USPS wins domain dispute for mobile domain name.
I wonder if the final decision was sent to the United States Postal Service via Fedex.
USPS has prevailed in a dispute over the domain name USPS.mobi, in a case heard by National Arbitration Forum. The decision is written in Chinese, but a crude Google translation tells the story.
According the the case files, the registrant of the domain name managed to get it in the sunrise period. USPS alleged that he provided false information about a non-existent Chinese USPS trademark in order to obtain the domain during the .mobi sunrise, a period in which intellectual property holders can stake claim to a domain. The complainant seems to deny that he knew he was doing this, and had only responded to a phone solicitation. (If anyone can read Chinese and confirm this, let me know.)
Now for the forty-four cent question: will USPS use the domain it just won?
Quote –
“Now for the forty-four cent question: will USPS use the domain it just won?”
That is exactly what I thought when I read your headline.
@ Domain Investor – I struggled with that one for a while. Now I’ve got a clearer one: “Arbitrator Delivers USPS.mobi to US Postal Service”.
Oh well.
Dub-A,
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT READ:
Think about the logic of the USPS (which won’t take long to thing about), and maybe these “1984” manipulators are actually seeing some value for use in this domain. This could be frightening, and here’s why:
Why else would they bother fighting for this domain? Could the USPS be preparing an “innocent” ad campaign, using “USPS.mobi” to engage in collecting data from cellphone users? Ahh.. consipiracy nuts! I love em! They’re so… correctly paranoid.
Here’s a few FACTS supporting WHY we should worry when the USPS gets involved with any communication medium, including .mobi:
In 1999, USPS ignored hundreds of thousands of responses from all walks of life (law enforcement, abused women, home businesses, Motorhome vacationers, etc) requesting the USPS not to implement forced ID regulations they introduced for “rental mail receiving services”, like “Mail Depot” “Mailbox, Etc.” and other commercial mailbox rental companies. Because the USPS ignored these responses, these companies lost a lot of customers, and were mostly bought up today (UPS, Fedex) or just went out of business.
USPS almost a decade ago introduced a regulation for their competitors (commercial mailbox rental companies) to allow anyone to be able to walk into a rental box company and obtain PRIVATE ID INFO on anyone who rented a mailbox there. This meant that any stalker, angry husband, revengeful criminal or planning criminal (for motorhome vacationers gone for months) or kook, armed with an address that led to a “rental mailbox”, could get all the personal info on the person renting that box. Anyone can do this without a warrant, or subpoena. All they have to do is ASK. This, my friends, was PRE-911.
If customers at commercial box rental companies refused to come in and “verify their true home address” by supplying a dr. license (which was scanned by the box rental company and kept on record), then they could not GET THEIR MAIL. But the rental box companies were forced to keep those customers’ mail for SIX MONTHS so the Postal inspectors (or law agency) could come in and read your mail, without a warrant, at any time.
To “sell” these un-American invasive regulations, the USPS helped produce some movies about “heroic Postal Inspectors” (starring Lou Gossett Jr). They set up their initial move to attack Commercial Mailbox rental companies with “The Inspectors”, but the “coup de grace’ was “THE INSPECTORS:2”.
The second movie dealt at the start of the story by visiting the inferred “criminals” who not only ran these commercial rental mailbox companies (CRMC), but those “criminals” who rented boxes from them.
For an AMAZING look into how DEEP and FOCUSED that movie was specifically created to push the USPS agenda, check out the IMDB.com file on this movie, notice the date it was produced (2000), and then scroll to the bottom of this link to see the “advisors” listed in the subheading: “OTHER CREW”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239066/
PEOPLE, don’t dismiss that link… copy and paste it and LOOK. It will freak you out. Ever see ANY TV movie about “crime” that lists more than three advisors from law enforcement? I haven’t. However, this movie lists FOURTEEN USPS advisors, INCLUDING the actual CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR PLAYING HIMSELF: “Chief Postal Inspector Kenneth C. Weaver”. Talk about a vanity piece.
Do you think the USPS wanted to sell their “program” to the public? Rent the movie and watch how biased the movie is, which is incredible if you’ve ever rented a commercial mailbox before.
Even BEFORE the Patriot Act, the USPS, which is NOT a true government agency, but has been given the power to act as one, was asking to have absolute control over commercial rental box companies.
Why? Was it to “fight crime”?
No, because a warrant would enable law enforcement to get info on any address holder from a commercial box rental location who was suspected, using the laws and rights of the US Constitution and the Bill or Rights, of committing a crime. (By the way, those two American institutions that founded our country, forget about them… they’re toast).
The purpose of the USPS attack on Mailbox, Etc and other rental mail services was to force all of their customers to IDENTIFY PUBLICLY their addresses as “rented”. Because of that, it chased away over 75% of the rental box commercial users, because putting the dreaded “PMA – BOX XXXX” number on your business cards, advertisements, envelopes, etc, immediately designated your company as possibly not having a physical address, even if it DID. It allowed someone receiving this “notice” of your “PMB” address, that they could go to the address location and simply ask for your home address and get it. It forced tens of thousands of companies to re-print their addresses, and frightened tens of thousands of women and tens of thousands of law enforcement officials, who didn’t want their bills coming to their home, or the utility or any “junkmail” company from selling their information, in fear of criminals searching them up.
