At 06:41 PM 6/24/99 -0800, Ellen Rony wrote:
>There's a resolution proposal just posted for the Names Council meeting
>tomorrow
>
> NAMES COUNCIL RESOLUTION TO PROHIBIT
>THE REGISTRATION OR TRANSFER OF DOMAIN NAMES SUBJECT TO DISPUTE
> RESOLUTION PROCEEDINGS
>
>http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/19990624.NSIreg2.html
>
>that includes this text:
>
>The Names Council hereby recommends pursuant to ICANN/DNSO bylaw ___, that the
>ICANN Interim Board approve by special resolution within 10 days the
following:
>
> 1.All domain names in the NSI exclusion list shall not be subject to
>registration by any new or current gTLD registrar;
>
> 2.All existing domain names subject to an on-going NSI or new gTLD
>registrars' dispute resolution proceedings shall not be subject to
>registration by any new registrar or transfer thereto; and,
>
> 3.Any future domain names subject to any registrar's dispute resolution
>proceeding shall not be allowed to be registered or transferred to any
>other gTLD registrar, until such dispute resolution proceeding is
>completed.
>_____________________________________
>
>So those legitimate domain names that are on hold because a trademark owner
>invoked NSI's domain dispute procedures based not on confusion as to source
>of good or services but on a covetous desire for a particular character
>string would be SOL under this resolution until the matter is resolved.
>They would remain locked into NSI's flawed policy. Is PETA.ORG still on
>hold?
In short, there goes the game for all the Veronicas of the world. Some
idiot outfit has a registered trademark that by no stretch of the imagination
could be infringed upon or diluted by the name of some little kid, but that
little
kid gets locked because of it. If the proposal meant only what it says, that
would be fine -- "forum shopping" should indeed be precluded, and where
cybersquatters set up to warehouse famous trademarks they should not
be able to sneak those names in by the back door. However, if you go to
the URL shown you will find, as a preface, the following language (purportedly
from Ted Shapiro, whoever the hell he is):
As we understand the situation, once a party has invoked the NSI
dispute resolution procedure the name is "locked" and unusable
until the completion of the dispute resolution proceedings.
The ADDED term "unusable" means that even a long existing domain name
would be put out of business indefinitely -- I've been fighting for epix.com
for going into the third year now, fortunately it's been fully functional
-- just
by a letter, perhaps from some freakin' one person room in Schenectady
who once sold a dingus with a mark on it in Pennsylvania. The resolution
AS QUOTED would certainly not be objectionable, and indeed ought
to be endorsed, since it would help to stall the cybersquatter who has
given the innocent domain name holder such a bad name. Now I'm not
sure whether that term was added out of sheer ignorance, an inability
to read, or as a PR gimmick to foster yet more the NSI pogrom (not
a misspelling) of ethnic cleansing, but it certainly ought to be clarified
in the adoption (or not) of the resolution itself.
Equally cynical and degrading to any sense of justice is the blatant
claim in the "whereases" of the resolution itself that "Network Solutions Inc.
(NSI) has a dispute resolution policy that has settled thousands of disputes
concerning domain name conflicts over the last five years by its dispute
resolution policy and proceedings." In fact, NSI has "settled" nothing:
thousands of innocent domain name holders who could not afford to go
into Federal Court have been victimized by NSI's policy that has taken
their property from them without due process of law. It seems that NSI
uses the same PR firm as does Slobodan Milosevic.
Bill Lovell
