My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, freely available hyperlinked version) assesses the recent round of Internet governance developments including (i) the U.S. statement which indicated that they no longer intend to transfer control over the root servers to ICANN, but rather to maintain their "historic role in authorizing […]
Vint Cerf at ICANN by Veni (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/3KWko9
Internet Governance
Policies Old and New
Just as Canada and the U.S. were gearing up for a holiday weekend, there was a flurry of noteworthy policy developments. I expect that I will have more to say about each in the weeks ahead, so I only pause to comment briefly on each (in order of media coverage […]
A Better Take on Dot-Ca Disputes
Last week I published my take on the sudden interest in dot-ca domain name disputes in the Canadian House of Commons arising from the Defend Marriage Coalition’s registration of domains bearing the names of several MPs.
Domain Name Dispute Puts Dot-Ca in the Spotlight
My weekly Law Bytes column (freely available hyperlinked version, Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses on the recent Canadian parliamentary discussion on domain name disputes. As discussed about ten days ago, the impetus for governmental interest in domain name disputes and Internet governance is the registration of several domain names bearing the names of sitting Members of Parliament by the Defend Marriage Coalition, an opponent of same-sex marriage legislation.
Debating Domain Names
It is not often that Members of Parliament engage in debates on domain name policies so yesterday’s extended debate in the House of Commons is worth noting.
The impetus for the debate is the registration by an opponent of same sex marriage legislation of domain names bearing the name of MPs who favour the legislation. The sites are pretty deceptive. For example, the Don Boudria site looks like it could be the MP’s official site with only a disclaimer that it is not the official site.
The legal response to this issue is pretty complex. CIRA’s domain name dispute resolution policy is expressly designed to protect good faith criticism sites. That provision was adopted out of concern for the impact under the ICANN UDRP which has seen many legitimate criticism sites transferred under the questionable claims of cybersquatting.
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