At 10:29 PM 3/28/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>I am reluctant to describe legal concepts to
>a legal scholar, but maybe you can keep me on
>track.
Well, I'm not the most you ever saw on internet techie
stuff either, so welcome to the club!
>
>As I understand it, whenever someone has rights
>to something, they have property rights. This
>is not necessarily synonymous with "ownership."
>It can be a lease, license, delegation, etc.
They would own the particular right. Somebody
leases me a car, well, by golly, that's MY lease,
I own it, nobody can have it but me. :-)
But I don't own the car.
>
>Now, if a "registry" (I assume that was what
>you meant) has the rights/obligations to edit
>a gTLD zone file, then by definition, they have
>some form of property rights in that zone file.
I'm treating a "registry" as the bottomless pit into
which are poured all the domain name registration
data that are produced by people "getting a web page."
That registry has someone in charge of it who, as you
say, has a "right" and "obligation" to edit the file.
Some need arises to edit my file, e.g., I've changed
ISPs or whatever, the person in charge has the right
to enter in there and change the data as I have
instructed.
I deposit money in my bank. Someone there has both
the right and the duty to change the numbers in my
bank balance. Does that person, or the friggin' bank,
own my money? HELL NO! Your definition, which says
that the registry has ANY kind of property right whatever
in MY friggin' data, I believe to be fundamentally wrong,
all protestations of NSI to the contrary notwithstanding.
>
>Now, before we begin a debate over exactly what
>those property rights are, please realize that
>the problem is recursive. The Root zone relates
>to a gTLD zone the same way a gTLD zone relates
>to an SLD zone, etc., ad infinitum.
>
>So, before you claim that Iperdome has *no*
>property rights in .per(sm), please explain
>why the same arguments wouldn't apply to the
>AOL.com zone file, or the ibm.co.au zone
>file.
>
Jumping into both of these, I understand that I
don't own .com, but only cerebalaw.com. What
I'm saying is that no one else owns .com either,
not only because it's a product of the USG but
also because it's simply a mnemonic for a set
of numbers defining an agreed upon domain space.
No one owns "888" or "800" either; those are routes
in the same way that .com is, and as it happens,
the FCC just released a whole bunch more of them
saying, "If you want one that's not already taken,
go to AT&T, or Sprint, or whoever, and if no one
has beat you to it, you can get it." Should be
the same with domain names: there's a new
TLD defined by international agreement; you
rush to your nearest Registrar or to your ISP
and thence to some one of the "favored five"
and if you beat out Joe Blow down the street,
you get it.
In short, the letter code that defines some subset
of the nearly infinite domain name space, whether
that letter code be "per" or anything else, should be
set by international agreement and freely available
to every prospective domain name holder to use,
through whatever registrar that prospective registrant
may choose.
Within previously defined country codes, there
would of course be no need for further international
agreement; how France divides up .fr is no one's
business but France's, and so on. If "per" or "cat"
is instituted in the U.S., every registrar should be
free to use it for its customers; every registrar
should be free to use .com, .net., etc., that were
historically the sole province of NSI. That is why
there has to be a registry that is FULLY ACCESSIBLE
to EVERYONE: is the domain name alley.cat now
available? If it is I want it, and I can go to ANY
registrar to accomplish that registration, and when
those data then appear in the COMMON registry,
well, too bad for everyone else: it's taken.
>P.S. ICANN appears to agree with you. They
>claim ownership over *all* names in the legacy
>name space.
ICANN and I could not be more in DISagreement.
That they may have administrative responsibility
over all names does not mean that they own them.
ICANN does not own diddly squat.
And thank you for this thoughtful response.
May the beating commence.
Bill Lovell
