[mdpopescu]

Someone else had the right to use a domain. They had paid for that right. You appealed to some people with guns, they decided to use the threat of force to revoke that right, and you benefitted.

What exactly is difficult to understand here?

[pistolpeteDK]

Owning a domain-name is not some fundamental right or need. It's an artificial thing, whose operation is, in many countries, paid for by taxpayer money. The entire history of the Internet, and related inventions, are also filled with a lot of taxpayer funding(CERN, DARPA). IMO it's a flaw in the system that allowed domainparking in the first-place, there should have been a built-in way to mitigate that issue.

It would be a lot different if this was say; a twitter-handle or an ICQ-number (like in the old days where the simple ICQ numbers could be sold for a lot of money), but the Internet is so close to being a public utility that it should be operated as such, and not like a town in the Wild West....

[Dracophoenix]

>>Owning a domain-name is not some fundamental right or need. It's an artificial thing, whose operation is, in many countries, paid for by taxpayer money.

Owning real estate isn't a fundamental right or need either. That doesn't mean property rights have no relevance or value simply because of their "artificiality". Property rights exist whether it is for houses or for domain names.

>>The entire history of the Internet, and related inventions, are also filled with a lot of taxpayer funding(CERN, DARPA). IMO it's a flaw in the system that allowed domainparking in the first-place, there should have been a built-in way to mitigate that issue.

DARPA was no longer involved with the internet/ARPANET by 1984. CERN had nothing to do with the Web besides the fact that one of its physicists made a GUI and a markup language. They both have nothing to do with DNS, URLs/URI, or IANA/ICANN. SRI/INTERNIC, a private research institute, was responsible for it's creation. As far as domainparking is concerned, the built-in limitation used to be the number of IPv4 addresses. But with IPv6, the point is made moot.

[yellowapple]

> That doesn't mean property rights have no relevance or value simply because of their "artificiality".

It kinda does, actually. Without the existence of a state enforcing said property rights by threat of monopolized violence, any sort of land "ownership" beyond physical occupation is meaningless; there would be nothing stopping someone else from inhabiting "your" land unless you're able and willing to infringe on their rights to life and liberty.

Given that dependence on the state, land "ownership" is naturally subject to its whims.

[Dracophoenix]

>>Without the existence of a state enforcing said property rights by threat of monopolized, any sorry of land "ownership" beyond physical occupation is meaningless.

Then by your standards, a state would be just as artificial. Without the existence of a sufficient number of individuals capable and invested in engaging in violence for the defense of property, any concept of a state would be just that: a concept. An imaginary plaything. Enforcement of property rights can only come from people, not papers or buildings. And since a people precede a state, so to do their rights to own property.

>> There would be nothing stopping someone else from inhabiting "your" land unless your able and willing to infringe on their rights to life and liberty.

You're contradicting yourself. If one owns land, no one else has any right to life or liberty with respect to it. In other words, your rights end where mine begin.

Proof of this is the fact that (contiguous) United States isn't bordered by Mexican Gulf, the Pacific Ocean, and the 49th parallel because nature or belief willed it. It's there because people physically occupied territory long enough to obtain legitimacy, people purchased other colonial territories (i.e Alaska, Colonial Louisiana), or people negotiated treaties that says they owns certain areas. None of this is any different from how ordinary people obtain or historically obtained ownership despite your claim of insufficiency in their case. If that's so, what makes it be inherently different for a so-called state?

Nothing stops Canada from invading a la 1812 except for pieces of paper that merely claim it "can't". Canada chooses not to, not because it lacks a dedicated army with sufficient capability to capture some land, but because because it obtains benefits from an alliance and because provoking a potential retaliatory occupation by it's nearest neighbor isn't currently in the country's personal interest as a result of what violence would likely ensue.

Ownership is not a power that comes with the prima facie existence of a state. It's not even granted. Individuals have those rights to begin with. It is the exercise of those rights to pursue either agreement or defense that demonstrate ownership.

[yellowapple]

> Then by your standards, a state would be just as artificial.

Indeed it would be.

> And since a people precede a state, so to do their rights to own property.

Except that the concept of private land ownership without a state has yet to be demonstrated, specifically because said private land ownership is wholly a function of the state.

> If one owns land, no one else has any right to life or liberty with respect to it.

Says who? There's a reason why the rights to "life, liberty, and property" are in that order: property is meaningless without life and liberty, and liberty is in turn meaningless without life.

And further, because the state - like the notion of land ownership - is artificial, your ownership of land is at the mercy of those fellow members of society and their collective conjuring of the state - and its powers to enforce ownership over imaginary concepts like parcel boundaries - into existence. That said society happens to currently tolerate your exclusive claim on some parcel of land (without receiving anything even remotely resembling reciprocal compensation for the incurred opportunity costs) is a privilege, and one which can be revoked when it conflicts with the rights to life and liberty.

> Ownership is not a power that comes with the prima facie existence of a state.

