> > You do not own your domain name.
>
> There is now case law on the books that says otherwise.
>
> You are quite simply wrong.
This is one of those cases where "ownership' is a soft concept.
Maybe one doesn't have absolute, unlimited title to a domain name, but one
has some collection of rights, contractual and perhaps otherwise, that are
in and of themselves rights that can be transferred (perhaps for a quid
pro quo, i.e. sold), used as security for debt, licensed, delegated, etc
etc.
One should remember that even in land, nobody has absolute title -- the
government always has an overriding power to take it away, to levy
taxes, and to limit use.
My conclusion is that domain names do come with a bundle of rights and
that those rights do constitute sufficient discretionary power over the
domain name that they, or at least the rights towards the domain name if
not the name itself, could be considered a form of property right.
Of course, this sub-thread started off on the issue of whether the DNS
root is a public resource or "private property".
Given that there can perfectly well be multiple roots, I would tend
towards, but I don't go all the way, towards the latter. But ICANN and
its regulation are being based on the presumption of a single, universal
root.
--karl--
