A text transcription follows.
This transcript is for anyone with a hearing impairment or who for any other reason cannot listen to the MP3 audio file.
The following is the text spoken by OUT-LAW journalist Matthew Magee.
Hello and welcome to OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly podcast that keeps you up to date on all the twists and turns in the world of technology law.
My name is Matthew Magee, and this week we talk to the woman at the centre of a domain name spat related to the fictional Kingdom of Narnia.
But first, the news:
NASA hacker loses extradition fight
and
BBC fined over competition deceptions.
NASA hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his appeal against extradition to the US. Five Law Lords have unanimously rejected his argument that plea bargaining by US prosecutors undermined his human rights.
McKinnon has admitted hacking into computers belonging to NASA and the US military in 2001 and 2002 though he disputes the US prosecutors' claims that he caused $700,000 worth of damage.
McKinnon's legal team argued that the prosecutors' plea bargaining represented undue pressure on him to give up his legal rights.
The Law Lords rejected that argument, saying that the difference in the sentences threatened was not great enough to affect his human rights.
McKinnon's lawyer Karen Todner told Associated Press that he will appeal the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The BBC has been fined £400,000 for conducting viewer and listener competitions unfairly. It is the highest fine ever imposed on the BBC by media regulator Ofcom.
The fines relate to four television programmes and four radio shows, with the Liz Kershaw radio show on 6 Music receiving the highest fine of £115,000.
Three of the four television programmes which were fined for running unfair competitions were broadcast in aid of charity. They were Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need.
Ofcom said that the BBC had deceived viewers and listeners about competitions. The programmes had fabricated competition winners either to cover up technical problems or to make pre recorded programmes appear to be live.
Last year a wave of competition and phone in scandals swept the UK television industry resulting in £11 million worth of fines for UK broadcasters.
That was this week's OUT LAW news.
It had all the hallmarks of a David and Goliath story: the might of Hollywood pitted against one small Edinburgh boy, battling over the right to own a domain name referring to the magical Kingdom of Narnia.
But when the World Intellectual Property Organisation's Dispute Panel ruled in the tussle over narnia.mobi, a very different picture was painted of the David half of the struggle.
The panellist's ruling pointed out that the Saville Smith family of Edinburgh registered a dozen other domain names at the same time as narnia.mobi, that five of them implicated other trade marks and that after ownership of narnia.mobi was questioned they registered two other narnia related domain names.
The narnia.mobi name was taken from the Saville Smiths because the WIPO panellist, William Towns, thought that it was registered or used in bad faith. Though WIPO panel decisions can be appealed through the court system, the family has told OUT LAW that it is almost certain not to appeal.
It was a complicated tussle, and a high profile one. The company representing the estate of CS Lewis, who wrote the Narnia books, did not respond to requests for comment, but Gillian Saville Smith told us how completely shocked she was at the picture painted of her and her husband Richard in the WIPO ruling.
Saville Smith: It comes across as, you know, as if we are criminals so even our media company is referred to as a, you know, a media agency or something. And in fact it's, you know, a, you know, media company that specialise in charities and you know is well establish over ten years with major clients. You know they're not going to hire us if we're a bunch of crooks so you just can't afford the impression. So that's what we resent which has made it less interesting and you know somewhat galling.
Saville Smith said that she and her husband had registered the Narnia name at the dot Mobi domain with the intention of giving it to their son to use for email addresses. The name was registered in 2006, and she said they intended to give it to him on his birthday this year, which was just a few weeks before the release of the second Narnia film.
CS Lewis Pte Ltd, a company which holds rights in the CS Lewis estate, asked them to hand over the domain earlier this year before they gave it to their son.
The WIPO panel is part of that organisation's dispute resolution service, an alternative to the courts which transfers domain names only if three strict conditions are met. The person who wants the domain has to have rights, such as a trade mark, in the terms in the name; the person who has it has to have no such rights, and the name has to have been registered or be being used in bad faith.
The WIPO case rested largely on the issue of bad faith. Saville Smith said that the panellist presented no evidence of bad faith.
Gillian Saville Smith: As I understand it they had to prove that it was a bad faith registration and as far as we can see there is no evidence it was a bad faith registration. You know we didn't try and sell it. We didn't use it to make any money. We didn't try and pass ourselves off as anything to do with Narnia. You know it's just been sitting there and it was bought for a child. I mean I don't see how that can be constituted as a bad faith registration.