With respect to land, unless you live in Bir Tawil or have decided to invest in deep sea and deep space real estate, said ownership quite literally is a power that comes with the prima facie existence of a state. That the state itself exists (ostensibly) as an action of the people it governs doesn't change the fact that your "ownership" of land is more of a lease, and that a superior landlord - the state - continues to exist.

If you disagree, then you're encouraged to brush up on your understanding of the difference between "fee simple" and "allodial" titles - hint: if you own land in a common law jurisdiction like the US, your land is almost certainly under the former kind of title, not the latter.

[disgruntledphd2]

> You appealed to some people with guns

Actually, the whole set of up all laws derives from people with guns. Like, if there was no government, then we probably wouldn't have the internet, so domain names couldn't be taken away.

Like, are you saying that rights of property are more fundemental than government?

That seems like an odd argument, given that rights to property would seem to derive from government, at least in the modern world.

[shadowgovt]

This is a deep well of theory of society, and reasonable people disagree based on how they answer that question.

Some do believe property rights exist independent of government (and existed before the concept of governments, as webs of individual agreements between people with no over-arching enforcement authority, i.e. "This belongs to me because if you try to take it from me I will kill you. That belongs to you because you would do the same to me. We have an understanding between us, but is an understanding between two people a 'government'?").

[mdpopescu]

> ... rights to property would seem to derive from government...

Yeah, this is the fundamental disconnect I have with (apparently) most people. Rights come from God. The idea that they come from governments is, in the words of a famous person, "not even wrong".

Anyway, this was an informative exchange. I learned that I'm in a minority, at least in this corner of the world :)

[wonderwonder]

Problem with this argument is: What god and under what rule book?

If my rule book says women are second class citizens, then is that just it? They have no rights? Or if my rule book says homosexuality is bad, but another interpretation of the rule book says its fine, then who's rule book is correct? Who settles that argument? Government.

Only other answer is a holy war and the survivors rule book is supreme. Until the next holy war.

[moate]

My God says you have no rights except those derived from governments. Now what do we do?

"Rights" are more properly understood as "a social agreement among people of a culture". If a culture doesn't value something, no rights for it exist. When cultures intersect, "rights" get real muddy real fast.

[AlexandrB]

This is silly. God gave no right to domain names. If the internet was a libertarian utopia, I would just run my own DNS server and could "own" google.com, apple.com, etc. Except no one would use my DNS server.

Instead governments and NGOs manage limited "intellectual property" rights on DNS servers everyone agrees to connect to so the internet can actually be useful and not a free-for-all. The same applies to copyrights and patents. There is no natural right to exclusive ownership of an idea or written text. These things are "naturally" meant to be copied. Intellectual property "rights" are entirely constructed by government decree.

[mdpopescu]

I don't believe in Imaginary Property (aka Intellectual Property). It's not what I was talking about.

Someone bought the right to use a specific domain from a specific domain name provider. It was a private transaction between two parties, freely agreed to between them.

[hansjorg]

In the specific case you're railing against, arbitration by the complaints board is just a contractual provision in that private transaction.

There is no "theft". Your whole understanding of this issue is absurd.

[krapp]

>Yeah, this is the fundamental disconnect I have with (apparently) most people. Rights come from God.

Please objectively prove the existence of the specific God from which you assert that all rights derive.

[mdpopescu]

This [1] is by far the best answer I have ever seen to that question / request. Since it is quite long, I will attempt to summarize: that is what I start from. I am more certain of the existence of God than I am of my own existence - the first one is an axiom, the second one is a theorem ("I think, therefore I am").

"The answer is that a reasonable person is a person who believes what Augustine believes and who, like Augustine, can only hear assertions contrary to that belief as absurd."

I genuinely see opinions different from mine as absurd. As in, "you cannot possibly believe this, which means you are lying" absurd. It's why I generally dismiss the common saying "do not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence". NOBODY is that incompetent, and therefore whatever I disagree with is in fact malice.

I realize it's a minority opinion. I am fine with that situation, though I continue to be surprised when people disagree :)

[1] https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/02/001-why-we-cant-...

[distances]

The obvious disconnect is whether they actually did have the right to use this domain. Where I'm from you may not mislead with advertising, which includes buying Google ads with your competitors' names. I place this domain name issue squarely in the same bucket.

I do see how someone with, say, more adversarial US background may have a different opinion.

[pistolpeteDK]

just to clarify;

Our product: A was a direct competitor to the other product: B. We tried to purchase domain: C - without any luck, we could not get in touch with the owner since he did not reply to the publicly listed email address.

B's owner(our competitor) purchased domain C from it's owner; B was better at location contact-information I guess.

So suddenly domain C contained logo, image, and redirect to product B; and that was when we complained. We had no intention(or right) to complain when domain C was still in use by its original owner.

[MikeUt]

> They had paid for that right.

The terms of that domain ownership included the possibility of losing it in the manner described. The buyer knew those terms and implicitly agreed to them at time of purchase. It's all perfectly libertarian.

Or do you think you know better, and want to limit what kinds of contracts/ownership terms people can enter? And enforce those limits with men with guns?