WIPO Internet Domain Name Process

Transcript - part 2: Budapest regional consultation

Hungarian Patent Office
October 22, 1998

(Mr...................): I want to ask a question, the IANA which you said is going to be given the report, I believe this corporation has not yet been formed or has it been formed already in the United States? Number one question. Number two, when is it likely to be formed and when is the report likely to be ready? Is it end of '99, the second half of '99 or when? Number two question, I find from your list of experts, there are 15 experts, some from developing countries, but I am rather surprised there is none from India which is supposed to be one of the biggest software producers in the world. So, I want to ask you, are you proposing when you are having consultations in Hyderabad, are you not proposing to have a specialist from there? Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): There are two questions. I think the first question goes to the exact status of the formation of the new corporation and I do know some detail about that, but I think there are persons on the expert panel who are probably better informed than I am so if I could ask one of the experts to reply to that first part.

(Mr. Donald Heath, President Internet Society): I am Donald Heath and I will do my best on that. First of all, IANA is something that has been around for a number of years, perhaps one could argue 20 or 30. As a name, IANA is probably less than that, but the function has been around from the beginning of the Internet. The Internet organ is non-legal, that doesn't mean it is illegal although sometimes I think it maybe it could be that too, but it is non-legal and the idea of forming a new corporation or the new IANA which really I think your question addresses was to institutionalize, internationalize and make legal that body. So, the corporation has been proposed, by the way Jon Postel who has been IANA, as you perhaps know, died just the other day, he hated the fact that we would say we would have to institutionalize this. He said, well that means we are going to put that into a mental institution just up the street? And so we had to clarify that and it really means make it legal and make it recognized as an international body the centre of which assigns names and numbers. So, the formation of this has actually been an evolutionary Process for almost three years now, and a very widespread series of debates including the IHC that David mentioned, this Process is part of the IFWP and many others. So, when it gets formed actually is about now. There have been proposals written which include by-laws, articles of incorporation, a proposed set of initial board members and as soon as, I believe, the U.S. Government says this is the proposal we want to start with then that corporation can begin. And that could be as early as a few weeks or a week. I understood that it could be this week that the U.S. government endorses a proposal. And I have been led to believe that it would be the ICANN proposal. But then, I think the Process would be to publicly vet this thing and in fact evolve it so that the ultimate by-laws that get formed and the methodology upon which this corporation works is yet to be determined. The intitial plan is in place. That may take weeks, it may take months, but I think that you have to have a very broad consensus built before it can be functioning. So, after that long preamble I would say that the corporation could begin within a month and I would think that it could be functioning probably within three to six months as an operational entity.

(Mr.................): Thank you. David had mentioned that, I kept a note here that the IANA has been requested to make decisions on revising the domain name system, including TMs aspects. So, I take it that what you say is that in a month's time it will come into being or in three months time it will start operating and then three to six months you said. So, I am right I think in saying that the report could not be expected before the second half of '99. Is that correct?

(Mr. Donald Heath): If it is a report per se, I think it will be more a series of things that come out and that when it is finally operational it will be making decisions such as the number of new gTLDS and so on.

(Ms. Esther Dyson, Chairman, ED Venture Holdings Inc., USA): Hi! let me make a couple of comments. My name is Esther Dyson, I am here as a non-legal person. I am not illegal, but I am not yet legal. I am one of the people who is being proposed as a member of the Interim Board of the new IANA. And the job of this Interim Board is to set up something more permanent than ourselves. One of the requirements for being a member of the Interim Board is that we should have absolutely no interest in serving on the Board long-term. Many of you in the audience I am sure are familiar with the challenges of privatization. And to do it honestly and also openly and end up with something that is honest and open and somehow is cleansed of its past history of ownership. Therefore, and this is one reason I am speaking, one of the big challenges and one of the most important issues here is doing this in an open and transparent manner. And so, although I cannot speak for anybody or the Board or anything like that, as individual I know about things that are going on and I want to be open and transparent. And so, the challenge of this new Board, whether or not I am on it, is going to be to create a system that is not simply in the business of issuing reports, but is in the business of making ongoing decisions because issues will arise and the challeng is to do that in an open manner that does not end up with calling a million people using the Internet every ten days. And the creation and the approval of this Interim Board is being discussed via a great deal of e-mail and in personal discussions right now and the challenge is of course how to make it broadly representative of a lot of interests without necessarily giving a spot to each country, each particular interest group etc, etc, etc. And making sure in some sense that it represents the public interest rather than a summary of private interests. I am here to listen primarily, but I wondered if I should stand up and make myself known.

