Ed Gerck a �crit:
>
> This page is very interesting but does raise some questions which you or
> the list may help me with.
I don't think I can help you very much. I'm not a lawyer. I thought
the judgement was interesting but, as you say, since it was by
default it's rather inconclusive. I felt that the assumptions of the
court were unwarranted under the situation. However, most anything
can happen when there's no defense, and a court unfamiliar with the
workings of the Internet, and ignorant of the present conjuncture
with regard to domain names versus trademarks, might very well be
willing to take plaintif's arguments at their face value.
What is especially interesting is that the court was willing to
entertain the idea that the domain name could be sold to pay a
monetary judgement, as transferrable real property. That's an
extension beyond where courts have hitherto been willing to go, and
places names into the realm of material commodities that can be
legitimately bought and sold, that is, traded. I made sardonic jokes
a couple of years ago about seeing the advent of markets for domain
names, much like markets in stocks. It now seems that those jokes
are becoming less humorous.
There's no doubt that scarcity creates value. Anything can be
traded, as the options and futures markets prove. First it was gold
and diamonds, and art; later "contracts" on the sale of raw
materials that are never in the possession of those buying and
selling them; now we are seeing the commoditization of strings of
characters used as place-holders for digital codes that never exist
at all except as identifiers for electronic "packets" in cyberspace.
The abstraction has become dangerous. The Athenians of ancient
Greece used to say that those whom the gods wished to destroy they
first drove mad. Perhaps we've been guilty of crimes against the
gods.
