[lug] good place to park or sell domains?

Thu Dec 6 22:10:08 MST 2012

On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Robert Racansky
<robert.racansky at gmail.com> wrote:

>>>> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Steve Sullivan <sullivan at mathcom.com> wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have about 15 unused domains which I've picked up over the
>>>>> years.  Where would be an *inexpensive* place to park them?
>>>>> Where is a good place to sell them?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This morning, I received 5 hours notice to appear in Boulder courtroom
>>>> H to contest a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order against me for
>>>> using the name of a lawyer as as a domain name.
>>>>
>>>> See http://www.jonahhunt.com
>>>>

>>>
>>> re  www.jonahhunt.com
>>>
>>> A few minutes ago, I received noticed that
>>>
>>>  - a complaint has been filed with the National Arbitration Forum
>>>
>>> - and that I was charged a $50 dispute fee
>>>
>>
>>
>> The Complaint has been dismissed "without prejudice" due to procedural
>> deficiencies in the original Complaint.
>>
>
>
>
> Immediately after the "Complaint" was dismissed, Jonah Hunt and his
> attorney Steven Rinehart filed the same Complaint with the NAF.
>
> The new case number is National Arbitration Forum case FA1211001471550
>
> All documents I have are posted at  http://www.jonahhunt.com/home/2012cv110

For those of you that are interested in hearing about the current
status of the domain name dispute.  Otherwise, skip this e-mail.

As many of you know, a "Complaint" was filed against me with the
National Arbitration Forum, a for-profit corporation used by other
corporations because big businesses find the 7th Amendment to the
United States Constitution to be too inconvenient.

The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) uses
the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) and World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) to settle doman name disputes.

The "Complaint" against me is about my registration of the domain name
 jonahhunt.com

Jonah Hunt is a collections attorney who represents HOA corporations,
and is a member of the Community Associations Institute.  I have
publicly accused him and his clients of engaging in numerous criminal
acts of fraud over the past 3 1/2 years.

A few minutes ago, I filed my "Response," which is available at

http://www.jonahhunt.com/home/2012cv110/NAF_FA1211001471550_2012-12-06_Response.pdf
  ( 425 KB )

$ md5 NAF_FA1211001471550_2012-12-06_Response.pdf
MD5 (NAF_FA1211001471550_2012-12-06_Response.pdf) =
763198e78b780c7bb14c069bfcb9471a

$ shasum NAF_FA1211001471550_2012-12-06_Response.pdf
4d98fc909f3b57177df0e30cf2b9962520761f50
NAF_FA1211001471550_2012-12-06_Response.pdf

I'm not terribly happy with the way the writing flows in it, but I
think it gets my point across.

Other documents filed in this case, and the previous court case, are
available at
http://www.jonahhunt.com/home/2012cv110   (at least for as long as I
have the domain name).

Why is this important?

(1).  This dispute has already been through an open court of law
earlier this year:  Boulder County Colorado District Court case #
2012CV110, Jonah Hunt v Robert Racansky.

As many of you are aware, I was sued earlier this year by Jonah Hunt,
Colorado attorney # 34379, in Boulder County Colorado District Court,
over the registration and use of the domain name  jonahhunt.com , and
for libel.

(2).   "Congress left little doubt that it did not intend for
trademark laws to impinge the First Amendment rights of critics and
commentators."  Lamparello v. Falwell, 420 F.3d 309,313
(4th$Cir.$2005).

yet this is exactly what Jonah Hunt and his attorney, Steven Rinehart,
are trying to do:  use trademark law to infringe on my First Amendment
rights.

As I successfully argued at a hearing in Boulder County District Court
on February 14, 2012, my use of the domain name is perfectly legal
under statute and case law.  Judge Thomas Mulvahill denied Jonah
Hunt's "Motion" to take down my web site.

(3).   This country's Founding Fathers created a mechanism, written
into the Constitution of the United States of America, to settle civil
disputes.  However, corporations are circumventing our 7th Amendment
rights by writing arbitration clauses into documents-called-contracts,
in which our rights to seek justice in an open court of law are
waived.

This is part of an ongoing effort to privatize our "justice" system,
since private corporations are not restricted by our Constitutional
rights.  The NAF corporation is not required to take my First
Amendment rights, nor my rights under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d) and 15
U.S.C. § 1129.

"Arbitrators also have a strong financial incentive to rule in favor
of companies that file cases against consumers because those companies
are their most loyal customers, and a busy arbitrator can make
hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Arbitrators routinely charge
$400 or more an hour. Top arbitrators can charge up to $10,000 per
day, and some make $1 million a year. In comparison, California
Superior Court judges earn $170,000 a year."

