Naval Postgraduate School
Fall 2007

CS3610: Information Crime, Law and Ethics

Oct 4, 2007

Trademark Law and Domain Disputes (Guest: Gary Kremen)

Seminar 3 <<                     Seminar 4                    >> Seminar 5
[wiki]

SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER: Gary Kremen, Sex.com

Although the Internet has experienced computer crime since its inception (see RFC 603, which we'll discuss next week), and there was general disregard of the NSFNET's Acceptable Use Policy, neither of these issues resulted in general conflict between different groups of network users. Genuine conflict didn't emerge until the so-called "Domain Name Wars" of the 1990s.

The Internet's creators designed a system with a single global name space: that was the point of having a single international network, after all. But the world doesn't have a single namespace.---the same name is routinely used in different locations to mean different things. As a result, trademark law has significant complexities and nuances---cut-outs for particular geographical areas, or different kinds of businesses.

There were numerous legal disputes involving domain names in the 1990s. One of ICANN's first acts was to create a policy on how domain name disputes should be addressed. That policy is called the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, or UDRP.

UDRP Resources

Special Gary Kremen Reading Assignment

Gary Kremen will be our guest speaker. Mr. Kremen was an internet businessman in the 1990s. Mr. Kremen started the successful Internet business match.com. He also registered the domain sex.com, had it stolen, and then sued to get it back. One of the lasting results of his lawsuit was the legal ruling that domain names are property that can be assigned by courts.x

Optional Gary Kremen Reading

Reading Assignment

We will also continue our reading in Privacy on the Line. Whereas Chapter 2 of Privacy on the Line presented the theory of cryptography, Chapter 3 gives you the history of modern cryptographic systems and the attempts by governments to control them. This is a fascinating chapter which will introduce you to the mechanical "rotor machines" used during World War 1 and 2, the birth of the National Security Agency (NSA), the development of public key cryptography in the academic world (in which Diffie was intimately involved), and the crypto wars of the 1980s and early 1990s.

One of the fundamental theme of this chapter is that cryptography's importance in society grew in the 20th Century. At the beginning of the century it was primarily used for protecting military and diplomatic communications, but by the 1970s it was needed for both government and commercial purposes. This produced stress as parts of the government wanted to be able to both exploit the security the cryptography for themselves while simultaneously preventing others from enjoying the same benefits of the technology. We shall see this desire to benefit from technology while denying the benefits to others come up again-and-again as we look at various technologies in this course.

More Technical Students Might Enjoy Reading

References

Assignment: 1-page response paper

Before class submit using the website a 1-page response paper to the reading. Please submit as a PDF file.