At 08:28 PM 3/28/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Call signs have much of the same character as DNS names, in that they
>may not be used in conflict by two different Electro Magnetic Signa
>Transmitters. But, this has nothing to do with whether or not the
>call sign registrant owns some intellectual property in connection
>with the Call Sign string.
>
>I keep going back to the advertsiing abstraction, where in the
>registry (TCC, or DNS) owns a data base or a name server that behaves
>like an advertising medium with space in the database zone file for
>registered call sign strings or DNS zone file names.
Um, again, they may own the name server and all of its space, but they
don't own the data base.
>
>So, there is room for a very clean contract between the registrant and
>the registrar to the effect that for a fee, the registry will
>"advertise" the registered name for the purpose of resolving the DNS
>name to various data that are entered into the Registry database and
>name serever for the registrant.
>
>And this cointract does not require that the ownership rights to the
>DNS name or the Radio CALL Sign be transferred to the registry, or o
>anyone else for that matter.
>
Excellent! I'd second all of the above except as noted, and thinking
further about what Jay Fenello had to say and to which I responded,
this helps to clarify what he might have intended me to pick up on,
so I'll amend here a bit.
I can see a model in which an ISP had coined a term like "per."
(Um, Jay, I've emails several years old in which I've proposed that
name for "personal" pages when we were in the classification mode;
if you get it, how much royalty are you going to pay me?)
Anyway, silliness aside, I can see that ISP also registering, through
some registrar, not just a domain name but a BLOCK of names,
just as an ISP has to have a block of IPs. All such domain names
from that ISP will end in .per, and there is this nice contract between
the ISP and the registrar which says so. Question is, what makes
that contract binding on the rest of the world? By what prior right
does ISP whoever get to claim the whole gamut of domain names
such as xxxxx.per?
The quick answer, of course, is trademark law. Too bad we don't have
an international trademark law. Since we don't, by what theory does
someone in Chile or El Salvador have to pay the slightest attention
to that contract?
May the beating again commence.
Bill