What the WIPO ruling did say, though, was that the fact of the registration itself could be taken as bad faith, given that the Saville Smiths had no connection to CS Lewis or the businesses based on his intellectual property rights.
The ruling said: "As prior panels have observed, when a domain name is so obviously connected with a Complainant and its products or services, its very use by a registrant with no connection to the Complainant suggests “opportunistic bad faith”." Panellist Towns said that this has been the case in rulings involving research in Motion and Paule Ka.
He also pointed out that the Saville Smiths had registered a number of domain names at the same time as narnia.mobi, and that some of these also incorporated other people's trade marks.
Here, said Saville Smith, Towns is confusing personal registrations with business ones. The Saville Smiths run a company which provides media services to charities.
Saville Smith: With things like MI5, like in fact I didn't even know that was a trade mark but I mean when we registered the funny ones, like MI5 and the Queen and whatever, they were there for sale, the same as Narnia was so basically we weren't intending them for any commercial use. As far as we were aware - I think we'll have to go and check now - there's no reason why that's not a fair use of it when they were available for sale and hadn't been bought. You he has mixed up for our media company, for example we have got two or three domain names which run for 10 years and the poetry business, the internet business which we have 43 and he has just mix them up. And you know he has just simply accept it. They are selective reading. They have cut little bits out of what we said initially. You know and attempts to make us look bad.
Controversially, they also registered two Narnia domains after being told of the complaint about narnia.mobi. These were freenarnia.mobi and freenarnia.com. Saville Smith said that these were to be used as protest sites against the complaint but, like narnia.mobi, they were never actually used.
Saville Smith: We have a friend in London who runs a celebrity agency and when he, you know, because he is chatting with people there were, a couple of people who gave us, you know, were offering supportive comments, and he thought it would be good to have a petition online. So we bought the domain name freenarnia and again, I mean to see it written like that as if it's really serious. In our statutory declaration we explained that this was done with, you know, I mean there's no humour displayed. Like say in the ruling that this was done in that spirit and that we were going to start a petition. We found it a bit unnerving to face these kind of false accusations so the more stuff that's out in public, the better. So he had suggested starting this petition which he could have, you know, sort of led at the celebrity quotes. That was bought in case we lost but I mean it was no more sinister than that.
Cybersquatters commonly use "parking" pages filled with adverts provided by companies such as Sedo to earn money on domain names they have registered.
Sedo pages with adverts did appear at addresses owned by the Saville Smiths, including narnia.mobi, but Saville Smith said that the panellist had been given evidence that they never earned any money from the pages, and that they were put there without their knowledge.
Saville Smith: Unbeknown to us, I mean it's not written anywhere or anything, if you do not use your domain name they create a holding page though this is not a parked website. It is not a parked domain. This holding page was created without our knowledge, without our permission which they have, you know, fully accepted. So I'll just read you out that as well: "I am happy to state on behalf of FastHosts that the redirection of the domain name narnia.mobi to a holding page maintained by Sedo was not the result of a request on the part of Richard Saville Smith. I am also happy to confirm that Richard Saville Smith has not sought to benefit and has not benefited financially in any way whatsoever from this domain name to this redirection." And that's the director at FastHosts. You know, it was created completely without our knowledge. We were surprised to see it anyway and we don't get any income of any kind from that.
Saville Smith said that she is unwilling to proceed further. She said she has been shocked at how actions taken casually have been pored over for ulterior motives and that she wanted to put up a fight but that is now at an end.
Saville Smith: Who'd be so stupid to think that he could generate advertising out of that name and keep the money and nobody would notice? I mean that's why I find that amazing. That they would assume you were and that this rather superior attitude is that we would be so stupid as lay people to think that we could get away with that. The fact I find it disturbing is that you know we're painted in a certain way by simply being very selective. And all he's done is just everything that they've stated - he refers to the - the panellist keeps referring to it as a parked domain even though we've provided these statements. You know impugn our reputation to make out that we're domain speculators and we have never sold a domain name, they're trying - falsely accusing of making money. You know absolutely that's not true and as a lay person you find that you know very dispiriting. The process we feel has let us down.
That's all we have time for this week, thank you for listening.
Why not get in touch with OUT-LAW Radio? Do you know of a technology law story? We would love to hear from you on radio@out-law.com.
Make sure you tune in next week; but for now, goodbye.
OUT-LAW Radio was produced and presented by Matthew Magee for international law firm Pinsent Masons.