That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

It is important that every business or organization has their domain names (eg slaw.ca) registered in their own name, and that the administrative contact is a senior person within the business.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

Domain names are often registered by an advertising agency, web designer, or IT provider for one of their customers. They should register it in their customer’s name, but often register it in their own name because it is simpler and easier for them.

Given that domain names are valuable assets, they ought to be registered in the actual owner’s name. The problem arises when for some reason the relationship goes sour and the party in whose name your domain is registered refuses to transfer ownership to you, or keeps control of the site, or disables the site.

While there are procedures available to get your domain name back, they take time and money.

If you were counting on getting that new web site up to launch a new product or business, it might be delayed for weeks or months while the domain name is wrestled back.

Even if the domain name is registered in the rightful owner’s name, if the administrative contact is in another party’s name, it can lead to similar problems. Domain name registrars will only take instructions from the administrative contact. That could be for assigning the name, or renewing, or to change the administrative contact.

There are processes available to change the administrative contact without the consent of the listed administrative contact. But because the risk of fraud and abuse is so high, the registrar puts you through a significant process to ensure that the domain name is not being hijacked.

This is one of those things that is simple to get right from the outset, but can be a major pain in terms of time and money to fix if it goes wrong.

As a client recently put it: “All this for a $20 domain … sad”.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

The draft regulations under the anti-spam legislation have attracted a lot of comments, most them negative. See this article by Lorne Salzman and Barry Sookman for a detailed summary.

In essence, the common theme is that the legislation and draft regs will be a compliance burden on business and charities, and the regulations don’t do anything to temper that.

From the article:

Unless the proposed regulations are reformulated, many worry that CASL will impede rather than facilitate e-commerce. It will hurt small and large businesses, cause significant economic harm and stifle innovation in the use of electronic messaging systems. It will hinder investment and job creation and drive new and emerging businesses to locate outside of Canada. Its red tape will be costly and inefficient to comply with.

I agree with that sentiment. The fundamental problem is the approach taken by the very lengthy and detailed legislation. Instead of focusing it’s effect on what most of us would call spammers, it focuses on a very broad definition of spam. That definition includes email and other electronic communication that most of us would not consider to be spam. Which means that every business and organization in Canada has to pay attention to this legislation and take efforts to comply with the detailed requirements, or face the possibility of massive fines.

There is not, for example, a volume threshold. So 1 email sent to 1 person can be considered spam.

It would have been much less invasive, for example, if it allowed an opt-out process, and made it an offense to not follow that request. If the sender is a legitimate business or organization, it would follow that request. And most people would be satisfied to know that business X was not able to contact them again.

In my view the regulations need to somehow make the law less intrusive, and less of a burden.

The Canadian government is expected to propose a bill shortly that would allow law enforcement unfettered access without judicial oversight (ie without a warrant) to certain information about you from your ISP, phone company, or other online service provider. 

David Fraser has posted a good piece explaining what it is about that I encourage you to read.  As David puts it, the concept is “inconsistent with your rights to privacy and is dangerous to the free and open internet. ”

For more information, look at what I have written about it before.  Also look at openmedia.ca which is campaigning against the proposed law.

For the London Free Press – September 19, 2011 – Read this on Canoe

Whether a domain name (such as www.harrisonpensa.com) is property that one owns — or just “a bundle of rights” — has been the subject of legal debate. The Ontario Court of Appeal recently said it is property.

The domain-name-as-property position makes sense in a world where, for example, in the early 2000s, wallstreet.com sold for more than $1 million and wine.com for more than $3 million.

Domain names are registered on a first-come, first-serve basis. The individual or company that registers the name receives the exclusive right to use the name, for which it pays a fee of a few dollars per year.

Registrars accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers act as overlord, allowing domain registrants to use the domain name subject to any restrictions they may impose.

If a domain name is a licence, clauses may be included in a service agreement that might, for example, impose restrictions on assignment. If a domain name is property, such restrictions may be hard to uphold. If a domain name is property, a registrant will have rights relating to the domain name which include the right to use, convey, develop, exclude, bequeath, profit from, assign and dispose of, with or without consideration.

A licence is a special permission to do something on, or with somebody else’s property which, were it not for the licence, could be legally prevented or give rise to legal action.

Conversely, property is the right to control how and by whom a particular thing may be used. If a domain name is a licence, registrants are at the mercy of the registrar to determine how the domain name will be used. If a domain name is property, the registrants are free to use the domain name in any manner they like and cannot be legally prevented from doing so by the registrar.

