PFF Event: ICANN & Internet Governance: How Did We Get Here & Where Are We Heading?

by Berin Szoka on September 15, 2009 · Comments

PFF Adjunct Fellow Mike Palage led this extraordinary discussion of ICANN’s origins, evolution and future with four of ICANN’s “Founding Fathers”: Milton Mueller (author of Ruling the Root), law professor David Johnson, ICANN’s first CEO Mike Roberts and then ICANN CEO Paul Twomey. In particular, the group discussed ICANN’s mission, governance structure, and accountability; the difficult issue of new generic Top Level Domain names (gTLDs) and trademark concerns; and ICANN’s future relationship with the U.S. government. Be sure to check out the handy ICANN Glossary on page 33. The audio can be downloaded here.

Here’s the transcript (PDF):

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Comments Posted in: Inside the Beltway (Politics), Internet Governance & ICANN, Podcast, Trademark

ClaimMyName: Self-Help Against Name-Squatting on Social Media Services

by Berin Szoka on August 8, 2009 · Comments

The proliferation of Web 2.0 social media services has magnified the old problem of cyber-squatting: Every new service represents the possibility that someone else might claim your name, or your organization’s trademark, as a user name before you do! This problem is especially significant where user names correspond to vanity URLs, as with Twitter and, more recently, Facebook.

So I was intrigued to discover that the market is responding to this need: ClaimMyName (CMN) will take care of user registrations on 30 Web 20 services for $329 or on an astounding 300 services for $799. CMN is a “freemium” service offered by DandyID.com, a nifty free service that allows users to organize all their social media profiles for something like 390 services so that buttons for each service can easily be added to an author bio page on a blog, as we’ve done at the TLF. So if I really wanted to make sure that no one else registered http://<WEB2.0service>.com/berinszoka, or /techliberation or /ProgressFreedom, this service would allow me to do so with just a few clicks—at a price of either $10.97/service for thirty or $2.66/service for 300 services.

CMN is essentially a mini-Mark Monitor, the international company famous for protecting trademarks online—except that CMN facilitates self-help by users outside of trademark law: No registration is required; everything is done on a first-come-first-serve basis. Pretty cool.

Comments Posted in: Technology, Business & Cool Toys, Trademark