__ Updata __
__ Roadrunner, InterNIC's After You __
The lawsuits are piling up at Network Solutions Inc., the US government contractor that runs the Internet domain-name registry, InterNIC. The reason: Network Solutions' unfair and arbitrary domain-name dispute resolution policy - ironically designed to prevent lawsuits in the first place.
Network Solutions' policy dates back to 1995, shortly after an Illinois-based firm sued a computer consultant in McLean, Virginia, over the domain name knowledgenet.com. Much to its chagrin, Network Solutions was named as a codefendant in the lawsuit, on the grounds that InterNIC's domain-name server was guilty of trademark infringement.
As a result, Network Solutions adopted its current policy, which lets companies holding a nationally registered trademark shut down rogue domains simply by sending a certified copy of their trademark certificate to InterNIC. In recourse, the domain holder must produce a trademark registration of its own.
Network Solutions' policy shows a fundamental misunderstanding of trademark law and offers a novel interpretation of it: the trademark holder is always right; domain-name holders must prove their innocence. And the only place to do that is in court.
In March, Roadrunner Computer Systems, an Internet service provider located at roadrunner.com, filed suit against Network Solutions. The reason: the domain-name company had been contacted by Warner Bros., which holds a trademark on the Road Runner cartoon character. Network Solutions demanded that Roadrunner produce its own trademark. When Roadrunner obtained a trademark from the government of Tunisia, which offers overnight service, Network Solutions said that Roadrunner's trademark didn't count - it was obtained too late.
Trademark allows a company to sue to prevent name use by someone else. But even then, lawsuits aren't always successful. "Lots of identical trademarks coexist without there being a trademark infringement because the goods and services are different," says Marina Larson, Roadrunner's attorney. Larson's partner, Carl Oppedahl, notes that both Mexico's and Switzerland's top-level registries say that domain-name disputes are expected to be settled "between the contending parties using normal legal methods" - that is, the courts.
Meanwhile, Network Solutions has started purging domain names of companies that have not paid InterNIC's US$100 registration or $50 annual renewal fee - though InterNIC admits that some decisions, like its dumping of Microsoft/NBC's msnbc.com, were the result of administrative screwups. Not surprising, as InterNIC has been notoriously understaffed ever since it was handed the domain-name contract by the National Science Foundation in 1993.
With at least eight other cases still pending, it looks like Network Solutions' domain policy hasn't been effective in preventing lawsuits - it has simply prevented lawsuits by major corporations.
Expect more, since trademarks are easily contested. Mark Voorhees, editor of the Information Law Alert newsletter, isn't shedding any tears for Network Solutions, however: InterNIC's monopoly is valued at US$1 billion. "They are in an impossible situation that is potentially very lucrative."
Simson Garfinkel
__ Boiled Diana __
In a 1994 trial in Pinellas County, Florida, Mike Diana, the 26-year-old creator of Boiled Angel comics, became the first cartoonist in the United States to be convicted on obscenity charges.
Diana appealed the court's sentence of three years' probation, 1,248 hours of community service, a US$3,000 fine, a psychological evaluation, a course in journalistic ethics, and a decree forbidding Diana from drawing anything - even for himself - that the judge might consider obscene. But on May 31 this year, Sixth Judicial Circuit Judge Douglas Baird upheld Diana's conviction, saying that the cartoonist's use of scatological and pedophilic images was "patently offensive" - if Diana's intent was to show "that horrible things are happening in our society, [he] should have created a vehicle to send his message that was not obscene."
Diana hasn't given up yet. Stay tuned....
[Original story in *Wired *3.01, page 34.]
__ Rave Redux __
Though techno music may have originated in North America, its culture has evolved in Europe. The best showcase of the phenomenon, *Localizer 1.0: The Techno House Book *(published by Die Gestalten Verlag), was historically hard to come by in the US, and sales were stymied by the steep import price tag.
The New World finally seems to be coming to terms with techno. One of Localizer's subjects, Canada's Plus 8 Records (home to artists like Plastikman), is selling the book through its distribution channels. Soon to follow are Localizer 1.1: Techno Art: The Chromapark Issue and Localizer 1.3: Icons, focusing on street-level art exhibitions and new-media design.
Plus 8 is offering Localizer for US$50; contact +1 (519) 258 7663 or plus8@plus8.com.
[Original story in *Wired *3.10, page 150.]
__ Future Shock __
As he fashions the new San Francisco Main Library into "the library of the future," Ken Dowlin - author of The Electronic Library: The Power and the Process - is making more than digital waves. Novelist Nicholson Baker has complained that Dowlin, in his digital zeal, was responsible for the "systematic removal to landfill of at least 200,000 library books."
Reopened this year, the US$138 million main library scrapped its "trad med" information retrieval systems in favor of computers, computers, and more computers. The plan for the first year alone calls for 695 of them, including 20 equipped with Netscape, 70 with CD-ROM drives, 12 multimedia stations, and 12 Pentiums for the children's department. However, there appear to be enough errors in the new electronic card catalog to justify investigation, and no record exists of the books that have gone missing.
Dowlin has characterized Baker's attack as misinformed. When asked about Baker's well-known desire to preserve the old card catalog, Dowlin reflected, "They're like covered wooden bridges. They're nostalgic, but they don't work for interstates." Baker replied, "It's part of a library's job to hold on to wooden bridges."
[Original story in *Wired *1.1, page 62.]
