Lock blockchain domain on opensea.io

Marketplace opensea.io has blocked a domain tommyhilfiger.eth
Then they unblocked and apologized, said that the problem was with the ENS (I think this is an excuse, since other domains were displayed correctly)
After a few hours of unlocking and my joy, I again received a delisting letter from my domain opensea.io. When you turn to the person who accompanied me again, here is the answer- Yes it has been delisted again by our Trust and Safety team. They informed me that there was a DMCA takedown request for the ENS. Attached is the request and we have to comply with this matter.
Thank you for using OpenSea.
What would you advise to do, because ICANN has no right to regulate web3, this is a bad precedent for all of us.
Anatoly.

1 Like

Use a txt record on your ENS to list it for sale or post ways they can contact you. OpenSea is a centralized marketplace and youā€™ll have to wait for another to become popular if thatā€™s how you want to sell. Marketplaces will always cave to these kind of requests, but no one will force the name from you.

2 Likes

Thank you, but I also thought to publicize this precedent, otherwise they may remove all domains from the site.

1 Like

This is good to know, thanks for sharing.
Iā€˜m sure we will see more & more delistings of TM-related/-copies/ā€¦ .eth-domains (in all centralized platforms). ENS would have been facing the same problem but itā€˜s DAO now and therefore save IMHO

I like your idea, but I have sales info on some of my NFT text records, but people canā€™t easily access the information through Opensea, especially when you seek to market subdomain names and not the domain name itself. You would have to click on the icon with the arrow in the square (View on ENS) to do so, but no opensea assistance to let potential buyers know that is what they could do, if they have an interest in the domain or subdomain.

1 Like

Thatā€™s definitely a good point. I think OpenSea makes it difficult on purpose because they would want all sales to happen on their site. We desperately need competitors to OpenSea and hopefully some that are decentralized. I hope people are developing these on the side and we see something in 2022.

1 Like

Iā€™m not clear on what ICANNā€™s involvement in this is. Can you clarify?

Actions like these show that the ens community urgently needs its decentralized market! There are resources to create it!

Yes, I agree. Creating an ENS decentralized market becomes a must.

3 Likes

thatā€™s a good idea-decentralized marketplace

1 Like

I think itā€™s because ICANN take this kind of action on the owners of gTLDs in the DNS world, and it seems the same behaviour is creeping into ENS. Otherwise OpenSea should have just given Tommy Hilfiger B.V. / ICANN / DMCA lawyer (whomever made the complaint) the middle finger. I would guess they (OpenSea) want to play it safe and not put their head above the parapet and incur the ire of all of the above, so theyā€™re doing it of their own accord, but maybe someone outside OpenSea contacted them.

ICANN does not have any authority in ENS as far as I know, but I can see that battle coming soon. This is just a fact, but ICANN is staffed almost entirely by lawyers :grin:

I think that ICANN has nothing to do in my case, let me remind you that TOMMY turned to opensea.io with a letter of request (Yes it has been delisted again by our Trust and Safety team. They informed me that there was a DMCA takedown request for the ENS . Attached is the request and we have to comply with this matter.) And my domain was re-blocked, I think opensea.io is reinsuring and does not want to resist, centralized hat.

Hi. i have a domain louisvuittonverse.eth delisted by opensea. what can i do now?

Hello) you can place this domain on https://tofunft.com/. And if globally, you can raise a question on the Forum about creating a decentralized marketplace like opensea
I donā€™t have the opportunity to do this now - Iā€™m from Kyiv, Ukraine, now we have military operations.
Can you start this initiative.
Anatoliy.

Hi there,
we have seen some delistings on opensea in the last months and I guess these have not been the only marketplaces in doing so. But is this legal? Are the marketplaces right if they act in behalf of the potential trademark-owner? I would say NO and will tell you why.

Letā€™s check it out using a brand like Apple or a bank like JPMorgan or a car producer like Mercedes.
Imagine you have been registering the ENS mercedes.eth back in early 2020 during the short-name-auctions. Now MercedesBenz/Daimler asks Opensea to disable the offers on that ENS-domain and they argue with trademark infringements/violation and so on.

Totally bullshit (IMHO) if you do it right Iā€™d say. Registering an ENS is not USING it so where do you violate any rights? Especially if you donā€™t connect the ENS to a wallet itā€™s only a sign already written in the blockchain. Itā€™s not usable because if you send ETH or anything else to the said address it will end up in nowhere. As long as your wallet-address has no reverse-record set, the address itself is not in use, is not connected, is not setup.

