[gnso-rpm-wg] URS / UDRP proposals -- data on registrar/registry compliance costs

[George Kirikos]

Hi Maxim,

On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 4:10 AM, Maxim Alzoba <m.alzoba at gmail.com> wrote:
> These days, criminals interact on purely economical basis, and weakened
> interaction between

Yes, that's a very important point that should not be lost in all this
debate. The URS and UDRP don't really attack the economic aspect of
cybercrime (including cybersquatting) very well, in my opinion. That's
why the Verizon/iREIT lawsuit was so effective (as previously
discussed on this mailing list), as was as the Verizon/OnlineNic case:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/technology/companies/25verizon.html
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/27/onlinenic_verizon_ruling_upheld/

Remember that scene from Batman?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJS7NaktQ8g

"I want you to tell all your friends about me."

Those highly publicized cases told active and prospective
cybersquatters all about Verizon, and not to mess with them. I'm sure
many cybersquatters cleared out their portfolios of anything
Verizon-related due to these actions.

We've also seen evidence of the decline in the profitability of
cybersquatting by looking at how many UDRP cases CitizenHawk has filed
over time:

http://www.udrpsearch.com/search?query=citizenhawk&search=text&results=100&start=1

Just 3 cases in 2018 so far. As many members of this PDP are likely
already aware, they file UDRPs on behalf of companies at no cost up
front, but in exchange they monetize the traffic from the domains that
are won:

https://icannwiki.org/CitizenHawk

The fact that we've seen such a sharp decline in cases they've brought
is consistent with the fact that cybersquatting is less profitable
than it used to be, because the problem has been addressed in other
ways (e.g. getting domains banned at various monetization services
like Google Adsense or parking companies, affiliate programs, credit
card processors, hosting companies, Google Safebrowsing, etc.).
CitizenHawk is driven purely by economics, so there are just fewer
profitable typosquatting domains out there that they can successfully
target via their business model.

In conclusion, consistent with your statement, attacking the economics
of cybercrime in more targeted manner (to deter the practice because
it's simply unprofitable) is far more effective than to try to
"punish" the criminals with a "weak" domain transfer (UDRP) or
suspension (URS). The biggest criminals tend to be highly rational
economic actors, otherwise they don't survive in "business" very long.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/