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Re:France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994 by Silhouette on Sunday April 29, 2018 @12:25PM (#16952668)
The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers

The implications of the current legal position you describe are troubling.

These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone. Physical addresses that are inherently tied to their current occupant (and the well-established pain that comes with updating everyone if you move home or office) are becoming secondary.

More than that, these IDs are becoming trusted ways to reach a specific person. Many organisations, including the likes of banks and governments, now rely on some form of two-factor authentication using phones for access to important facilities. Many organisations will grant you the keys to (your part of) their kingdom as long as you can respond to an email to the address they hold for you. Many businesses reach their customers through services at their domain, and that domain may enjoy special privileges that a customer has permitted such as being whitelisted for sending important emails or just simple things like being bookmarked in the customer's browser or turning off an ad-blocker to support a site.

The law seems to be outpaced significantly by the technology and society's use of it here. If we aren't going to enjoy real property rights in terms of these essential identities that are managed or hosted by third party services, stories like the one we're talking about here today may be the tip of the iceberg.

Re:France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994 by lkrubner on Sunday April 29, 2018 @01:51PM (#16953054)
"These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone."

That's a good argument for changing the law.

However, this is wrong:

"More than that, these IDs are becoming trusted ways to reach a specific person."

That is something that I would like to see, but that is definitely not the way things work now. If I fail to pay to renew a domain name, I lose it, just like if I fail to pay my phone bill, I lose it. I would like to see ids that belong to each person for life and which can not be sold or transferred. I'd especially like the postal service to offer me that option, so I would no longer need to give my physical address to strangers, but instead could simply give them my postal alias. But no such thing exists right now.

Re:France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994 by Silhouette on Sunday April 29, 2018 @03:50PM (#16953592)
I agree that your suggestion of some sort of official, permanent point of contact would be better. However, even with the proviso that you have to keep paying for a service to retain it, it seems to me that some sort of regulation giving the current user of a particular ID first refusal over renewing it and a clear warning before they lose access to it would be beneficial. Possibly some restriction on reusing the same ID for anyone else within a reasonable period, say a few years, would also be a good idea. The fact is that these IDs are being used for sensitive, important, often government-sanctioned purposes already, and protecting them as such is surely an improvement on the status quo.
Re:France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994 by CodeWriter23 on Sunday April 29, 2018 @07:53PM (#16954637)
> The implications of the current legal position you describe are troubling.

No more so than actual real estate being seized by governments under Eminent Domain laws.