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld these arbitration clauses, even
where state laws protect consumers:

http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2011/04/supreme-court-arbitration-ruling-courts.html

Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Supreme Court Arbitration Ruling: Courts for the Wealthy and Wall Street

SANTA MONICA, Calif., April 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC v.
Concepcion, invalidating California's protections against unfair
provisions in contracts effectively eliminates the right of consumers
to join together to fight powerful corporations in court and will lead
to enormous abuses of consumers by corporations, Consumer Watchdog, a
California non-profit consumer advocacy organization, said today.
----------------
You can read the opinion in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion by following
this link to SCOTUSBLOG.

Here's what happened and why it matters. The Concepcions were entitled
to "free" cell phones under their contract. Then AT&T charged them
thirty bucks for "sales tax." They joined a class action with others
who got shafted the same way. Everybody's claim was too small to
litigate alone, but together they had something worth a lawyer's time.

But their contract contained a clause saying disputes had to go to
arbitration, and could not be joined with a class action.

Under California case law that term in the contract was unenforceable
because it is unconscionable. The Discover Bank case, decided by the
California Supreme Court, held that such class action waivers
contained in adhesion contacts are unenforceable.

AT&T argued that the Discover Bank ruling was pre-empted by the
Federal Arbitration Act, which provides that arbitration agreements
are "valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as
exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract." The
conservative voting bloc of the US Supreme Court (Scalia, Roberts,
Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy) agreed with the big corporation and
screwed the little consumer (what a surprise!)

Why does this matter? I expect to see such arbitration clauses and
class action waivers in every single contract we get in our hands,
from now on. The Supreme Court just gave corporate America a way to
slam the door to the courthouse in our faces. No lawyer will litigate
a thirty dollar case against a giant corporation. Now orporations can
strip us of our class action rights just by inserting a term in a
non-negotiable adhesion contract.

Will this include condominium or HOA declarations? I am sure it will be tried.

http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2012/01/credit-card-arbitration-trumps-lawsuits.html

Friday, January 20, 2012
Credit Card Arbitration Trumps Lawsuits, Court Says : NPR

Consumers who sign credit card agreements that feature an arbitration
clause cannot dispute fees or charges in court, the Supreme Court
ruled Tuesday. The 8-to-1 decision drew immediate fire from consumer
advocates.

To get a credit card, a consumer generally must sign a detailed
agreement. In the fine print, almost always, is an arbitration clause
that says that if consumers want to dispute fees, they must do so
through arbitration, not in court.

A 1996 federal law allowed consumers to take their disputes to court.
But in its ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court said arbitration clauses
in those agreements trump that law.
-----------
Your Supreme Court at work protecting consumers the way the usually
do. Which is, not. Thanks to Beanie Adolph for this link. The full
opinion is here

http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2011/12/fine-print-society.html

Thursday, December 22, 2011
The Fine Print Society

As I go over all the bills and statements and announcements and
changes to this or that plan or arrangement or contract that have
flooded into my mailbox recently, it occurs to me that this is a form
of concerted action. Corporate managers have collectively determined
to overwhelm us with fine print. We can't possibly read all this crap,
much less meditate like some 18th century aristocrat on the
implications of the content. Yet we can't do so much as download an
update to Adobe Acrobat without "signing" a contract. We are
conclusively presumed to have read, understood, and agreed to every
lawyer-drafted word, and yet everybody knows that none of us reads
this. Not even Ron Paul -- so don't start with me. And the more of
these contracts we get, the less likely it is that we will read any of
them. So corporations have an incentive to send more of them and make
them longer and more verbose. This is a collective decision on their
part, and it is working, and they know it.

Nearly all of this stuff is enforceable, as many an HOA or condo unit
owner has discovered, and it makes citizens relatively powerless. The
private logic of contract law structures the relationship as
individual consumer vs. big corporation with government as the
enforcer of the contract, instead of citizens vs. powerful private
organizations, with government as policy maker holding jurisdiction
over the relationship.

The law calls these boilerplate documents "contracts of adhesion," but
the days are long past when judges were willing to throw them out
because they were drafted by one party and imposed on the other, there
was gross inequality of bargaining power, and there was no real assent
to the terms. Now they are deemed essential to the free flow of modern
commerce.

My view has always been that policy makers should be willing to step
in and reform these relationships if they become predatory or
destructive. But there is little stomach for that presently.

http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2009/12/ssrn-terms-of-use-by-mark-lemley.html

Wednesday, December 30, 2009
SSRN-Terms of Use by Mark Lemley

"Ten years ago, courts required affirmative evidence of agreement to
form a contract. No court had enforced a shrinkwrap license, much less
treated a unilateral statement of preferences as a binding agreement.
Today, by contrast, it seems widely (though not universally) accepted
that if you write a document and call it a contract, courts will
enforce it as a contract even if no one agrees to it."
-----
New law review article that talks about the increasing use of
standardized adhesion "contracts."