Kerry Miller wrote:
> Its only the trademark interests which have proclaimed DN strings to be intellectual
>property, over and above its original use as a convenience to the commonality of
>net-users.
I think I've heard Ellen Rony make a persuasive case that DNs are
intellectual property. If I've got her right, maybe she can help me
here.
I would argue that DNs are intellectual property because as a DN holder
I receive a kind of title to that string of characters when used in
relation to DNS services. I choose that particular string of
characters... a functional resource... and that string consequently
becomes a property of my presence on the system... a property that is
uniquely my own within the legacy root.
Kerry, doesn't the use of "sympatico" by your ISP (which calls itself
"Canada's most popular Internet online service provider..") reflect an
attempt to associate that entity with certain intellectual and emotional
characteristics? Isn't that name a resource of the company?
>Giving them *as a class* any special representation in the DNS is to foretell the day
>we get to pay for the privilege of driving on the right side of the road (or the
>left, as the case may presently be - obviously that'll be a scase for WIPO!)
That statement motivated me to check out what's at
http://www.hyperbole.com/ :-}
> Seriously, by any concept of 'intellectual property,' the cybersquatters
> are in *exactly* the same business as the TM holders: trying to
> capitalize on the alphabet. If the net cant handle that, it would be
> better if ICANN proclaims forthwith that all domain names will be
> characterized in Cyrillic.
Spasibo, no ya ne soglasen.
(I've forgotten a lot of my Russian. I mean to say, "Thanks but I don't
agree.") Kent is correct here. The TM holders are capitalizing on much
more than the alphabet, while many cybersquatters are capitalizing on
the work of TM holders.
Remember, I don't want to rule out anyone's right to own
whateversucks.*, and I don't think there's much point in pre-empting
variations on *whatever* either. I'm just saying that trademark holders
have a legitimate beef. They're particularly vulnerable to exploitation
in this medium.
I just heard an interesting story tonight about an incident in Paraguay
in the early 90s where a bunch of local companies registered famous
foreign brand names, and then charged the US, Japanese, and European
companies big bucks for the names when they showed up to do business.
Completely legal, obviously but sleazy. Paraguayan lawyers got rich from
it. The upshot of it is apparently that Paraguay is now notorious for
poor copyright protection, and the government has a poor record getting
reciprocal protection for its creative people in other countries.
Consequently Paraguayan authors have a hard time getting published
outside the country. There's a "golden rule" sort of lesson there that
unfortunately doesn't seem to fit for the Internet.
I wish I had a positive suggestion, but I can only play critic right
now. (It seems to me that the challenge of being a critic is learning
how to disagree without becoming disagreeable.) So here are some
comments on other points that have come up on this and related threads.
1) I wouldn't go as far as Greg Skinner's suggestion of a waiting period
allowing for challenges. Deciding on how to resolve challenges sounds
like an issue that would open a big can of worms.
2) Requiring a statement about the purpose of the domain name being
registered isn't likely to help much, but it probably won't hurt, so
there are potential gains there. On the other hand, how hard is this to
implement? What would this involve with regard to existing
registrations?
3) The idea of the domain contacts having to provide harder name and
location information sounds appealing to me, but I haven't seen much
progress in determining how this can be implemented. NSI has little
incentive to change; chaos and uncertainty means that more names will
get registered as people engage in predatory or defensive strategies.
Craig Simon
