In a Nutshell HERES WHAT HAPPENED
Posted on 10/19/2007 10:57:17 AM PDT by SubGeniusX
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has taken up a new battle against pirates, but this one is different than previous legal pursuits. The UK-based organization acts as the worldwide arm for the music recording industry, but as widely reported, it apparently forgot to renew its .com top-level domain in time before it got snatched up by one of its top targets, The Pirate Bay. While the IFPI still retains control of ifpi.org, ifpi.com now points to a Pirate Bay page that reads: "International Federation of Pirates Interests." The two sides are now preparing for a fight over the domain, and we talked to the parties involved.
The switch came about sometime last week, when Pirate Bay was given the domain by someone who had bought it after it expired some time ago, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde told Ars. A quick look through Archive.org shows that the "real" IFPI has not been using the domain for some time—in March of this year, the domain was a parked page with a Google search box, and as recently as April, it was being used as a blog for the "free music community."
An account of the events from IFPI spokesperson Laura Childs appears to confirm this. "IFPI's website www.ifpi.org continues to operate as normal. The web site www.ifpi.com was acquired by a cyber-squatter who appears to have passed it on to an associate of The Pirate Bay," she told Ars. "IFPI has already taken legal action to get the domain returned. We have filed a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) under the dispute resolution procedure. This procedure is designed for classic cyber-squatting cases such as this which involve the use of a URL in bad faith."
Indeed, the WIPO introduced new dispute resolution procedures in 2002 to account for cybersquatting. The procedure involves a review by WIPO-appointed, independent panelists in order to enforce ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. If the panel decides that the domain was acquired or used in bad faith, then it can order the domain to be transferred to the party that registered the complaint. (For curious readers, a number of past cases and related decisions can be found on WIPO's website.)
Given WIPO and ICANN's definition of "bad faith"—which says that the domain cannot be used to cause confusion with the "Complainant's mark"—there's a decent chance of The Pirate Bay eventually losing control of the domain. But if Pirate Bay can fight back and prove somehow that it has no commercial interests or intent to confuse visitors with the "real" IFPI site, it might have a chance at succeeding.
"We have not done anything illegal or even immoral," Sunde told Ars. "I can't see why we shouldn't be able to keep the domain name. We're not going to bash IFPI on it, we're going to host our own IFPI on it," he said.
PING
“People Eating Tasty Animals” redux. Pirate Bay will lose this.
most likely ...
but the fact that the domain had been dormant for so long will work in their favor...
and it’s at least fun while it lasts
now that’s funny
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry can suck on limes once per month to keep from getting scurvy. Arrrrrrrrrrr!
Absolutely wrong. As the article says they weren't using it, let it lapse, and someone else bought it to put up content. That is not cybersquatting. These corporations think they have a right to the domain name equivalent to their name, but they don't. What the IFPI is about to do to get it back is known as reverse domain hijacking.
This could affect us because our browsers are set for blocking websites with phonographic content.
A lot has happened since 2001. A lot of reverse domain hijacking attempts have been thwarted by the courts and arbitration since then, so there's better precedent now. PETA was the last big example I can remember of such abusive attempts succeeding.
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