(Mr.......................): But, you said that you are wanting to have the system cleansed I didn't understand that, because I didn't understand anything about the cleansing requirement at all. Thank you.

(Ms. Esther Dyson): Well, what needs to be done is to cleanse it if you like of the American ownership. So, that it becomes, you know it cannot arise from the sea, but we want to at least make it arise from an Interim Board that is as free of history and vested interests as possible.

(Mr. Donald Heath): It’s Don Heath again and it just might be prudent to state some things about the IANA. The IANA can be viewed in two ways, this new corporation. In one sense it does the most mundane tasks in the world. It assigns names and numbers on the Internet. That is an administrative process, and we can all yawn when we think of that. It is a very trivial task one could argue, but a very crucial one for the operation and stability of the Internet. So, why all the hoopla? And the reason there is hoopla and the reason that she is so correct in that it must be very open and transparent and it must have a Board of internationally recognized people who have marked good judgement and track records and so on, is because the process by which we set up this organization may be a model or a precedent for future self-governance type organizations. And it’s critical that we put this together in the proper way. In a way that serves our needs in the Internet and in a way that is open and transparent and it doesn't take advantage of something that should be considered as a global resource, one. Two, the people who are in control of this new IANA will have the right to determine who can be a registry. David pointed out that there 5,000 registrations per month under .com or by NSI. And at USD$35 per registration there are those in the world who believe that if they can become a registry they will have the right to own a printing press to print money. In other words get very rich. If you are the people who are going to decide who can do that then you want to be real open and transparent and know your process. It is very important to all of those people who have visions of having a printing press to make money, that they want that corporation to be completely honest and open and so on, so that the allocations of the registries can be fair and honest. So, on the one hand it is a very mundane task that the corporation does, but on the other hand it is given or vested with a tremendous amount of power at the same time. And again self-governance is where we think the Internet must go, it is important to set it up properly.

(Mr.................): Thank you very much. Thank you.

(Mr. Ken Fockler, Former Chair and President Canadian Association of internet Providers): Yes, it’s Ken Fockler. I wasn't sure if one aspect of your question had to do at all with any concern about timings and what happens. I just wanted to point out that the IANA functions are still going on and being performed. The actual IP address functions take place from the organizations known as RIPE for Europe, and AP NIC for Asia Pacific and ARON for the Americas and parts of Africa so that the actual number assignments just in case there is any concern as to what's going on because there was some expectation everything would be tidied up by September 30th and a new organization in place and decisions being made. But, I can assure you that those functions, the things that keep it running are still functioning and going on. And these comments could describe approaches to the new organization. You can also go to the NSI web page and read the summary, which I would recommend, or the details of the extension the U.S. government has done with NSI, that at least gives you some idea of what’s going on with .com, no matter what your views are one way or the other. But, I guess I am saying that those are the things that are going on. So, I just wanted to add those comments as to the current stability in this time-table of what is taking place.

(Mr. David Muls): Okay that’s fine. I would suggest that before the coffee break we have at least one person who stands up and makes a presentation about one of these aspects of the Process, dispute prevention, dispute resolution, protection of famous marks. If there is nobody who wants to make a statement maybe we can proceed like this. I will go through the Request for Comments and briefly describe the background to each of the items and then ask persons in the audience to state what their views are about each of these more detailed aspects, that may help us all to get the discussion going.

Let me touch upon dispute prevention and one of the more important questions in the context of dispute prevention has been the following. You register a domain and generally you go and fill out a web site form applying for the domain name. And these forms generally ask the applicant to identify who he or she is and to state their address and e-mail contact. This is an important piece of data particularly when a conflict arises to enable the claimant to actually get in touch with the domain name registrant. If you want to claim against somebody, you must know who that somebody is and how to get in touch with him. Now, in some of the registration procedures not that much attention is devoted to the question of, first of all, whether those contact details are actually provided and, second of all, whether they are reliable. Now, the question that I would like to put to the audience for comments is whether in your opinion, when a party applies for a domain name, whether there should be an obligation on that party to provide accurate, reliable and up to date contact details? Do you think that would be important?

