Domain Owners’ Bill of Rights

1. Having paid the full cost of registration, Domain Owners will not have their rights or interests trampled upon by others who covet their assets.
2. The wishes and intentions of Domain Owners must be considered in decisions affecting the property or contract rights or taxation of their domains.
3. Domain Owners, acting in good faith, shall have the right to have Domain Ownership claims heard by a an efficient, industry-aware, objective, and equitable body of competent jurisdiction.
4. Domain Ownership conveys no right to abrogate law, ethics, and time honored industry practices.
5. Domain Owners have the right to be protected and catered to in the transfer and ownership of Domains, in Domain Disputes, and against Domain Hi-Jacking.
6. Domain owners shall have the full cooperation of Domain Registrars and Registries when they request transfer of their Domains between Owners or Registrars.
7. Domain Owners shall have the full cooperation of Domain Registrars and Registries in promptly returning stolen Domains to the rightful Owner.
8. Domain Owners are entitled to protection against reverse hi-jacking attempts. Owners forced to defend against such actions shall be entitled to recover their expenses when arbitration panels, courts, or legal bodies of agreed upon jurisdiction rule that an attempted reverse-hijacking has occurred. The domain owner should also be awarded punitive damages from the party initiating a reverse hijacking attempt.
9. Domain Owners shall not be deprived of their property & contract rights without full due process of law, and shall be entitled to full and just compensation in those rare instances when deprivation occurs.
10. ICANN’s powers shall be confined solely to the limited and distinct mission set out in its ByLaws of technical coordination of the domain name system and policy development as it is reasonably and appropriately related to that narrow technical function. All other aspects of legal use and enjoyment of domain names should be reserved and protected by traditional law and regulation for those who have paid for the registration rights – Domain Owners.

Seen at Domain Owners’ Bill of Rights (Daily Domainer)

WIPO, the entity that handles domain disputes, posted a press release that seems to imply that most domainers are “cybersquatters”.

Daily Domainer and Frank Schilling have some great comments about WIPO:

in its Proposed Program and Budget For 2006/07 WIPO congratulates itself that its own awareness-raising activities (!) are at least partially responsible for the increase in UDRP cases:

This press release must be another part of these awareness-raising activities. WIPO has to paint an alarming picture to attract attention. If they had said, complaint levels not even back at their 2000 levels people would have ignored the issue. Now reporters are all over it and they have no idea about the real problems.

WIPO does talk about valid problems, e.g. large-scale traffic tasting but they can be solved quickly and easily (and quietly). No need to launch an all-out attack on domainers just to gain more attention. Why don’t they talk about Google and Yahoo who profit from most parked domains, and Verisign who profits from domain tasting? It’s easy to bash the usual suspects but apparently it takes guts to even mention the big boys.

Welcome to my new domainers blog. Here I’ll talk about my favorite topic – domains, and how to make money with them! Stay tuned.