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

[Jeff Williams]

Bruce and all stakeholders or interested parties,

Bruce Young wrote:

> Ester Wrote:
>
> >But there *is* a scarcity of space in people's heads, which is why
> >trademarks are not *artificially* scarce, but in fact reflect the scarcity
> >of attention. And because domain names get some of their value by
> >association with trademarks, there *is* a scarcity (inversely related to
> >value)  vis a vis domain names that matters.
>
> This is bordering on off-topic, so we may incur Denise's wrath, but . . .
>
> I question the wisdom of allowing trademark protection outside of .COM and
> .BIZ, since doing so gives us no benefit: for example, if Coca-Cola is
> allowed first dibs on "coke.<anything>", then what's the point of open new
> TLDs?  We gain no new useable names if 90% of each TLD is allowed to be
> grabbed up by corporate interests to protect their trademarks.  Outside of
> .COM and .BIZ, which are clearly set asside for commercial business use, all
> names should be first come, first served.

  Not even .COM or .BIZ should be considered for "Special" Trademark
protection.  That would be extralegal.  This is what the Interim ICANN
BoD, of which Esther was the COB at that time imposed upon the
stakeholders through WIPO in the UDRP.  It is this sort of thing
that the stakeholders/Interested parties that would make up the
At-Large and at least 1/2 of the BoD seats as well as have the
ability to VOTE on these sorts of policy initiatives that would provide
for the stakholders to provide for legitimacy in ICANN and protect
themselves for policies that does not serve the best interests of
the stakeholders themselves..

>
>
> I also think that automatically deferring to the WIPO to decide who keeps
> disputed names has not worked very well: just because one business has
> registered a trade name should not give them the right to steal the domain
> name of a small business that had the foresight to register the name first.
> Laws already exist in most countries to squash cybersquatters, and should be
> used as a model by ICANN to set up its own independant arbitration process.
> Good-faith domain name owners not infringing on another company's trademarks
> should be allowed to keep their domain.
>
> Bruce Young
> Portland, Oregon
> byoung651@home.com
> http://members.home.net/byoung651/index.html

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
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