Archive | April, 2011

Roaming banditry

By nigel on Thursday, 28 April 2011 in General

David Snyder has had a bad experience with a disproportionately high bill while roaming. His report is at snydersense.com

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Having read it, it seems to me that Verizon is trading in Europe. That is to say, it is selling data access to US subscribers to its service who are in Europe when they receive the service.

It also seems to me it may be likely that European legislation already provides remedies for this kind of behaviour by companies, dealing with consumers with bad faith.

Read what the UK’s Department of Businesshave to say about the Unfair Business Practices Directive particularly the wording which reads ‘contrary to the requirement of good faith’.

What is especially interesting is that the European networks that Verizon uses to deliver the service to Verizon subscribers in Europe will charge approximately 0.1 eurocents per megabyte (that’s around €15 per gigabyte) to domestic consumers.

My VODAFONE.UK contract gives me 3 gB each month for ₤10. I have a VODAFONE.DE data plan where the data costs are similar. Airtel-Vodafone in Guernsey and Jersey charges ₤0.01 per megabyte whch equates to ₤10 per gig. There seems to be a consensus here ..

So how much is Verizon really paying to the European network wholesale if European networks can make these charges retail and still make a profit?

I’d love to see someone take Verizon or another roaming bandit to court in an EU country where such services were delivered.

At some point what is within reasonable range of profit becomes consumer gouging. And while I happen to live in a territory, like the US, whose legal system honours the Victorian principles of freedom of contract, there has to be a limit. (Should we still expect illiterates to be bound when the back of their train ticket has a written notice saying that contractual terms are available in written form upon applying at the railroad ticket office before departure?).

Poker domain seizures in .COM

By nigel on Sunday, 24 April 2011 in Channel Islands, Domain Names, General

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Last week a court in the USA seized control of the .COM domains belonging to several online poker sites, inlcuding Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.

On the face of the registration records, these domain registration were owned by organisations outside the USA, although there seemed to be some suggestion that one or more of them may have been ultimately controlled by US citizens or residents.

On the one hand, it is entirely right that the courtroom is the right place for decisions like this. No excutive agency, or a law enforcement body, or even worse, domain vigilantes should have such powers.

And the face that these recent temporary seizures were done through a Court is actually good news.

Democratic countries have something called the Rule of Law which protects personal property (which the bundle of rights under a domain registration contract undoubtedly is) and it should take a court order to seize things.

On the other hand, it seems that removing something which in e-commerce terms is equivalent to both the brand and the shop window of a business, is fairly draconian, and should be resorted to in the most egregious of cases. The commercial harm that, if only for a short time, a notice is placed on a company’s website stating it has been shut down on the basis of alleged criminal activity will not be insignificant.

The question which a British or European Court would probably have asked itself before granting a Prohibitory or Mandatory Order, is whether the requested remedy was proportionate.

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Now it seems that at least some those domain names have been returned to use.

At the time of writing pokerstars.com is forwarding to pokerstars.eu.

fulltiltpoker.com looks to be back to normal, although I understand from what I read at gamblingcontrol.org (Full Tilt is licenced here in Alderney) that they have suspended real-money play from the USA. Frankly, I’m surprised that an Alderney company ever allowed US players!

But there’s a big lesson in this episode.

And it’s something that has been obvious to those of us in the domain name industry for years, but self-evidently, it’s not something that the risk management people at online poker sites have ever considered before.

It’s not only ‘foreign’ ccTLDs like Libya that have jurisidictional legal risk to an online e-commerce business. Any company which uses a .COM, .NET or any other ICANN ‘gTLD’ domain name places itself at risk of losing its entire business and voluntarily puts itself within US jurisdiction.

And it’s not only criminal proceedings in above-average risk sectors (such as online poker) that are vulnerable.

Any non-country-code domain name can be disputed in an American court. And well established, legal businesses could find themselves on the end of an expensive, and inconvenient ‘reverse cyber hijacking’ attempt in a US court. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. In 1997the British owners of PRINCE.COM had to take swift legal action in London’s High Court to keep their domain from an American company who, as an American company, believed they had a better right to it

Suddenly your local country-code domain name might seem like a much better to do business in.

And the long-awaited ICANN ‘new generics’ much less so.

Oh, and an amusing postscript and shameless piece of self-promotion.

The country-code for the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which includes Alderney, is actually ‘GG’ which is poker terminology for ‘Good Game’. I can hear Bruce Forsyth in my head already!

Two Poker Sites Can Use Domain Name (online.wsj.com)

.LY prediction comes true

By nigel on Saturday, 16 April 2011 in Channel Islands, Domain Names

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Several weeks ago, in one of my first articles on Notes from a Small Island I noted that there was systemic risk in using domain names registered in foreign countries such as Libya.

