Comment regarding RFC on domainname properly laws
Magenta H. Nezumi (pascal@trikuare.cx)
Sun, 21 Feb 1999 22:26:28 -0700 (MST)
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I do not believe it is the place for NICs to determine a policy regarding
trademark with respects to domainnames. I believe that InterNIC only gets
away with their policy as it is because of the perceived monopoly they
have over the Internet namespace, but really they do not. Many
alternatives, such as CX and NU, are cropping up all the time as countries
are discovering the value they have in selling domains cheaply. (For
example, my domain, trikuare.cx, costs only about US$17 a year.)
The policy I like the best is a hands-off policy, which is what nic.cx has
adopted. Basically, they do not in any way try to determine which domains
are legal, and domains are assigned purely on a first-come first-served
basis. They will transfer a domain if and only if they get a court order
to do so; this way, every case is on a case-by-case basis, and so
individual cases can be treated individually, as they all are.
Take a few completely disparate examples from the real world. There are
many cases of individuals registering large companies' names as domains
for the purpose of extortion, such as is the case with quake.com. It is
for these cases in which InterNIC set up the policy they have, which the
WIPO policy seems to be following. However, take ajax.org and
veronica.org, whose owners were sued by Colgate-Palmolive and Archie
Comics, respectively, because of the domains having the same name as
something associated with the respective company. Any court would have
thrown these cases out, because ajax.org was completely unrelated to
Co-P's Ajax line of bathroom cleaners (and Co-P can't even claim a
trademark on the word Ajax except in the scope of bathroom cleansers).
Any court would have thrown out the veronica.org case, because
veronica.org was completely unrelated to a character in one of their comic
books who was named Veronica.
There are many, many more cases where companies trying to assert their
trademark have no valid case but the InterNIC's policies would be
completely unfair to the domain holder than there are cases where actual
extortion is taking place. As such, I believe that NICs should only
comply with the large corportations based on a court order; it is the only
way that is fair to everyone, as corporations with a legitimate case get
to rightfully take their domain, and corporations who are just trying to
bully individuals don't.
Please follow nic.cx's example. It is the only scheme which can possibly
work. Don't try to set de-facto laws on top of international copyright
law; let the courts decide.
--- Magenta H. Nezumi http://trikuare.cx
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