Further more a brand violation needs to violate the brand in its registered services/goods. So as long as you donā€™t start to build cars and have not connected any wallet to the ENS ā€œmercedes.ethā€ it will be almost impossible to proof trademark-violation by the brand-owner. Sell furniture or pets or apples under the ENS mercedes and you will be fine. Cars and Food is a totally different Class of goods obviously.

Further more if you are a private person not using the ENS for business you are save. Trademark law is not focussing on private usage, itā€™s on business use-cases!

So to be save with your ENS I recommend (no legal advice please)
ā€¢ register an ENS brand name
ā€¢ set Registrant & Controller as well as Resolver (to your private not publicly known ETH-wallet)
ā€¢ DONā€™T SET THE REVERSE RECORD

without setting reverse record the ENS is not able to receive anything

In other words itā€™s not used and therefore there is no trademark violation possible.
I would expect this argumentation is valid in almost any jurisdiction knowing trademark law!

BTW: if the given explanations are correct (Iā€™m not a lawyer, just a sophisticated trademark user) I would assume it is possible to ask OpenSea for compensation for damages if a potential buyer didnā€™t buy because of the delisting and so on. Iā€™m sure we will see some law suits in the upcoming months.

What do you think?

1 Like

This is not correct. Any name that resolves can be used to receive ether or tokens.

@nick.eth thanks for the answer, I always thought without setting reverse-record the ENS is not connected to a wallet but it is (always) connected to the registry wallet even without setting reverse if I got you right?

So what do I have to do to avoid the possibility of receiving anything in the first hand. Deleting the Resolver?

I can adjust later of course but actually I would like to have an ENS not able to receive anythingā€¦ possible?

Is important in case of trademarks and so on

you can delete eth address from your currently set resolver (it actually sets 0x address on the back).

People are sending to ETH address which is set on ENS resolver not to ENS name directly. You cannot block people sending ETH/ERC20 tokens to your address.

@matoken.eth Thanks, got it, of course one cannot prevent people sending erc-tokens to my/any erc-wallet-address. My need is/was to prevent that the ENS-address (example.eth) isnā€™t able to receive anything as long as I decide to do so. Deleting the eth-address from the resolver that is set is obviously what I have been looking/asking for.

Why? I think this might be interesting for all the people that registered trademarks like Apple, google, louisvitton, gucci, ā€¦

Opensea and other more or less centralized marketplaces have already delisted these ENS-domains by arguing with trademark violation.

I donā€™t see this (1.) due to the IP class system (goods/services) of international trademarks and (2.) the need to use the domain in the registered classes. In DNS-world law-suits often ended up pro the trademark-owner if the court-decision was on e.g. gucci.net. Gucci.net is not able to be registered without getting into economic business-relation with the registry (versign) for the .net-addresses. So a trademark violation might be arguably.

ENS is different to DNS in that field (IMHO) because in ENS you yourself act as Registry (level 1) by calling the smart contract and you set the resolver (level 1). In DNS world this is done by the registry (level 1; verisign, PIR, afilias, denic, ā€¦) and the enduser (level 2; customer) gets his domain fully connected. He (as controller) can tell the address where to point (html, server, IP) but he is not able to ā€œinitially createā€ the domain due to lack of access to DNS-system (forward/reverse lookup). He is only able to ask the registry to register /to create it using his (the registryā€™s) technology. No trademark owner would sue verisign for creating an entry in the DNS but he would sue the enduser if he is using it in the field of protected goods/services.

In ENS I am the registry myself and if I donā€™t set the resolver (no forward/reverse lookup possible), the domain is not active and not in use although it was initially created ā€“ better prepared for use ā€“ on-chainā€¦ in my eyes.

What do you think?
Is this a reasonable argumentation in that field? I would be interested in more opinions on that. If there are some lawyers around specialized in the field of trademarks that would be very nice to discuss withā€™em. I mean, if Iā€™m right this would open up the road to ask Opensea for damage compensation after delisting ENS making it almost impossible to sellā€¦ IMHO.

This is not a recommendation on domain-squatting but a real-life use-case. I guess 98% of ENS-domains with trademark-wording are in private wallets actually and they will all face the same question if one (owner of any trademark rights) comes around and asks for transfer and/or compensation for illegal usage.

As I mentioned earlier, if you do own the name, you can delete the record from the resolver by yourself.

You can see the bin button on the right side of the input field.

1 Like