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information Which Internet registries offer the best protection for domain owners?

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Today EFF and Public Knowledge are releasing a whitepaper titled Which Internet registries offer the best protection for domain owners? Top-level domains are the letters after the dot, like .com, .uk, .biz, or .mobi. Since 2003, hundreds of new top-level domains have come onto the market, and there has never been more choice for domain name registrants. But apart from choosing a name that sounds right and is easy to remember, a domain name registrant should also consider the policies of the registry that operates the domain, and those of the registrar that sells it to them.

Trademarks
To draw one example of out of our whitepaper, if you're running a website to criticize an established brand and you use that brand as part of your domain name, it may be wise to avoid registering it in a top-level domain that offers special rights and procedures to brand owners, that could result in your domain name being wrongly taken away or could embroil you in dispute settlement proceedings.

This probably means you'll want to think twice about registering in any of the newer global top-level domains (gTLDs), which provide brand owners access to a privately-run Trademark Clearinghouse that gives them veto powers that go far beyond those they would receive under the trademark law of the United States or those of most other countries.

See the whole news story here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/how-threats-against-domain-names-used-censor-content

And download the extensive whitepaper here: https://www.eff.org/files/2017/07/26/domain_registry_whitepaper.pdf
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Just a reminder for anyone that the majority of the new GTLDs provide significantly less protection against trademark and copyright claims than most of the 16 original GTLDs. Some conclusions of this article are:

1. For better protection against trademark bullies, you should generally avoid registering your domain in any of the new gTLDs.

2. For protection against copyright bullies, you should consider choosing a domain name operated by a registry that doesn’t have, and isn’t considering adopting, a streamlined policy to takedown domain names alleged to be associated with copyright infringement. This means avoiding the new GTLD domains operated by Donuts and Radix.

3. For protection against overseas speech regulators, you should also look carefully at the policies of the gTLD registries, and consider avoiding those that allow an overseas “trusted notifier” other than a court to initiate a domain takedown process.


Some of the mechanisms that are described in the whitepaper are:

- For the new GTLDs, brand owners have access to an accelerated version of the UDRP, called the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS). The URS provides a lower cost and quicker mechanism for a domain to be suspended.

- New GTLD registry Donuts’ private Domains Name Protected Marks List Plus (DPML Plus) program enables brand owners to block third parties from registering domain names that only partially match their brand, including misspellings, across all of the 200+ new gTLDs that it controls—and this veto right extends beyond the sunrise period for an initial period of ten years, which can be extended.

- New GTLD registries Donuts and Radix have established private deals with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), appointing it as a "trusted notifier" to initiate a registry-level take down of websites that it claims are engaged in extensive copyright infringement. There is no assurance that the registrant will even know that their domain name is being challenged. Donuts and Radix in turn commit to respond to MPAA’s request within 10 days of the complaint, absent exceptional circumstances, and may put the infringing site on hold or suspend it if they accept the MPAA’s evidence. In effect, MPAA becomes a private domain policeman, and Donuts and Radix enforcers.
 
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Yet another reason to focus on .com names.
 
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