William X. Walsh a �crit:
>
> On 04-Jan-99 Michael Sondow wrote:
> > Richard J. Sexton a �crit:
> >>
> >> At 05:32 PM 1/3/99 -0500, Mikki Barry wrote:
> >> >This argument does not follow. I would argue that intellectual property
> >> >protection and interests are beyond the scope of ICANN completely.
> >>
> >> Right. We have courts for that.
> >
> > That argument won't stand up. They can argue successfully, I believe, that
> > prevention of the problem, on the level of domain name registration, is the
> > only way to solve it because the courts will be too overburdened otherwise,
> > and because the expense of trying all the cases will be too great.
> >
>
> Overburdened from all the cases?
>
> There have been so FEW cases that I cannot see this as a valid argument in
> saying that this needs to be addresses at the registration level at all. The
> simple fact is the domain name disputes are an extremely rare thing and only
> involve a fraction of a percent of domain names registered.
That's not what the trademark lawyers say, and unfortunately they have the
ear of the courts and of the committees that are concerned with budgeting
the courts. The lawyers say there are already too many cases for the courts
to handle. Who knows what the real truth is?
But the truth, as always, isn't what's important. What's important is the
impression of the truth that the authorities have, and this impression they
get from the lawyers, who have the numbers, expertise, and training to
present their case better than the ISPs, registrars, and users can. That's
why it's so terribly important that the government of the Internet doesn't
duplicate the external government, where business lawyers have the upper
hand.
My remarks against lawyers participating to any great extent in the
formation of the NewCo don't come from an idle distaste for lawyers, but
from a desire to see the Internet continue to be used by everyone on an
equal and free basis, which won't happen once the lawyers, whose interest is
always with the biggest and richest businesses, get too big a hold on the
process.
Look what they've already accomplished: disintegrating the ICANN into
separate corporations (divide and conquer), which they can manipulate more
easily because, once incorporated, the separate pieces are dependent on the
lawyers at every step; running to a great extent the affairs of the ICANN
(Jones Day, and now Harvard Law School); submitting a proposal (the INTA) to
turn the DNSO into a corporate state, and using their leverage as a
trademark constituency to get it negotiated by the DNSO. Is this the
"community of the Internet" that was supposed to get together and decide its
future?
The argument that can win is not the argument that domain name/trademark
cases are insignificant, but that no one has the right to more than one vote
as a domain name holder. That is, users have just as much power to decide
policy as businesses. Then, since the users are in the majority, and it's in
the interests of the majority of users to have new gTLDs, there will be new
TLDs. Someone's got to lose out, so it should be the minority of big
business that loses. That's democracy. Otherwise, it's the lawyer's
corporate state, a sort of disguised authoritarianism. Some call it fascism,
but I wouldn't go that far :)
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