[Foundation-l] Wikimedia domains, SOPA, Godaddy and MarkMonitor

[Michael Peel]

Hello,

Thanks MZMcBride for your reply here.

On 10 Mar 2012, at 22:32, MZMcBride wrote:

> Michael Peel wrote:
>> I'd like to see more information here. What activities are MarkMonitor
>> involved in with the 'anti-piracy fight'? Are they involved in filtering all
>> peer-to-peer traffic, or just the traffic that contravenes copyright law? As a
>> domain name supplier, what is their relation to ISPs, and how do they
>> practically provide this filtering? What evidence do they supply to copyright
>> holders - I assume that this evidence is related to who has registered which
>> domain, since (as domain name providers) they shouldn't be in a position to
>> provide any other (non-public) information here? How do they monitor titles?
> 
> Did you do any quick research before asking these questions?

Yes. I've been aware of this planned transfer for a while, and I did some background research into MarkMonitor as time has permitted. Of particular relevance here, I've read the (English) Wikipedia article, and the WMF blog post. I'm still surprised at what Domas said here, though, and I want to understand this aspect of the issue. Both my last email and this one was/is sent in the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of this issue from knowledgable people, rather than just relying on a bit of quick research via a Google search.

>> I'm asking this out of genuine interest. My understanding of domain name
>> providers in general is that they provide a service that simply says "this
>> domain name points to the server at this IP address", rather than them having
>> any role in filtering, providing evidence, or monitoring.  I'm rather
>> surprised to hear that their activities go beyond this.
> 
> MarkMonitor isn't a typical domain registrar. It's a component of what they
> do, but they're quite explicitly a "brand protection service." A very large
> part of Web brands just happens to be their domain names.
> 
> I did some quick research. It looks like MarkMonitor has been involved with
> a lot of major companies, including Facebook (hi Domas!), Google, and now
> the Wikimedia Foundation
> (<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:MarkMonitor>). There were
> rumors that MarkMonitor was also involved in the acquisition of mobileme.com
> and me.com for Apple.
> 
> http://arst.ch/nu2 was an interesting take on one of the company's reports.
> I guess they pissed off RapidShare pretty badly at some point.

That's interesting to hear, but I'm still curious about the logistics of how they operate, particularly in terms of how them being a domain name provider (which is a rather distinct role) but not an ISP (another rather distinct role) connects to them assisting in filtering content, and also how this link to them enforcing Creative Commons licensing. Speaking as someone that has contributed to the Wikimedia projects, I would be rather surprised if the WMF's domain name supplier started trying enforcing the copyright and licensing terms of the content that I have provided to the projects.

I want to see more information here. Ideally, that information would be provided via the Wikipedia article on this organisation. But if Domas could provide links that back up his comments, then that would still be really useful. At the moment, though, I have to tag his whole email with [citation needed]... That's not to provide any sort of opposition to the move that WMF has made here; it's just to make an expression of interest in terms of seeing more information being made easily available (via the Wikimedia projects) on this topic.

>> I'm all in favour of moving the Wikimedia domain names from GoDaddy to
>> MarkMonitor (and, tbh, I'm rather puzzled by why the WMF decided to use
>> GoDaddy in the first place), I'm just rather puzzled by your statements here.
> 
> Byproduct of history, I imagine. It used to be that it didn't really matter
> where you registered a domain, as long as they were competent enough to keep
> it registered and handle your whois data. In most cases and for most people,
> this is still true. I vaguely recall some major site being interrupted
> within the past year because their domain registration password (on a site
> like GoDaddy or HostGator or wherever) was incredibly weak. You'd be
> surprised what kinds of domains are registered where. :-)

Thinking about this further, I guess that this links all the way back to Nupedia being a Bomis project, which would explain why they an unethical domain name provider was used for the Wiki[p/m]edia domains...

Thanks,
Mike
(personal viewpoint)