(Mr. Velok László, private patent attorney): My name is Velok László and I am a private patent attorney in Hungary. It would be a very important thing.

(Mr. David Muls): Now, assuming that those details are provided, who do you think should have access to them? Everybody?

(Mr. Velok László): No, with limited access, authorized by the Internet provider.

(Mr.....................): But, does that mean that if I am an individual or a company and I want to find out who owns a particular domain name that I should be able to go to a registrar or to have access to a database and find that information out? Is that what you are saying, that I should be able to make a request to some organization who then goes in its files and how public should this be in your view?

(Mr. Velok László): I think it would function as a special organization, but for everybody. It is not open.

(Ms. Esther Dyson): Why not?

(Mr. Velok László): Do you think about spamming?

(Mr. David Muls): Okay. Maybe we can summarize the situation as follows. There is one gentleman in the audience who believes that a domain name registrant should provide his contact details, but that those contact details should not be made publicly available for instance on a web site so that everybody can see them. He suggests that, I could imagine in your thinking, that the domain name itself would be publicly available so that you could search whether there is a domain name that resembles your trademark and if you see that one of those in your opinion infringes upon your trademark, you are then saying that then you should be able to go to the registrar and then that company would provide you the contact details for the person in question. Now, this is an important discussion and there are, I think it is correct to state, that there have been other views expressed by trademark owners who say what is required is a publicly accessible database including contact details. So, it would be more open than the gentleman suggests, that is to say any registry would have a publicly accessible database and you would be able to search on that database as a trademark owner and find the contact details. I would like to see more views in the audience on people who are either in favor or against such an open system. I can see a gentleman saying no and I would like to hear what he thinks.

(Mr..............): Thank you very much. I am ..................... from the Hungarian Patent Office. I think the database of applicants or claimants for any kind of domain names would meet the same problems as trademark registration or any other IP registration forms. So, I think a centralized office having a registry of all the relevant data of the owners of domain names would have the same problem as a trademark registry let’s say. So, the trademark registry that clarifies the data of the claimants and I think under the Trademark Registration Treaty there is no opportunity for the relevant officers to verify whether this address of the applicant, the name of the applicant and so on are correct or not. So, to be short, I think it would be necessary to estimate the number of the possible conflicts that would arise between domain names and trademarks so I think no concentration of the data would help with this. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

(Mr. David Muls): Is there anybody in the audience who would be in favor of a publicly accessible database that anybody can go to and actually read the contact details? Maybe we can have a showing of hands. Who would be in favor of a publicly accessible database where anybody can go to that web site, search on the domain name and find the contact details for the person in question. Who would be in favor of that? Of a publicly accessible database? Who would be in favor of a more closed, closed maybe a too negative word, of a more limited system where only for instance the domain name would be publicly available, but to get the contact details one will have to address a specific request to an entity. Who would be in favor of that? There are many people who have no views on this question. Okay, but the majority view still seems to be that it would be better to have a publicly accessible database. Can I ask anybody from the audience to, because it seems to be the majority, to explain why they think this would be better.

(Mr. Valentin Pepeljugoski, Assistant Director, IP Protection Office, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia): Thank you very much. I am Valentin Pepeljugoski from Macedonia Patent Office. I think this registry book is a public book and all these registry books for example, the trademark registry book and the court registry book of the firm names are public. Also we are in the area of dispute prevention. If I see that somebody has a similar domain name with my trademark I would like to sort the dispute out by my ownself and I need the relevant data of this holder and I would like to solve the problem without any court, without any mediation or arbitration. That is the reason I raise my hand. Thank you very much.

(Mr. Balás Martos, Chairman, Hungarian Internet Providers): My name is Balás Martos, I am now the Chairman of the Council of the Hungarian Internet Providers to this registration Process, this is the Hungarian registry de facto. I would say that if someone goes to the Internet in my view this person or this company will want to be open to the public, will want to be publicly seen, they don't want to hide themselves so I don't know why this data should be kept a secret. But, I would go a step further and ask why are these trademark databases not public so that an applicant can come and see what he wants to register. If he is in conflict with a registered trademark or the owner of this trademark, then they may have some agreement. And so if I want to register a name in good faith, I can't be sure that I won’t be in conflict with a trademark and you should think about not only in one country, in one country it may be easy to go to the public office and ask them. But if I want to make a registration let us say in Latvia, I wouldn't know how to handle this question. It would be very easy to look for it on the Internet, whether there is such a name close to my wishes. Thank you very much.

