/namecoin.org

signup292
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Joined: Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:02 pm

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Post by signup292 »

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Last edited by signup292 on Sun Feb 22, 2015 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

mightbemike
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by mightbemike »

Personally I think anonymity is one of the most important features that can be added. People can always choose to break that and make it obvious who controls a domain name.

It's important to realize that anonymity supports more than criminal activity - it protects free speech itself.
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sudoquai
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by sudoquai »

mightbemike wrote:Personally I think anonymity is one of the most important features that can be added. People can always choose to break that and make it obvious who controls a domain name.

It's important to realize that anonymity supports more than criminal activity - it protects free speech itself.
Ack - Anonymity is not a bug, it's a feature.
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knightArmor
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by knightArmor »

Hi,
After reading the different suggestions and ideas on the trademark problems that namecoin could face I suggest:

This in my view would be a better way to solve this issue for both the squatter and the owner of a trademark.

Since Namecoin was made to be decentral, it would be also better to allow disputes on .bit names to be decentral.
Decentral works. We allow the market to sort itself out. Having namecoin getting involved in trademark disputes and law will just open up a whole new can of worms for those devs administering namecoin. This will eventually move closer to an ICANN model and that model is not decentral, it is central. Just follow me on this and believe me that it will work. Let us make namecoin decentral.
So how do we do this?

In order to allow trademark disputes to be resolved by the two parties which is ( the owner of the .bit domain and the real owner of the trademark), we must create a namecoin client that facilitates the trading of the .bit domain for whatever price the two parties agree upon. By this I mean the transaction must take place by both parties commiting both the fee and the name within the client. When both gets commited in the interface then both are then transfered to each other same time. if one does not commit his part of the bargain then the other party must be allowed to cancel the transaction. It must be an equal release when both commit. When both commit to the tansaction then they must also be able to see if the right fee or domain has been commited and if any party cancels the transaction then the other party to the transaction must be cancelled automatically.

This creates a decentral way of allowing them to trade

In order for them to know that either party is interested in trading a particular domain name, there must be a built in messaging feature in the client for either party to contact each other. The messaging feature should allow users to contact each other through the client but also, the messaging feature should not allow language that could affect negotiations. You might get a buyer who could use threat in the negotiation process. Therefore the messaging feature should have a language database to facilitate decent communication, and most important the language database must be setup to only allow negotiation of a price and not allow the buyer and seller to display his/her contact details as this could lead to payments for a domain name to be made outside of the client and thus namecoin could end up losing the transaction fee for the deal.
The feature could also charge a sender a fee for sending the message to prevent spamming.The messaging feature must limit the length of the message to avoid cramming the network.

I think this overall is the best route to take to solve the trademark problems. SIMPLY, Let the market decide.
Do not let namecoin developers involved in namecoin to become the middelmen. Let the parties be free to negotiate and trade within the client.


Another good feature would be to allow namecoin to charge a fee for the transfer of the name from one owner to the next when the transaction gets committed by both parties. But the fee must must be a percentage of the transaction value. Say for eg:
A seller sells a domain for 1000 namecoins then the fee must be a percentage of this and not a set fee.

I see the ideas I have suggested as a viable way for namecoin to grow but also be neutral and decentral.

LET US ALL STAND TOGETHER FOR DECENTRAL NOT CENTRAL, AND STAND FOR NAMECOIN AND NOT ICANNCOIN
Last edited by knightArmor on Fri Oct 03, 2014 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

domob
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Re: Preventing trademark infringement

Post by domob »

I totally agree. In case you are not aware, such a feature (atomic name trading) exists already - but very hidden / only usable from the command-line. I think all core community members agree that it is a good development goal to build an easy-to-use UI around it - be it in the client itself (like you suggest) or as a separate application that only hooks onto the Namecoin daemon. Are you interested in developing such a UI or do you know someone who might be? This would be great!
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