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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a white paper discussing which internet registries offer the best protection for domain owners against trademark and copyright “bullies”.
The .onion domain, which allows domain owners to remain anonymous as .onion is only accessible through the Tor network, features heavily in the report.
Tor, the name of which derives from “The Onion Router”, is a free software enabling anonymous communication.
“For better protection against trademark bullies, you should generally avoid registering your domain in any of the new generic top-level domains,” the report stated.
It claimed that the Trademark Clearinghouse, a rights protection mechanism, admits many “questionable entries” into its database, with the result being that many legitimate registrants are prevented from having domains or are afraid of litigation.
It added that the ultimate protection against “domain takedowns” is a .onion domain, but that this comes at the expense of wider public access.
To protect against copyright bullies, .onion domains were also listed as something one “may consider”.
However, the report stated that the best way to avoid such bullies is steering clear of domain names operated by a registry that “doesn’t have, and isn’t considering adopting, a streamlined policy to take down domain names alleged to be associated with copyright infringement”.
EFF, domain names, report, internet registries, copyright, trademark, .onion, Electronic Frontier Foundation
