browse comments: WIPO RFC-3

WIPO RFC-3
jwinn@post.cis.smu.edu
Thu, 11 Mar 1999 11:39:32 -0500

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I am submitting these comments during the period for public comments on the Interim Report of the WIPO Internet Domain Name Process ending March 12, 1999. I am a member of the faculty of Southern Methodist University School of Law, where I teach the law of electronic commerce, and author of The Law of Electronic Commerce (3rd ed. 1998).

I would like to voice my support for the criticisms of the RFC3 Interim Report that have so ably been articulated by Michael Froomkin (available at http://www.law.miami.edu/~amf/quickguide.htm) and Carl Oppedahl (available at http://www.patents.com/nsi/rfc3comments.htm). I think it is highly inappropriate for WIPO to advocate under the guise of increased certainty a proposal that so clearly stacks the deck in favor of powerful trademark rights owners. Twenty-five years ago, Marc Galanter analyzed the shortcomings of this type of lawmaking in his classic work, Why the 'Haves' Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change, 9 Law & Society Review 95 (1974). That in 1998 an organization with the mandate given to WIPO should produce a proposal so badly skewed in favor of major corporate interests and against individuals, small businesses, not-for-profits, and community organizations is unconscionable.

When one night over the dinner table I recently explained to my husband (who is also an attorney) the nature of the WIPO Internet domain name and trademark proposals and my desire to submit comments, my two daughters, aged nine and six, took an active interest in the discussion. My daughters were intrigued by the idea of registering domain names in their personal names, so we checked to see if such domain names were still available. Julia.com or Lydia.com are already taken, but even had they still been available, I would not have felt free to register such domain names for my daughters. In light of the current WIPO proposals, I could not be sure that all the money we have saved for their college educations and then some might not be put at risk should I be called upon to defend their rights to make lawful use of such domain names. I think that the quite serious issue of preventing domain name piracy can be addressed by other, less oppressive means than those contained in the Interim Report, without eff
ectively denying parties of modest means located anywhere in the world the ability to participate in the domain name registration system for fear of what are, from that party's perspective, punitive sanctions.

It is my sincere hope that the proposals contained within the RFC3 Interim Report will be scrapped and WIPO will instead return to the approach originally taken by an earlier generation of technologists entrusted with the development of the Internet.

Sincerely,

Jane K. Winn
Associate Professor
SMU School of Law

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