Sex.com Saga Continues- At Least for a Couple More Weeks
That Gary Kremen, the owner of sex.com will never see the $65 million the courts have awarded him in his legal battles against Stephen Cohen is almost a given. Now Kremen will have to wait a few more weeks to see what the 9th District Court of Appeals will come up with. Kremen yesterday presented a case in San Francisco in which he holds Network Solutions, a division of VeriSign accountable for the whole sex.com mess to begin with. It's Kremen's contention that Network Solutions never bothered to verify Cohen's forged request to transfer the domain from Kremen.
Kremen is saying that the largest U.S. domain name registry should be held accountable for an error that put the Internet address in the hands of Cohen, a known con artist. In a hearing before a federal appeals court panel, Kremen's lawyers argued that Network Solutions committed a breach of contract when it failed to verify the forged request. "This all could have been prevented with a simple call or e-mail to Mr. Kremen saying: Did you authorize this?" said James Wagstaffe, the attorney for Kremen, who's seeking monetary damages.
This is Kremen's second try at a court judgment against Network Solutions. Kremen lost the first case in May, 2000 when federal judge James J. Ware in San Jose, California ruled against him basing his decision in part on the fact that at the time Kremen registered the site, in 1994, domains were free. Ware contended that because Network Solutions was offered nothing of value in exchange for its efforts, it not should be held financially liable for its error. But Ware also held Cohen, liable to the tune of $65 million in largely uncollected damages. Cohen's attorneys were also in appellate court Tuesday, seeking to undo that ruling.
In yesterday's appellate hearing, attorney Wagstaffe argued that even though Network Solutions didn't get money for registering the domain, it did get personal information about Kremen for its database. Wagstaffe said that should count as something of value. The company was also able to begin charging registrants shortly afterward, having developed its initial database of free registrations.
Attorneys for Network Solutions, disagreed rejecting the argument that a domain name's entry in Network Solutions central domain name server, or DNS, constitutes proof of ownership of that Internet address.
http://www.generossextreme.com/
Is this guy the matt Drudge of the naughties or what?
http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2443/na0902f/index.html
Study carefully,there will be questions.
ICANN of Worms
The Internet governing body is short on answers and out of time.