(Mr. David Muls): Just to comment on the suggestion about the openness of a person who wishes to have a web site. I just want to tell you one of the opinions, not necessarily a majority opinion, but an opinion that was expressed at the San Francisco regional consultation where a person said that in certain cases it might be desirable for a person not to be known because he might use those pages for political manifestos for instance. And if he had to disclose his identity that may lead to some problems in his country. That was just an example of why, in the view of some persons, this may be an issue. Another reason that has been mentioned is, apparently in the United States there have been some problems, I am not very well aware of this, but where people who for instance got divorced and if one of the parties knew the contact details of the other party would constantly be able to follow that party. So, just to tell you that there some persons who state that it could be better not to have or at least in some cases not to open the contact details up. Is there any other view on this question? Then I would suggest we hold a coffee break and then after the coffee break we could attack the next important question, that is to say what would happen if those contact details are found not to be reliable. (coffee break and end of tape)

(Mr. David Muls): We can resume the session. I would suggest we go on until one o'clock and then break for lunch at that time. This morning we discussed in some detail the question of the desirability of having contact details available and the extent to which these details should be made public. With your permission I would like to move to the further question on this particular point, that is to assume a third party has got these contact details of a registrant and wishes to get in touch with the registrant because the third party is of the opinion that the domain name infringes one of his rights, and that it turns out that these contact details are not at all reliable. This is often the case in registration procedures affecting domain names particularly those that are quite flexible. To give you an example, I think we had the following situation a few months ago at WIPO. A person had registered in his or her name the domain name wipo.net and provided as contact details 'I hate WIPO'. So obviously you don't know who to contact. Somebody who was very happy with our Process I am sure.

(Mr...............): It could be anyone.

(Mr. David Muls): Yes, it could be anyone.

(Mr...............): Have you checked our staff on list?

(Mr. David Muls): Yes, we have and I think we actually solved the problem now the name is in our possession. But the question really is the following. Assuming that the contact details are not reliable, what should happen? Do you think that in that case after reasonable attempts to get in touch with the registrant, should it be possible for the domain name to be canceled even if there is a web site linked to it? Should that be the sanction? Anybody in the crowd having a view on this? Who believes that the sanction should be cancellation of the domain name? Raise your finger. Who believes the sanction should not be cancellation of the domain name? This is posing a great challenge.

(Mr.............): Ask somebody why they have no view.

(Mr.............): Is there anybody who does not have any view here?

(Mr.............): Well in fact is it possible to make an intermediate solution. In this case you shouldn't revoke the domain name, just strike out from the Internet, to drive the address from the Internet service. So, in about two or three days there will be somebody will complain about that and then you have the contact.

(Mr. Geert Glas, Chair INTA Internet Sub-Committee): Maybe to put it a little bit in perspective, if you look at NSI now, you can ask NSI to put a domain name on hold. You say there is a conflict here and when you do that NSI will write you and will say that's fine but do provide me, for example, with your own trademark registrations which you think are violated. And also provide me with evidence of all reasonable steps you have taken in order to make sure that the domain name owner is aware of your complaint. And then you have to show that you sent it by registered mail. But maybe they did not pick up the letter. But, still here is the evidence that I sent by registered mail and often if there is a web site I did send one or two or three e-mails to it and also I had no reply. So, you have to provide evidence of all reasonable steps that you have taken to make sure that the domain name owner is aware of your complaint.

(Mr. David Muls): Any observations? Okay let us move to another issue which has proven to be a difficult one. Close call I would say about the question of whether this would be a good measure or not. There is the idea of introducing waiting periods. The basic idea is the following. Now, when you register a domain name that domain name becomes active very quickly, usually a matter of days. One thought would be to do the following. When a domain name is registered, that request for the domain name in question is made publicly available, probably through a web site. And it is not put into effect for a period of 30 to 60 days, then everybody in the world including of course the trademark owners have the opportunity to review those pending domain names and lodge an objection. If this waiting period passes and there is no objection, the domain goes into effect, but if there is an objection then there is a procedure to solve the problem.

There is a tension here between two elements which we have alluded to in the beginning. On the one hand the speed of the Internet and on the other hand the desire to introduce some more protection for trademark owners. We would like to solicit the views of the audience on what would be the right balance to strike. Do you think such a waiting period would be a good thing and why do you think it is not necessary etc?