In the recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision, Tucows.Com Co v. Lojas Renner S.A. (2009), the court settled the licence/property debate, at least in Ontario.

Tucows.Com Co. (“Tucows”) is the registrant of more than 30,000 domain names. Lojas Renner (“Renner”) is a Brazilian subsidiary of JC Penny and has registered the trademark Renner in Brazil and other states. Renner made a complaint to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers regarding Tucows’ registration of the domain name “Renner.” In response, Tucows initiated its own action in Ontario for ownership of the domain name.

The Ontario Court of Appeal examined the traditional common-law attributes of property, specifically whether there exists “a collection of rights over things that can be enforced against others.” The court found the rights associated with a domain name include those rights.

As a result, the Ontario Court of Appeal found the domain name, as a business asset of Tucows, was intangible property.

This decision won’t have dramatic impact on the day-to-day use of domain names, but helps clarify their legal status for many issues ranging from ownership disputes to the right to bequeath them to heirs.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

At this moment, Apple’s iPad is without question the tablet that is defining the category and vastly outselling any competition. But it is too soon to write off competition from Android tablets. And Microsoft just yesterday officially unveiled its new Windows 8 operating system at a build developers conference. They gave away Samsung windows 8 tablets to everyone at the conference. Windows 8 is not ready for consumption yet – it will be some time in 2012 before it is ready for use. If you are keen to try it now, you can download the developer preview edition from the Windows Dev Center.

Initial reaction from the tech press has been positive. Windows 8 will replace Windows 7 for PC’s, and for that use includes a desktop similar to Windows 7. It also includes a touch-screen desktop similar to Windows phone, Apple and Android for use on tablets, or any computer with a touch screen.

This is a good move for Microsoft, as it allows them to be in both the PC market – which is shrinking because of tablets and smartphones – and in the tablet world as well. If it can end up with a competitive experience and usability, it will be especially compelling to the corporate world where IT managers will like the compatibility with existing infrastructure and software.

For more details, see this ZDNet article, this cnet article, or this allthingsD article.

Londoner, and Orchestra London’s principal cellist Christine Newland has entered a portrait (see it and vote here) in the Paul McCartney competition.

From the talenthouse website where you can vote:

The legendary Paul McCartney, hailed as the ‘greatest composer of the millennium’, is inviting designers to submit graphic art inspired by his critically acclaimed solo albums ‘McCartney’ and ‘McCartney II’. Designers can draw inspiration from ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ from ‘McCartney’ and ‘Coming Up’ from ‘McCartney II’. The winner will receive global exposure by having their graphic art featured on Paul McCartney’s website and on his social media channels. Paul McCartney will sign a lithograph print of the winning graphic art which will be exhibited in one of London’s most fashionable galleries, Idea Generation before being given to the winner.

Paul McCartney is choosing the winners, but “with special consideration for the top voted entries”.

Go here to see the various entries and vote.  Make sure you vote for the right one – there is another one that looks very similar.  ( We want the pastel version – not the one with the bright yellow/orange hair) Voting starts today, and goes to Sept 13.

London has recently won contests for money to plant trees, and to name Labatt Park Canada’s favourite ballpark – both based on voting.  So can we make this 3  for 3?

[Disclosure - I'm on the Orchestra London Board - which may explain why this caught my interest in the first place - but I'm not doing this post, or voting in that capacity.]

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

Symantec, the makers of Norton antivirus and anti-spyware software, released a report today containing a plethora of statistics on cybercrime.

As with any report containing statistics and poll results, we should take some of it with a grain of salt, but the stats make interesting reading. The report is set out in infographic style, so its easy to skim through it. It points out the types of online behaviour that tends to be the riskiest.

The most common – and most preventable – type of cybercrime is computer viruses.

After that comes online scams and phishing.

What is surprising is the high percentage of people who say it is important to protect their computers, compared to the lower percentage who actually have the right software to protect it.

From the report:

This shows an emotional disconnect between what people think is important and what they’re actually doing to protect themselves against cybercrime. Often, because people feel the Internet is too complicated and the threats are unknown or ambiguous, they default to a learned helplessness where they simply accept cybercrime as part of the cost of going online.

Also, they cannot visualize online protection like they can offline security systems like a fence or alarm that act as a physical deterrent.

Good online security is like having a professional bodyguard. Discreetly in the background, but there to spot all signs of danger and ready to step in to protect you against the attacks you expect and those you were never aware of.

So it is worthwhile continuing to emphasize the need to have up to date anti-virus software on our work and personal computers, and to be cautious about scams and phishing.

Another interesting stat is that 25% of respondents said they had “digital regrets” about things they had posted online.