For those of you who don't live in Silicon Valley, there's a weekly
paper called "Metro" that comes out on Thursdays. This week's
(Aug. 19-25, 1999 Vol. 15, No. 25, San Jose) cover story is "Squat
Busters" -- an article that looks at the issue of cybersquatting from
both angles. There's a related story, "Bush Fire", regarding Exley's
www.gwbush.com site, and George W.'s reaction to it.
>From the front cover:
"Internet domain names have become the real estate of the future.
They've become political soapboxes and lucrative business assets. As
small operators hit paydirt with dot.com registrations and Web sites
begin to influence elections, big business and the political right
have struck back. Their latest assault on free speech and net culture
is an attempt to criminalize trademark dilution. A bill just passed
the Senate almost unnoticed. Should the state use police powers to
regulate Internet domain use?"
Interesting reading. Sadly, the new stories aren't yet up at
http://www.metroactive.com/metro , but I'd imagine they should be
soon.
Among the points the story makes is that "just about every word in the
dictionary is trademarked at least once, and often several times over
with one or more of the 48 different types of trademarks.
[...] 'idea' appears in 195 registered trademakrs. The word 'idea'
itself is registered 22 times."
--
Mark C. Langston Let your voice be heard:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.idno.org
Systems Admin http://www.icann.org
San Jose, CA http://www.dnso.org