(Mr. Alexandru Christian Strenc, Deputy Director General, State Office for inventions and Trademarks, Romania): My name is Alexandru Christian Strenc and I am the Deputy Director General of the Romanian Patent Office. Coming from the direction of lets say the trademark community. My opinion is strongly in favor of having a waiting period for registration of a domain name. But this idea comes at least from the following consideration. When I am making a trademark registration, well I am paying a lot of money for that, I am obtaining a national protection and more than, that this protection will be warrantied after a certain period of time let’s say one year. Now, if I am asking for a worldwide protection for domain name through the Internet my consideration is that at least we should have some safety period, some waiting period to see if there is no such conflict. I said at least, because once again somebody who applies for worldwide protection through the Internet needs probably more than trademark protection. That is why I am saying yes I am for a waiting period to solve the possible conflicts. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you very much. Anybody else in the audience who wishes to make a comment on that?

(Mr. András Szász, Adviser, Hungarian Patent Office): My name is András Szász from the Hungarian Patent Office. I work in the patent administration so I am not an expert on that issue but I was thinking that two conventional terms or functions are involved in domain names. One, the normal address function, the postal address function or the telephone number function which can be kept in secret. The other, the commercial function the trademark function. And if we do not divide or distinguish these two functions maybe in the course of the registration too, will these problems arise? Because I think someone will give false data as you mentioned for example for political reasons. Or, I would like to have secret my telephone number if possible. So, maybe the registration of these two functions can be distinguished and different processes apply in different cases. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you. I would like to throw an idea on the table with regard to the waiting periods. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that NSI registers about 5,000 names per day. Now, imagine NSI registers 5,000 domain names per day. If you add to that a waiting period of 30 to 60 days some people will argue that, that completely changes the dynamics of the system. We don't take a position as to whether that opinion is a valid one or not. But that is certainly what some people will say. Now, I would like to hear from the audience whether considering that extreme volume of domain name registrations whether that in your opinion has a bearing on whether waiting periods should be adopted or not, or whether for you that does not make any real difference? Maybe the gentleman who was in favor of the waiting periods would like to comment on that?

(Mr....................): Yes, my opinion is once again that probably first of all we should like to have a strong quotation for a domain name before to have a quick protection. This is my consideration. Well, I am in favor of deleting the 30 to 60 days but to eliminate as much as possible could create a possible conflict of the trademarks.

(Ms. Esther Dyson): I just have a question about the waiting period. Which is, is it simply a matter of time or what would happen during the waiting period? To me that seems more interesting than how long it is.

(Mr. Donald Heath): Well, there are a couple of thoughts on that. Two possibilities, a waiting period where nothing happens and they just simply wait. Another possibility is that you have a conditional authority granted for a period of 30 to 60 days that can be challenged and that at the end of that period if you’re challenged successfully you lose it or if unsuccessfully you get it. So, at least you could start but there is some risk in that too. If I could go on, because I was going to ask to speak on this anyway. Regarding the volume of names that are registered, when we first started this whole debate back almost three years or two and a half years ago at least, we had a very large public electronic debate on this subject. And there were some arguments that developed over about a month or two period that broke down into literally a cost benefit analysis on this. Of the thousands and thousands of domain names that are requested and registered very few ever come into conflict. Let’s say its one per cent, it isn't one per cent it may be one thousandth of one percent that actually come into being. So, to cause everyone to wait 30 to 60 days, when you do an economic analysis on it, it says it’s insane. We had originally recommended in our proposal to have a waiting period, and it was overwhelmingly analysed out by the populace. And it was only later when the U.S. government got involved with their Green Paper and so on that this resurrected itself. And I will admit that if you are in the Internet world, the term IP stands for Internet Protocol, that is all anybody ever thought about it. And so now, the discussion is still always IP in the last year, but it is intellectual property. The people that we talked to in the last year are mostly lawyers in on this subject. And they are, in particular, corporate lawyers and their goals of course are to protect the trademarks of their companies. So, we are hearing a lot about that again and it’s actually come back up about a waiting period. I think there is merit in protection not only for the intellectual property owners, but the domain name owners and if they can in fact do something initially to prevent their name from later being usurped by someone, maybe even an intellectual property owner who has as much right perhaps as the domain name owner, but if they can be afforded some protection through a waiting period, great! It is just that the problem is that you do put a severe penalty on 99.999 per cent of the people by requiring that. And that sort of comment has been bantered around for a couple of years now.

