At 01:35 AM 2/13/99 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Martin makes a really good case for enforcing TLD charters. NSI has allowed
>them to erode simply because the TLD space has been frozen. Do you think
>enforced TLD charters would help in reducing this trademark pressure?
>
Not being perfectly certain of the jargon being used here, if you mean by the
TLD charter being enforced that a .com has to be commercial, a .org has to
be a nonprofit, etc., then enforcing them would be a small step in the right
direction. The courts have now learned to distinguish what comes after the
/ from what comes before the . , and trademark infringement cases are
always decided by going through a laundry list of relevant factors (which
unfortunately vary from one circuit to the next), so giving the court one more
factor upon which to base a distinction certainly wouldn't hurt. This is no
panacea, since we've seen xyz.com go after xyz.org, but it would be a
step in the right direction. (At the risk of starting up another babblefest
here, I myself favor at least 4 character extensions, one of which would
be .porn. A Boolean search engine could be configured "AND NOT porn"
by Mom and Dad, for example.)
Bill Lovell
