[CPWG] Domain Name Abuse... potentially

[John McCormac]

On 27/03/2020 19:03, Bill Jouris via CPWG wrote:
> Basically, if you buy a domain name in the hopes of reselling it, that's 
> a non-problem.  Definitely not, in itself, abuse.  An irritation, for 
> some.  And a potential problem.  But not yet one.

To people who watch domain name trends and registrations, this kind of 
thing happens all the time with news events. It is most apparent with 
celebrity deaths and there's generally a spike in registrations followed 
by many of the domain names being deleted a year later.

There are some malicious registrations and there are industry backed 
operations to deal with these. However, most of the registrations will 
be monetised with PPC and affiliate advertising.

> However, if you take one of those names, and use it to misrepresent 
> yourself (specifically your site) as someone/something you are not, that 
> is abuse.  Also fraud.  The question to my mind is, is that problem 
> better addressed as DNS abuse?  Or via the existing legal system as 
> fraud?  Which, I suppose, depends in part on how well the legal system 
> can deal with fraud on an international level in an interconnected world.
Where intellectual property rights have been infringed, there are 
mechanisms in place to deal with it. Where laws have been broken, there 
are procedures and in place for dealing with the problem. It is 
complicated by being multi-jurisdictional.

A lack of knowledge is dangerous. In rushing to categorise all such 
registrations as DNS abuse, it would make ALAC look clueless. It would 
be better to concentrate on actual DNS abuse 
(malware/spam/phishing/hacking etc) rather than trying to group all 
commerical activity that does not conform with a purist view as DNS 
abuse. The malware/spam/phishing aspect is far more dangerous than the 
clickbait registrations and the registrations for resale. Again, the 
level of domain names for resale in most TLDs is actually much lower 
than that the purists think. Even the 150K domain name survey on the 
.ORG earlier this month had the resale/auction percentage at just below 3%.

With technological problems, the first response has to be technological 
and the second financial. The decision chain with legal action is often 
too long to make any difference and people still get hit by 
malware/spam/phishing. This first response is already happening with 
various industry groups being formed to deal with the problems. Legal 
action might be effective in the long term.

Regards...jmcc
-- 
**********************************************************
John McCormac  *  e-mail: jmcc at hosterstats.com
MC2            *  web: http://www.hosterstats.com/
22 Viewmount   *  Domain Registrations Statistics
Waterford      *  Domnomics - the business of domain names
Ireland        *  https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO
IE             *  Skype: hosterstats.com
**********************************************************