[ga] Fallout From An Exchange of Emails with Esther Dyson About ICANN Disenfranchising Internet Users Right to Vote For the ICANN Board Governing the Internet

[cpart@interaccess.com]

Hey everyone, 

REVERSE HIJACKING

1.  Check out this email article from TheStandard.com about the Madonna.com dispute.  The original registrant tried to give the name to the Hospital named Madonna in order to to avoid a reverse hijacking.  

If the story below is true... that one of the ICANN/WIPO judges is a member of the law firm that represents another party fighting the registrant over another name... Wow!!!  

A justice system that permits this to occur is something you might expect to find in a third world country... but not on the internet..  shame shame shame.

I am sure it was done all legal and proper.... and that's the problem.  

Unfortunately the registrant has a reputation as a troublemaker with names such as Wallstreetjournal.com, Whitehouse.com and Brunswicksucks.com.

Still... why should the Material Girl have a higher claim on the name than Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital or the Catholic Church?... just becuase the registrant is a trouble maker??????  

Looks to me like some form of institutionaly sanctioned vigilante justice...   The rules need to be changed, even for pornographers.  Until then, none of us will be safe (the good, the bad, or the ugly).  

The email article below  came from TheStandard.com (you can sign up for news from the Standard at http://www.thestandard.com).  You should take a good look at the links below as well.  They lead to a number of good articles on this subject.

Curtis Sahakian
1-847-676-2774
cpart@Corporate-Partnering.com
http://www.Corporate-Partnering.com/cpi

2.  Adam and Eve's Bones Are Found - and Madonna Gets Her Domain Name

If only there were such a thing as the Weekly World Net News, the supermarket tabloid would have been all over the story of Madonna, the Net and hints of pornography. As it is, there is no such publication (yet), and that left straight-business journos to gleefully report that the World Intellectual Property Organization had ruled that the Material Girl is the rightful owner of Madonna.com.

According to outlets, Madonna had filed a complaint with the WIPO, a specialized agency of the United Nations, about site operator Dan Parisi's use of the name Madonna.com. She claimed that Parisi had no trademark right to the name Madonna and failed to prove legitimate interest in the Internet domain name that he had registered in bad faith. The WIPO liked Madonna's argument that she had used her name and trademark Madonna professionally since 1979. Decision, Madonna. Reuters was restrained in its coverage, reporting that Madonna.com was "initially a porn site" and referring to Parisi as a Web site developer and businessman. But the Associated Press had no time for qualifiers. It reported that Madonna's win came after the WIPO "ruled a pornographer had improperly registered the site to cash in on the pop star's name."

Internetnews.com sniffed conspiracy. But it had little to back up its provocative headline - "Was the Madonna Decision Rigged?" - other than a post by Parisi on his soon-to-be former site claiming that the panel's composition is tilted by the inclusion of a Chicago attorney whose clients include corporations trying to evict cyber squatters. In a note on Madonna.com, Parisi offered the skinny on how he knows this tidbit: It's because the attorney, Mark Partridge, has represented Brunswick, and Parisi owns Brunswicksucks.com. Internetnews reported that Parisi declined an interview but Partridge was chattier, telling the site that the dispute process offers respondents a chance to complain up front about the panel's composition, but that Parisi declined to do so until the panel ruled against him.

The UK's The Register skewered the WIPO's decision, feigning shock at a group that it has referred to as a "friend to rich companies and people everywhere." It pronounced some of Parisi's arguments compelling, but in the end conceded that "Madonna is rich and famous so she can have" the name. There's lots more on the Madonna decision, but we have no time - aliens have landed and Elvis has been spotted bidding on eBay. - Deborah Asbrand

Madonna Wins Internet Domain-Name Dispute 
http://www.livedaily.com/news/2003.html 

Madonna Wins Fight Over Web Site Name (AP) 
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/0,1643,500269426-500419391-502599595-0,00.html 

Madonna Boots Cybersquatter Off Web Address (Reuters) 
http://news.cnet.com/news//0-1005-200-3209475.html 

Was Madonna.com Decision Rigged? 
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article/0,,3_487271,00.html 

Madonna Wins Her Domain Namesake 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14042.html 

Celebs Mince Cybersquatters 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/13885.html 

Madonna.com Fight Heats Up 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/13227.html 


3.  Here is a collection of resources for anyone who wants to learn more about ICANN vs. Internet Democracy.
http://infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/10/02/001002oplivingston.xml (by brian_livingston@infoworld.com) - In my opinion, the best article to date on ICANN's dysfunctional behavior...  
http://www.media-visions.com/icann.htm (Analyzing ICANN - a page with a very good set of links to pages containing well researched and reasoned critical analysis of ICANN)
http://www.ADOR-DOC.ORG/wipoletter.html (you can't understand how outrageous has been  ICANN's behavior with respect to favoring large corporations in domain disputes... unless you read this) 
http://www.news.com/Perspectives/Column/0,176,459,00.html (article by by Brian Livingston of cnet about ICANN bias in domain name arbitration)
http://www.Icannwatch.org (regularly updated website monitoring ICANN activities)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/full_coverage/tech/domain_names_and_registration/ (100s of articles written by reporters who've been covering these issues)
http://www.flywheel.com/ircw/overview.html (an overview of the domain names controversy - starting pre-ICANN with an extensive and thorough  set of related links)
http://www.icann.org  (ICANN's Web Site)  
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/gao-icann/DNS-Proposal.txt
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/ (background on the development of the Internet and the role of the government)
http://www.domainhandbook.com/toc.html 
http://www.iciiu.org/ (International Congress of Independent Internet Users)
http://www.domainnotes.com/ 
http://www.eff.org/ (electronic Frontier Foundation (the ACLU of the Internet)
http://www.media-visions.com/newdom2b.html (links to government and industry leaders)
http://www.media-visions.com/icann-involved.htm (steps you can take to help this problem)
http://www.civsoc.org (the Civil Society Democracy Project has a good set of links on internet democracy and related current happenings)

4.  Please pass this email along to anyone who might want to be added to the distribution list.

Curtis Sahakian
1-847-676-2774
cpart@Corporate-Partnering.com
http://www.Corporate-Partnering.com/cpi




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