John Berryhill, writing on the Registrars' List: "Be creative. Give yourself a 100 day domain tasting period and cut the .COM price down to two bucks."

Mine the thread a bit for the context. It's worth it.

At least in the United States. Susan Crawford has the details in "The Day the Internet Became Cable Television: Dec. 29, 2006."

Goes to the ALAC's John Levine, for his latest blog entry, titled "Earthquake in Asia, Spam Plummets." And I thought my email was light just because of the holidays.

Traveling out of Burbank airport yesterday, the day after Christmas, my 5 year-old daughter's new Ariel doll was confiscated by TSA officials as a possible forbidden explosive device. As her tiny backpack emerged from the scanner, the TSA guy asked, in his gruff official tone, "Whose bag is this?"

"It's mine," my 5 year-old responded.

"The scanner shows that you packed toothpaste in here."

"No, I didn't," she said.

"No, she didn't," I added.

As he searched her tiny 8"x8" backback, the TSA guy found this Ariel doll, with its gel bendable tail piece, and declared that the tail section violated the ridiculous "no-liquid-more-than-3-ounces" rule. He took it.

"It's not a liquid; it looks more like a gel," I argued. But arguing didn't help.

"You can put it in your checked backage," he offered.

"But you know that by the time we reach you, we've already checked our luggage," I replied.

"That's all I can offer you," he said. "If you don't check it, it has to remain with us."

Try explaining to a 5-year old why the Ariel doll she received as a present has been confiscated by a government official.

I went over to a local Burbank police officer and asked if he could do something to help. He politely deferred to TSA, saying that airport security was "All TSA's authority.....And they're nuts." Amen.

I always forget to give until I get this year end message. Thanks, EFF.

----

Dear Friend of Freedom,

I'd like to thank you again for supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and to ask for an end-of-the-year donation to help us continue to protect your rights: http://secure.eff.org/friends2006

The threats to freedom keep coming. Just this month, we blew the lid off a government plan to assign secret "risk assessments" to American travelers. Before the major media reported on this invasive and unprecedented data-mining system, we sounded the alarm and filed comments opposing the program's implementation.

Also this month, we pushed ahead in a new lawsuit in Sarasota, Florida, to protect the right to vote. Flawed machines were potentially responsible for disenfranchising thousands of citizens in the county's congressional race, and EFF is fighting back to make sure every vote counts.

That's just a sampling of what we've taken on in the last 30 days. This year, we also sued AT&T for its role in the NSA spying program, held Sony BMG accountable for damaging customers' computers, "busted" dangerous patents, and achieved many other critical victories in the fight for digital rights.

We need your help to continue these efforts and confront whatever threats to freedom come next. Consider spreading out your contribution throughout the year by donating a little every month.

As a sustaining member, your gift continues to flow and secure your
freedom in 2007 and beyond: http://secure.eff.org/monthly

You can also make a one-time donation.
http://secure.eff.org/friends2006

Either way, we greatly appreciate your continuing support and wish you a healthy and happy holiday season and new year!

Thanks in advance for your help.

Shari

--
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Shari Steele
Executive Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
http://www.eff.org/

Business 2.0 has a nice profile of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons. Did he really kill an elephant?

Verizon's Sarah Deutsch, in Business Week: "Domain tasting is destabilizing the entire domain name system."

More from Andrew Allemann on CircleID and on his own weblog Domainnamewire.

Here's a pointed article from the Times Online: "A new type of cyber-squatting which allows opportunists to occupy web addresses without paying for them is creating havoc for internet chiefs....As many as five million domain names are registered each year by domain name kiters, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns web addresses." The article includes quotes from ICANN's Paul Twomey and NetNames' Jonathan Robinson.

For the record, although the media likes to refer to any distasteful registration practice as "cybersquatting," it is not the same as domain name "tasting" or "kiting." "Tasting" refers to a domain name registration lasting less than 5 days, while "cybersquatting" refers to a certain type of registration designed to trade on the trademark value of another. In other words, some "tasting" may include "cybersquatting," but not all "tasting" is "cybersquatting." You can find more background on the issue by reading the transcript of last week's domain name marketplace workshop in Sao Paulo.

The Lisbon registration site is already up. I got first.

Registration is now open for the next DomainFest, which starts on Wednesday evening, January 31st and wraps up on Friday afternoon, February 2nd. I'll be on the "Ask the Experts" panel on Friday morning.

From the Black-Helicopters-Everywhere-Department: A few hours before this press release landed on the ICANN home page, I received an automated confirmation notice from ICANN to confirm that I had submitted an unsubscribe request to ICANN's announcements mailing list. I hadn't. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but, in light of the fact that just a couple of hours later ICANN posted something that it might not want me to counter in the same news cycle, I wonder....

(For those who don't know, I'm one of the lawyers on the CFIT legal team.)

ICANN: "Last Friday, 8 December 2006, United States' Federal District Court Judge Ronald M. Whyte dismissed, for a second time, an antitrust complaint filed by CFIT against ICANN...." Copy of opinion here. In the spirit of "open law,"comments are welcome below...or by email...or start a wiki page with suggestions and comments.

Here's the entire collection of photos from Sao Paulo.

You folks are terrific. Nice to go to sleep, wake up a few hours later, and have such a wealth of information in response to my last post. The consensus seems to be that Verisign is saying two things, that aren't related: the contract was signed on March 1, 2006 and is now -- as in just now -- in full force and effect. I suppose I was misreading the statement because I was trying to make the Verisign point make sense in context. CFIT had argued that the DOC approval meant that the conduct alleged in the complaint that could harm consumers was now no longer a potentiality, but a likelihood, and perhaps imminent. Verisign responded with this language about 'signed in March, now in full force and effect,' suggesting, somehow, that the DOC approval did not really alter the state of the things. So if CFIT said the approval was important because it means the agreement is now in effect, and Verisign is really saying the same thing, I'm confused as to what point the company is trying to make. FUD, I suppose. Thanks for all the fish.

If you've been reading this weblog, ongoing since December, 2000, for any amount of time, you know that I don't often blog about the projects on which I work. This post is that very rare exception. I need your help. I'm attaching to this message a legal brief, filed this afternoon by Verisign in the CFIT litigation. The brief makes two incredible claims. Only the fact that Verisign's lawyers signed the brief under penalty of Rule 11 sanctions makes me doubt myself, so I throw it out to you, my readers, for assistance. The brief is here. Read it and then help me with the following assertions:

My first impression is that these claims are false...in fact, sanctionably false. Help me. You have my email address...and comment fields are below.