GoDaddy hoarding domains. What is my legal recourse? I want to purchase a domain: curion.com It is unavailable because it is held by godaddy (as shown on whois.net) Question is, Can a web hosting company hoard a domain name to itself. Is it even allowed? The domain doesnt function either. How do I legally pursue this matter? What is the law? Whois details: Domain Name: CURION.COM Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 146 Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com Name Server: NS1.JACKSONNATIONAL.COM Name Server: NS2.JACKSONNATIONAL.COM Name Server: NS3.JACKSONNATIONAL.COM Status: clientDeleteProhibited Status: clientRenewProhibited Status: clientTransferProhibited Status: clientUpdateProhibited Updated Date: 11-feb-2013 Creation Date: 11-jul-2002 Expiration Date: 11-jul-2018
The domain you mention has godaddy as its registrar, but the registrant (I.e. 'owner') is 'Jackson National Life Ins Co' according to godaddy's own whois server. To answer your question: a person or other entity can register as many domains as it likes. Absent a trademark or other name-related dispute, you have no grounds to dispute a registered domain simply because you think it's being 'hoarded'.
You may at your peril. The safe harbor provision in 17 USC 512 does not provide absolute immunity to service providers, that immunity is only available (c)(1) if the service provider—(A)...(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent Given your question, which reasonably assumes that the material is infringing, infringement is apparent. The DMCA provisions were written not to protect service providers, but to protect innocent service providers who are not aware of the infringing activities of their users. So it depends on what you know.
First off: Legally, everything is copyrighted anyway. Licensing is not at all necessary. Hence, even if a court would disagree with # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0, that would just make it closed source. Having said that, the law generally doesn't bother with trivialities such as &quot;file headers&quot;. Any commonly accepted way to state the copyright and license terms is OK. Your LICENSE is such a common convention. If you want to avoid all doubt what is covered under that license, put a reference to that LICENSE in each header. If you have just five files in one directory that are all licensed the same, I wouldn't even bother with that. Again, the default position is that everything is closed source.
The conditions for lawfulness of processing are spelled out in Article 6 of the GDPR. As for it being legal for website operators to log the IP-addresses of visitors, this is covered by the following paragraph (also pointed out by phoog in a comment). The paragraph says it is legal to process personal data if processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. (my emphasis) You are not the only web site that logs IP addresses for the purpose of security. Every web site I've ever worked on - from those controlled by large corporations to tiny NGOs - do this. This security practice will not be impacted by the GDPR (if it were, I am sure we would have heard about it by now). there is the EU cookie law too If your website are going to be accessible to European citizens and not only accessible by your friends and familiy, you have to comply with the EU cookie directive of 2002 (a exemption for "personal websites" does not exist).
The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.
I think haveibeenpwned would be legal in the EU because it carries out a task in the public interest (Art. 6(1)(e)), and it shares no more data then necessary, for example you can search for a password, but it would not show you the emailaddress which belongs to that password. It would also be legal for you to hold a copy of a leaked database, but only if you have a legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) to have it. Being a security company does not change that, but finding a legitimate interest might be easier. If you have a legitimate interest to hold a copy of a leaked database, it does not mean you can use it in any way you like. For example testing if the password still works, is very likely illegal everywhere in the EU. But I'm not familiar with the UK laws.
There are three main aspects to this: Its their website, and their terms of service. They can enforce those terms, or change them (in some appropriate manner). You have no recourse if they remove you, block you, or delete your account, for example. That's the measure that you would probably have, virtually every time. To claim damages, or litigate beyond just website access control, requires a legal claim. But there's a catch there. To claim damages, they need to show actual damage, which they wish to be compensated for. If you misused their website but no actual harm can be shown, the total damage claimable is zero, whether or not you followed their rules. Merely entering dishonest information isn't by itself harm. So they would have to show they suffered damage/harm because of that, which is directly attributable to your behaviour, was foreseeably harmful etc, or similar. They also need to consider legal costs, and ability to enforce, especially if you are in a different country. If for some reason the computer use was also illegal, then a criminal act could be committed and they could notify law enforcement. For example suppose you did this in the little known country of Honestania, where the law says that to prevent trolling and online abuse, anything posted on social media under any but your own legal name is a crime. Or suppose you'd been banned from the system and ignoring/evading such a ban was criminal computer use or criminal trespass due to the forbidden/unauthorised access (which can happen in several places). But this is purely for completeness; I guess you'd know if you were taking it further, into criminal computer use.
I doubt that they are legally required to get your VAT as a condition of registration. However, they are a private company, and they are allowed to attach almost any restriction they want to registration. It is more likely that they require your VAT for some of the business interactions that they expect will happen after you register for the site and have decided to make it a condition of registration.