The Internet Rights War is being lost!

Suck featured an article today called Downtime by Law which talks about the Old World Judicial System's inability to rule effectively in the Internet Era, the rights that are being stripped away as a result, and the Internet Ruling Class' inability to defend those rights.

An interesting side story concerns the precedent set by a U.S. District Court Judge by ruling that domain names "aren't property, and therefore can't be stolen" in a case where Steven Cohen allegedly forged a fake letter to Network Solutions authorizing the transfer of sex.com from its original owner, Gary Kremen, four years ago. This is another example of a webjacking involving Network Solutions in which the domain registration company throws up their arms and exclaims, "Not our problem!" citing standard company policy. Except there are cases where Network Solutions helps out in returning domains to their rightful owner...

Well, according to the Suck article, the real power isn't in the hands of the techies, but rather, it's in the hands of the lawyers of the world. Because courtrooms are where the Internet Rights War will be fought, not in endless posts in newsgroups or bulletin boards. But for all the criticism leveled at the incessant whining of the cyber-geeks, it all ends up sounding like more of the same.