And by ‘foreign’, I don’t mean overseas, I mean ‘different – culturally, linguistically, and jurisdictionally’.

Libya scores pretty high in all those categories, and in view of the recent problems experienced by LETTER.LY I am not above a passing ‘I told y’all so’.

In summary, because of communication difficulties caused by the Libyan civil war, it appears that this particular .LY domain registration couldn’t be renewed and went off the air temporarily.

Now both .GG and .JE (the Channel Islands) have their own a small share of’ domain hack’ registrations.

GG has several different flattering meaning in Chinese internet slang. It also means ‘good game’ to computer gamers and Internet chess and poker players. There’s even a Tennessee religious group. JE means ‘I’ in French, and both ‘you’ and ‘little’ in Dutch.

The registry welcome overseas registrants — there are no artificial restrictions on registration at all, although it’s important to note that we are not advertising or promoting the domains as anything at all other than the local official two letter codes for the Channel Islands. It is clear in the Agreement, that the contract of registration is under our laws, and our courts have jurisdiction.

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Fortunately, we have had a stable system of government and an independent judiciary for many hundreds of years – as a common-law jurisdiction under the English Crown. This gives registrants, in the same way as international banks and others in the finance industry who open branches of their businesses locally, a large amount of comfort that our system is logical and predictable and operates under the Rule of Law.

But if a third party raises a dispute over a GG or JE name, you will either have to resolve it in our equivalent of the UDRP, or hire a local Advocate to represent you in court.

And that might be an inconvenience, to say the least, depending on where you are from.

Alderney Presidential Election

By nigel on Tuesday, 5 April 2011 in Channel Islands, General

This very afternoon I received in my box, courtesy of the Guernsey Post, the April 2011 Presidential Newsletter.

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Sir Norman explains very well many of the subtleties of the
constitutional legal background to the appointment of the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Bailiffs of Guernsey and Jersey, and of our own Presiding Officer, the President of the States of Alderney.

But then he goes on to state that the President of the States ‘has a mandate’ (that is to say, a political role) because he or she is elected by the People, not appointed.

With respect to Sir Norman’s 10 year Presidential reign, the President’s role as ‘the States’ conscience’ does not derive from the relatively modern innovation of popular election (which has only been the case since 1948) but is inherited from the ancient customary law duty of the Juge (judge) in Alderney, the same duty being upon the Bailiffs in Guernsey and Jersey, to ensure that the States Members were fully informed of the views of the People. That duty came about in ancient times when the majority of Islanders could neither read nor write.

A former Bailiff, quoted in a case in the European Court, said: “In Guernsey, the Bailiff “is the Island’s chief citizen and representative”. Speaking of the casting vote, he went on to say “in Guernsey, in general, the Bailiff uses his voice to ensure a further investigation of questions on which the States are in doubt”.

It cannot be doubted that, in Alderney, that role is carried out by the President, and the Presidential office is the successor-in-law to the last Juge (Judge Sir Frank Wiltshire). Furthermore, it must be the case, as an integral part of the Bailiwick, that same constitutional conventions that applies to the Bailiff in Guernsey must apply to the President when carrying out the same role, such as when the States is faced with an equally divided vote.

Yet in his newsletter, Sir Norman goes on to set out the circumstances in which he believes when the President may take on a political role, although he says these circumstances are limited.

As respected scholar Peter Hogg wrote: “Conventions are rules of the constitution which are not enforced by the law courts. Because they are not enforced by the law courts they are best regarded as non-legal rules, but because they do in fact regulate the working of the constitution they are an important concern ….”

With very the greatest of respect, I feel that Sir Norman’s assessment of the circumstances a President may be political is entirely wrong.

The President should never take on a political role – his job is, above all — in the House — to keep the politicians in line.

And, in plain language, he cannot be a player as well as a referee.

Any time the President joins in to the political fray, it seems to me, no matter how infrequently, he diminishes the respect for, and effectiveness of the office. Fortunately that has not, so far as I can remember, happened on more than one or two occasions in the last 10 or 12 years.

Finally, there seems to be a contradiction in the Newsletter. If we accept after all that the President has any political role (although I say he should not have), it follows that any candidate for that role cannot be inhibited from campaigning for the office. Indeed to do so, would deny the very mandate that President Browse suggests that he has.

In any election it must be for the People, not an elected politician, no matter how respected, to judge if a style of campaigning is appropriate or not, using their ultimate power, that of their vote.

And, as a democracy, we should trust the electorate to decide who is the better candidate.

I therefore look forward to the May Billet and to learning who the candidates for the forthcoming Presidential Election in Alderney shall be.

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