Eminent Domain for Phone Numbers?
Acting on an emergency request from the American Red Cross, the FCC on Friday handed over control of the toll-free number 1-800-RED-CROSS to the nonprofit group, unceremoniously plucking it from the hands of corporate digit-squatters who’d been hoping for a six-figure payday.“They weren’t going to give it to us, and they were going to charge us ridiculous amounts of money to use it,” says Chuck Connor, senior vice president of communication and marketing for the American Red Cross.
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Calls from Wired News to 1-800-RED-CROSS (1-800-733-2767) were answered Tuesday by a cheery male voice announcing, “Thank you for calling 800-Ideas.com Inc. of San Diego, California. We offer telecommunications service to the business community.”
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Steve Parker, chairman of 800-Ideas.com, claims he acquired the phone number after founding a company called Red Arms, which by pure coincidence happens to share the same alphanumeric phone-pad translation as the Red Cross.
As I understand it, this issue is becoming pretty much well-settled law regarding URLs — a company can apply, or sue, to seize a URL from a squatter.
But what about phone numbers? Obviously people don’t “own” phone numbers, the recent availability of portability notwithstanding. So a situation such as this is not covered by either the Fifth Amendment or the recent eminent domain Kelo v. New London, No. 04-108 (2005).
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be analyzed like an eminent domain case. Is giving a phone number to the Red Cross a “public use”? How important must the would-be acquirer be? Must it be non-profit? Non-partisan? Non-discriminatory?
And if there is to be a seizure, should there be “just compensation”? Obviously this “800-Ideas.com” was a holdout. Should they get nothing? The value of their lost income from the 1-800-733-2767? Some other metric?
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Filed under: Law, Property Rights