browse comments: WIPO RFC-3

WIPO RFC-3
dan@mythology.com
Tue, 23 Feb 1999 16:35:38 -0500

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Previous message: Benjamin Weste Pearre: "Internet domain names: where should the power lie?"

I know you spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways around the current problems, but I think you have taken a complicated situation and are proposing to make it even more complicated.

When you get down to it, the problems can be summed up pretty easily:

1) There are people who are registering hundreds if not thousands of domain names in an effort to sell them to others or confuse people.
The reason they can do this is you can place a hold on a name without paying for them, and InterNIC has been slow to open up previously-registered but unpaid domain names to the public again. Requiring cash up front (credit card # at time of registration, for example) would stop many of these people immediately. Also, keeping the registration cost at a nontrivial but not extreme level (I thought $100US was a good round number)also flushes out a lot of those who would just register names to sell later.

2) People are getting confused on who can be found at what domains.
This is largely due to the idea that a business should automatically be found at [word or short couple of words].com . People who make shoes called Earth Shoes think earth.com violates their trademark (no it doesn't) or confuses people (really shouldn't, unless the site as earth.com is trying to pass itself of as selling Earth Shoes, in which case that can be solved by normal legal means that have nothing to do with the registration process). There would be no confusion if Earth Shoes just registered earthshoes.com or earth-shoes.com or even earth.shoes (we should very definitely create new top level domains that are specific in what they cover). Same thing when Juno Email services was sued by a company called Juno Lighting. Sure, the word is trademarked, but a trademarked name is tied to a specific commercial niche and does not normally protect just that word. So they should have gone for junolighting.com.

3) Companies are sometimes lazy and greedy.
Juno Lighting had just as much of a chance as getting juno.com as the people who ended up with it. It's their own fault they didn't have the foresight to register it sooner. It's not like they can't register another name which is more specific and less confusing in the first place.

4) Setting up an official process that subjects domain registrants to automatically be placed on hold or forces paying for arbitration unfairly favors large businesses.
A small business owner, such as myself, has just as much right to a domain name that accurately describes my site as the big companies. If you set the expectation that my registration will be yanked or financially challenged at the slightest hint of an argument, no matter how groundless, you have basically priced me out of having an easy to remember one.

The most flagrant violations are easy to spot: people who buy up hundreds of names can be flagged, investigated and yanked. Needlessly complicating things further only does a disservice to all the small businesses without the legal or financial resources required to successfully navigate the current and suggested dispute resolution procedures.

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