Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN

[Vittorio Bertola]

(First of all, it's not clear to me whether we are going off topic or not,
so please someone tell me whether we should move this thread elsewhere or
not.)

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:59:56 -0400, you wrote:

>]> You're right, there is no scarcity of potential domain names.....you can
>]> always add new TLDs, or in extremis put a 1 in front of every
>]> word (as they
>]> do with phone numbers).etc.
>]>
>
>Limiting the number of TLDs is an artificial means of imposing scarcity,

On the other hand, I also register domains for the company I work for. And,
believe me, it's really frustrating to go and have to register your
company's trademarks in all new gTLDs (at least the non-chartered ones...
i.e. .biz or .info). For my company, it is basically a big waste of time and
money, because you have to go to all these different registries (which in
turn are kept free to invent nice systems such as the "IP Claim" or the
"domain lottery" to push you to give them as much money as they can get) not
because you are ever going to use yourcompany.biz, but simply to protect
your name from possible cybersquattings and unfair competition. 

I mean, this makes it evident that new unchartered gTLDs are completely
useless, unless for the fact that they transfer a big amount of money from
the users (be them individuals, non profit or profit entities) to ICANN, the
registrars and the registries. And it makes a good point in favor of those
that think that ICANN only represents the domain registration businesses
interests.

Personally, I think that no more unchartered gTLDs should be introduced, as
they would not add diversity at all, and would just be a huge theft of money
from the end users.

>So we CAN have Delta faucets, airlines, and (if you want to enter a new
>market) -- mouthwash or aftershave.  And we can have a multitude of LOCAL
>"Delta" brands of restaurants, garages, automobile dealerships,
>hairstylists, bookstores and other things.  But if you try to sell Kodak
>mouthwash or aftershave, however (even locally), you are diluting the
>trademark.  And it seems that every trademark owner in the world views its
>trademark as a "famous" one entitled to a dilution remedy even if the mark
>CLEARLY is not "famous and distinctive" (whatever THAT means).

It is not a matter of dilution. If you are introducing a worldwide TLD, it
does not matter that your company only works in your city - you simply don't
want a part of your customers, even if tiny, not to find your site because
they guess and write .biz or .net or your local ccTLD rather than .com. And
domains are cheap enough so that any company, even small, won't bother
paying ten or twenty registrations to protect their name, even if it will
blame those who built a system that forces it to do so. And by the way, I
(being involved in the policy board for the .it domains) noticed a sharp
increase in the kind of disputes such as "I own the .com and this guy owns
the .it, I want it too".

Speaking as an individual or as an ICANN involved person, I might not like
this attitude, but unfortunately any business in the world will think and
act this way.

>I doubt that in the heads of rougly 6 billion people in the world there's
>any "scarcity" -- or at least any "scaricity" that matters for any practical
>purpose -- of ability to recognize and remember different trade symbols used
>in a multitude of different cultures.

But they usually remember the name. They don't necessarily remember which
two or three letter code follows the dot. They usually don't. My company
uses <companyname>.it for the Italian site and <companyname>.com for the US
one, but even if we're a very famous company in Italy, we've had TV ads with
the .it URL, and so on... we still have an amazing number of Italians
browsing the .com site in English and writing to our US team "why in the
hell you don't have a site in Italian?".

>Some helpful writing on the subject can be found here:
>
>http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Ford_v_GreatDomains/
>
>as well as on the 2600 Website, in the PDF copies of the papers filed in the
>dispute between 2600 and Ford about Fuckgeneralmotors.com.

Of course I'm not talking about *this* kind of dispute. I absolutely agree
that TMs should not deserve a better treatment, at least not to the extent
of menacing freedom of speech, and that there should be TLDs with a charter
that prevents any trademark enforcement, so that coca-cola.free can go to
whoever gets it without any menace from the TM owner.
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology
.it Naming Authority, Executive Committee Member
ICANN At Large Interim Coordinating Committee, Member