To: process.mail@wipo.int
Subject: WIPO2 RFC-3
From: "Muirinn Ruadh"
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 19:43:22 +0200
Name: Muirinn Ruadh
Organization: Startup Web Hosting/Entertainment Company
Position: VP/CIO
While restricting the registering of a pharmaceutical name as a trademark makes a good degree of sense, this idea of banning the use of these names as Internet sites is something else entirely and represents a big step towards overall restriction of speech on the net. It is ludicrous to expect that every site on the net with the word "minoxidil" in it is a trusted medical source. It is, in fact, dangerous to give people the idea that such a thing is even possible. Instead, there should be a method for locating trusted sources, such as a medical top level domain.
From your organization's report: "With the arrival of the Internet and the domain name system, a new opportunity arose for tainting the public status of an INN. By registering an INN as a domain name, the functional capacity of the INN to serve as an address locator and identifier on the Internet could be appropriated and controlled by the domain name holder."
This is a risk that every word and name ever created runs when dealing with the Internet. I cannot and do not expect that a site with a certain domain name is the end-all authority on the subject implied by the domain name. I, as an individual, bear the responsibility of deciding which information is correct, much as I do in normal conversation.
What is - or I should say, should be - at issue here is the fact that people need to learn to take responsibility for their own actions. If I make a decision based on information, I am responsible for that decision, whether I have faulty information or not. If I am told that the speed limit is 70, when it is 55, and I am caught going 65, I must pay the fine. I cannot simply say, "I was told the speed limit was 70." I would be laughed out of the courtroom, because the burden lies with me, as a responsible driver, to know the speed limit wherever I am.
Clearly the answer lies in many more top-level domains that are dedicated to a specific purpose, rather than attempts to control and manipulate every use of a particular name or word throughout all Internet domains.
If the registering of the .med domain, for example, were restricted to physicians and hospitals, and the .pha to pharmaceutical companies, then we could trust that these companies with provide authoritative information on each subject. This would be a much more practical application of a restriction. As a user of the WWW and the Internet, I would then know that MenWhoUseMinoxidil.pha would have relevant medical information, and that MenWhoUseMinoxidil.com would be less reliable. I would also be more likely to find the information I was actually looking for. If I wanted to know about potential side effects, I would got to the .pha; whereas if I wanted to know how men's lives had been affected by the use of the drug, I might look at both.
Your organization has the opportunity to improve the fundamental ways in which the WWW can positively affect lives. I am hoping that this effort is a means by which you hope to do just that. I would be terribly disappointed to learn that this might be an effort on the behalf of pharmaceuticals manufacturers to limit brand (and non-brand) dilution.
We should give people the tools with which to decide for themselves, rather than making the decisions for them. One should not cut off one's hand because one does not understand how the hand should work. Education is the answer, not excision.