I think you all remember the lovely Frederick Harris, a.k.a. Count
DooDoo. Anyway - Harris has been given a royal spanking all over the
internet community for attempting to defraud people into his .pod tld
which resolves within the root - themantically - or so Harris
claims. It's complete nonsense but he's managed to string along a few
people and basically make himself into a pest.
One of my concerns is that harris is asking people to sign nondisclosure
agreements - which he then peddles to venture capitalists. I myself have
know Harris for sometime. He started calling me back in may - and
basically the man is clueless. Mr. Walsh also had an opportunity to waltz
with Mr. Harris and I would say I have Mr. Walshs support in the fact the
Mr. harris is clueless.
Anyway - according to Harris - this solicitation of the pod tld - and
these investions of fiction regarding resolution was basically for the
benefit of branding. So basically he has committed fraud for no better
purpose then branding his pod space. I'll tell ya - human stupidity never
fails to amaze me - and almost always brings joy to my life.
Anyway - if you have had an encounter with Mr. Harris and ended up signing
one of his non disclosure or confidentiality agreements - just send him an
email, or fax or letter and revoke the authority. Harris has in my
opinion acted in bad faith.
And if anyone has had an encounter with Mr. harris - and they want to
share the experience - in public or privately with me - I would welcome
the information.
Regards
Joe Baptista
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 10:38:28 -0500
From: Joe Baptista <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: HARRIS The Last Laugh
Rick:
Your reply once again shows your ignorance. At no time did we discuss
"third-level redirection" of domain names. At best we speculated that you
were attempting to run a third level domain business - no redirection was
discussed. And we still have no idea what your going on about. Feel free
to brand yourself and your products as much as you want. Just stop the
fraudulent claims about "resolving within the root - themantically" -
that's just alot of bogus nonsense.
And in closing - feel free to call me as many names as you wish. It's
allowed here and it enhances your legal challenge against me.
Now if this correspondence means we won't see you anymore nor be subjected
to your fraudulent claims then I feel were all much happier for that.
Regards
joe
On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, Rick Harris wrote:
> The Last Laugh
>
> On behalf of myself I want to thank in particular the one and only
> Mr. Joe Baptista for the recent public discussion(s) about
> "third-level redirection" of domain names. I have found the
> discussions most amusing. I do (seriously) want to thank several persons who
> took the trouble to offer off list and in phone calls helpful
> and well meaning comments about how to improve the unabashedy
> commercial marketing concept for a product and brand name called
> "pods". Brand building these days is expensive - and nearly impossible
> without extensive advertising.
>
> The issue with "pods" as a "brandable" - trademark, because of the
> nature of the product - ie., an "equivalent" TLD - had been
> complicated by the fact that a court of competent jurisdiction recently
> held that top-level domains can not be trademarked. Thus -to
> protect the mark and to prevail in common law , say, in the
> eventuality of a later application for a genuine TLD named "pod" or "pods"
> by a third party - it was necessary to develop a strategy to show
> that indeed the word "pods" was already a "famous" mark and who was the
> legitimate author of the mark.
>
> The test of what constitutes a famous - or even infamous mark is
> ultimately a subjective one. But I am confident that in this particular
> instance the numerous public references - from around
> the globe in fact - not only to "pods" in the conceptual sense, but also to
> the author of the concept - will be most helpful if in future it should
> happen that a third party decides to apply to ICANN for a "real" top-level
> domain coincidently named ".pod" or perhaps "pods".
>
> That such a scenario can in fact occur was illustrated most
> recently in connection with the a TLD named ".web" which was
> proposed to ICANN by one or more third-party applicants who
> apparently were in conflict with one who was arguably the
> real "owner" of the mark. And so: - rather than detail
> unnecessarily the ultimate reasoning behind "pods" - and the
> kinds of remarks that were contemplated beforehand as likely
> to surface - I will leave to the imagination of others to
> dissect at their leisure whose interests were actually and
> ultimately served by the delightful subsequent discussions
> about "pods".
>
> As to the matter in principle of third-level redirection of domain
> names as a business proposition - as well as in terms of some
> of the possible legal ramifications of third-level domain names in connction
> with trademarks, I would be remiss of course if I failed to mention
> "mmm.beer.com". In fact I was surprised that the matter of mmm.beer.com (as
> the model if you will) didn't surface at all. Therefore I recommend for
> those who not familar with the issue the following
> <www.dnso.org/wgroups/wg-6/archives/msg00414.html>
> for comments and related threads from Michael Palage and others
> about third level redirection when it comes to domain names.
>
> Now I don't doubt that there will perhaps be near hysteria in some
> quarters and, perhaps, subsequent postings to this particular list
> about "pods" that are even more mean spirited than the ones that
> appeared heretofore. Nonetheless,there will be NO FURTHER INFORMATION
> from me on this particular matter - meaning "pods" - no matter what kinds
> of provocations turn up. However, I will say in closing the topic
> (so far as I am concerned) - that I expect and I will certainly be watching
> with great amusement the rantings of a moron like Mr.Baptista who
> is and was patently too stupid to know when he was being had.
>
> Cheers.
>
--
Joe Baptista
http://www.dot.god/
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