Re: [nc-udrp] Re: [nc-deletes] Revised draft recommendations

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

> The high level description of the proposal is:  "Inform the challenger the
> name is going to expire, and let them pay for the renewal if the registrant
> is not going to."  As always, the details get a bit more complicated than
> that, but I'd rather think about some of the details now than when the
types
> of problems you describe start to crop up.

The recommendations appear to accomplish the high-level description with a
minimum of undue complexity, and without fictionally maintaining the
registrant in an extended contract term to which he/she did not agree.

"Legal dispute holds" are not unique to the UDRP, and it is probably time to
share a trade secret about the only currently-known way to secure a
permanent, non-transferable, non-hi-jackable domain registration.  And if you
don't care if the name resolves, you can have Verisign maintain this
permanent domain registration for free.  It is the ideal mechanism for TM
owners who want to lock up a lot of unused variations, but don't want to have
to pay the bill.

Registrars are required to place a domain name on "hold" in response to
receiving any court complaint about the domain name, and to keep that status
until they receive notice of the resolution.

So, what you can do is to walk into your local court, or any court, anywhere,
and file a complaint against your *own* domain name.  Total cost, as low as
$15 in some places.  If you are worried about a valid filing, find a friend
who doesn't like your domain name and have them sue you for infliction of
emotional distress - whatever.  File in small claims court, family court,
juvenile court, a tennis court, it doesn't matter.  No registrar is sitting
there pondering the "competent jurisdiction" clause... go to the mall and
file a complaint in the food court.  You get the idea.

You then fax that complaint to the registrar, as time-stamped by the dutiful
court clerk.  The registrar puts the domain name on "hold".  Then, you do
nothing about the court complaint, and the court eventually kicks it off the
docket and dismisses the case.  It's not as if the court is going to send any
notice the registrar, who will duly keep the domain name on hold *forever*,
in accordance with the rules concerning names in litigation.  Any third party
who wants to unlock that domain name is going to have to find the court order
dismissing that case and send it to the registrar.  Yeah, from a small claims
court in Timbuktu, right?  They aren't going to find that docket online.

Why does anyone think bodacious-tatas.com was never "cancelled" in accordance
with the UDRP decision on that name?  Doesn't anyone ever get curious about
that kind of thing?  The reason is that a case was filed in a court
(somewhere), and no decision of that court is ever going to be made or sent
to Verisign.  So there it sits, and Verisign will pay $6 from now to eternity
to maintain that domain registration record.  Free eternal domain
registration.  There are legal systems in some countries where you can file a
complaint, and the case will stay "pending" for decades without any care and
feeding at all.

In any event, the draft recommendation on this issue looks very good.  It
would be nice if the wrinkle about UDRP-ordered deletions could be smoothed
out in parallel by the UDRP task force simply by eliminating the cancellation
option - which has not worked out the way it was intended by those who
thought domain names would "stay cancelled".  Every UDRP-cancelled domain
name has been re-registered by someone, and practically never the complainant
(not unless they asked me nicely).  My comments were intended to update Dr.
Lisse on how your marvelous recommendation got to the point where it is.

Technically, yes, there "is no dispute" in such a circumstance, and within
the context of the procedural step of having the Case Manager confirm the
expiration date and provide notice of same in the record of the case, a
Panelist may of course consider that fact along with all of the others in the
application of the Policy.

John

(off to file my DJ complaint in traffic court, somewhere, on gnso.org)