[ih] Some Questions over IPv4 Ownership

[Ernesto Rubi]

Yup, saw/read RFC 2008, but there are two things with respect to the
contract language;

It doesn't incorporate RFC 2008 or a similar concept into the contract
itself.

RFC 2008 is circa 1996, so if you base an ownership theory just on RFC
2008, that still leaves a gap from 1977-1996.

-----
As to Dr. Lisse's question, it would appear, at least in the US, that
domain names have a very strong ownership interest.

In fact, through the application of trademark law (anti-dilution, etc) and
later through the Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act (ACPA) Congress gave
owners of marks (and especially famous marks) the ability to go to a U.S.
court and get at least an injunction and possibly monetary damages against
the person(s) using the mark as a domain name.

Importantly, ACPA also gave 'in rem' (~ explained: under English common
law reserved only for real property) jurisdiction to actions pertaining to
domain names in the district court covering the registrar of the domain
name.  So a plaintiff could now come into a US court and obtain
jurisdiction over ford.com in Virginia (NSI) and if successful could have
the court command NSI transfer registration/point NS to the proper IP.

Internationally, ICANN has adopted UDRP, which broadly speaking allows
folks to do the same as ACPA.

As a general statement, DNS case law is very well established, while IP
case law is non-existent (except for a one-off ex parte order in N.D.
california, which didn't even really decide ownership issues) and what you
do find is court decisions repeatedly saying things like "the owner of the
IP address" when refering to individuals whose IP has been tracked/logged,
etc.  Just plain odd.

Also part of my motivation to write the paper.

I'm taking 3 more courses during the evenings and work full time during
the day, so I have limited time and my paper is limited to 25 pages. 
Someone, somewhere really ought to spend a whole semester locked in a room
researching this.  If only I had graduate assistants...hehehe


----
Jorge Amodio wrote:
>> Language in law is important, and nowhere is that more evident than in
>> contracts and contract clauses.
> ...
>
>> "ownership" is not defined anywhere else in the contract.
>
> There is a BCP (RFC2008) that talks about "address ownership"
>
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp7
>
> Jorge
>


-- 
Ernesto Rubi
Network Engineer
FIU / AMPATH
Email:  ernesto at cs.fiu.edu