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.
Post Tagged with: "CIRA"
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.
Over-Dose
Earlier today I provided links to some of the coverage from Thursday's file sharing decision. A small article from Dose, the free Canwest daily paper, was not included (it isn't online) but merits some attention.The article features brief Q & A's with Alex Cameron, who argued the privacy issues for CIPPIC, and with Graham Henderson, CRIA's President. In response to an open-ended question on his thoughts on the decision, Henderson responds:
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), Director
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), Director
CIRA Proposes New WHOIS Policy
Professor Geist’s latest Toronto Star Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, HTML backup article, homepage version) examines CIRA’s new proposed WHOIS policy for the dot-ca domain. The new policy will not publicly disclose personal information for individual registrations, though corporate and organizational registrations will typically have full information publicly posted […]
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