The USPS ignored all the “public and written hearing” results on this new policy, and went ahead and instituted it. Nobody regulates them, so who would stop them. Only ONE politician spoke up against the USPS:
Senator Ron Paul
So what was the plethora of goals the USPS was looking to establish with these new totalitarian regulations?
To begin controlling the DATABASE of everyone in business in the USA, their true location, and finally, to bring back customers to renting “PO BOXES”, which at that time had grown stagnant and empty, because what business wants to use a “PO BOX” as their address? A commercial box rental street address with a “suite” was more desirable and they had captured over 80% of box rentals.
Strangely, the USPS doesn’t allow anyone to walk into a Post Office and get all the personal ID of the user of any PO BOX without a subpoena or warrant.
The funny thing is about all this… and it isn’t really funny, is that the “Patriot Act” and giving the govt more control to know more about you and to start “indexing” you, started many years BEFORE 9/11. So when you think all this govt snooping is being done to protect you from those evil terrorists, think again.
Most arrests using the laws infringing on the rights of Americans are regarding drugs and other crimes, NOT terrorism. Hey, you have nothing to hide, so why worry about the govt’s unlimited power to root out the bad guys?
Because when a new government (administration/congress/judicial) arrives, they could make a lot of new laws that would “touch” you somehow. And all the laws, technology, and systems are in place for them to have the ultimate power over everything that is YOU. Even your connection to a friend or family member.
How did these systems get in place? Because YOU have nothing to fear, you’ve broken no laws, so let the govt have this power to root out, fish for, witchhunt, invade, inspect, assume and convict others with their new powers. It’s not you… yet.
The “fight against terrorism” is just the cover…
To end this “hijacking” of the original blog article, I apologize to Dub-A. However, I think this information, which I’ve known about for a long time but never spoke about publicly, is important in the general sense of understanding how America is slowly becoming fascist out of intentionally manufactured political “fear”.
Remember the anecdote: “A frog will jump out of boiling water, but swim around as the water slowly comes to a boil until he’s boiled alive.”
Stay vigilant.
And here I’ve been waiting months for my tinfoil hat to arrive in the mail.
This is simplly a BS. I think they should come with some kind of law that USPS dont use this domain within an year then they should hand it over back to the previous owner!!
Hi John,
Your tinfoil hat isn’t coming in the mail. That’s too obvious. It’s already inside your cellphone and your computer. Wear it well!
USPS will soon be “connecting” to it. Remember, they are the only agency in the U.S. that has EVERY PERSON’S address, current or not.
Let’s not forget that the first people the HOMELAND SECURITY TEAM went to in order to “report suspicious activities”, were postal workers. “Going Postal” really has more than one meaning.
“Remember, they are the only agency in the U.S. that has EVERY PERSON’S address, current or not.”
Wow, that’s scary.
With that sort of information, one would have the power to do things like…. deliver mail, or even forward mail, or return it to the sender if the addressee is not found.
Thank you for providing this important and hitherto unknown information about the USPS and their nefarious business of knowing addresses.
@ John Berryhill
I’m fascinated by your sardonic interest in my comments here. A rare response from you, someone so respected in the domain industry, and I’m the lucky respondent to your sarcasm. You honor me simultaneously as you jeer me regarding something that has nothing, at the moment, to do with domain legal issues.
Why is that? Why have you honored me with your acerbic interpretations of my statements?
My focus is this simple question:
In 1936 Germany, who responded to those trying to warn them of impending doom: “Ich vill nicht vesn”?
This happened in our parent’s and grandparents lifetime. The results of theirs and many others lack of vigilance are well-known. The world lost millions of innocent people to horrible deaths, injury, and devastation SPECIFICALLY because of powerful governments’ collection and control of data on their citizenry.
And it still happens today… millions of certain “types” of people have been massacred in the last decade in free-wheeling genocide. Their deaths and maimings were based on… where they lived. They don’t get “mail” anymore.
Got a joke now?
OK Stephen, let’s take this offline now please.
OK, It really sounds like Stephen has a HUGE AX to grind with the PO. Does he own a post box outlet? Did he use a “suite” address at such a place until he had to reveal he didn’t actually have an office to do business at?
Having worked at the Post Office in a small town retail and delivery office I personally know that the PO does NOT have a file of everybody’s name and address !! Fowarding records are ONLY used to foward people’s mail and are PERMANTLY deleted after a short while. The address database ONLY has addresses ( no occupant names ) and is distributed to presort mailers so they can barcode and prepare large volume mailings (this also allows the PO to barcode and sort mail more efficiently). As to the ready public access to Post Box holder info, that sounds just not plausable. There is a form that is filled out to make sure an actual person by that name with an ID exists ( this helps to prevent fraud scams ), but it is usually only made available to law enforcement agencies. I will ask my local Post Box owner about this since I see him every couple months ( in a small town you see everybody sooner or later, usually sooner ).