(Mr. ...............): Well I think that this would be technically possible… It is not so easy on the .com, but it is probably more easy on the national top-level domains or other areas and as you said this should not mean that the name can't be used during this period. There are also some domains where rules are not so strict but someone wants a very quick and final solution there can register not directly on the top-level domain but somewhere else and so if he has the opportunity to get on the Internet, as I understand this name is something of more value than coming and getting to the Internet, being contacted via the Internet. So, these people don't need to go to the Internet but they require extra value for having a very precious domain name. So, it makes sense to have some waiting period or to make some further steps for this. But, the main question is if we do that, does someone lose the right after that to challenge this name? No, then what if during this period will someone challenge this thing, then should the applicant not be allowed to use the name or what? Then there can be some highjackers who claim this and that, and that name is for me also legal and probably ask for some money not to do that and I don't know what will be the gain from this procedure.

(Mr. Geert Glas): I want to make two points. One is that I think in the end when we talk about top-level domain names, generic ones, international ones or the national ones, the country codes of most industrialized countries, even with my trademark hat on, I am convinced that people would work out a reasonable solution. Be it a short waiting period or no waiting period but strong safeguards and procedures etc. I have not that much doubt about that. Besides as some of you may know we have seen in the past agreements between a number of countries and organizations, Turkmenistan is one of them. The .TM space which was allotted to Turkmenistan, where the number of Internet users is still somewhat limited, Turkmenistan made an agreement with an English company whereby they could take care of the .TM space. And that English company then wrote to a number of trademark owners saying wouldn't it be interesting for you to have a .TM web site and of course TM stands not for Turkmenistan but for trademarks. We see the same thing with .TV now, which I think stands for Tuvalu. We have the same with .AS which stands for the American Samoa islands etc. So, you have an amount of potential abuse there. And I am very confident that if at some point I have a conflict under the .HU that there will be a procedure in place whereby if I am the bona fide trademark owner in the end I will have a chance to defend myself. I am not so sure that those procedures would be in place in China or in Iraq, or you can pick any number of countries, and I think in the end, I think for the trademark owners the danger is not so much in the procedure not being a hundred per cent right in a number of countries or in the international domain space, but in having some countries in the world which become safe havens for people who want to abuse the system and be sure that there will never be any procedure whatsoever in that particular country to attack it. And I think that, that is a major concern.

The second point I wanted to make, David, is that you’re rightly saying we have a momentum going. I mean there are these thousands of people who have .com registrations and can you all of a sudden change the game, that's what you are asking. And I accept that point of view partially, because you don't want to push it all aside and say we will create the world anew, you can't do that. On the other hand, I think one should not be fatalistic either and say, well we have got so far there is nothing we can do about it. I think a number of people specifically outside the U.S. still think that a better use can be made of the .US country code. Some of you will know the Ministry of Economic Affairs, has now launched the request for comments in the U.S. asking what should we do about .US, and shouldn't we follow the examples of a number of countries in making more use of that. I think if the United States would come to a different type of view in respect of their .US domain space that may considerably change this area. So, I think we will see changes and so we should not take it for granted. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you very much Geert. I just want to clarify that obviously when I mentioned the 5,000 registrations per day, I am not taking a position and none of us are as to whether that's a good or a bad way of doing it. It was just for an illustration to get the discussion going.

(Mr. Mihály Ficsor): Now, I am getting interested in this. I am a technical specialist. I know also as a specialist, many, many things, but not too much copyright. So, I would like just to know whether the burden on a registrar is increased by this waiting period. Each day, you have 5,000 registrations, and then the final registration takes place let’s say in 30 days, again of the 5,000. The real question is does the registrar have to do something twice or not? And The majority of the countries represented here are from the so-called transition countries, with the exception of Turkey, Malta and Cyprus. They are also perhaps in transition from somewhere to somewhere but not like the majority, hopefully at the end of a 40 year transition period from capitalism to capitalism. Now, in this 40 year period these countries learnt how to live in the world of compromise and I think that from these countries some good ideas may come also in this field. I refer to a joke as to the way compromises were worked out in this period. You know Kader (?) in this country who was the First Secretary of the Communist Party was very, very popular for a period. Because everybody thought that he is very clever in this sport pretending to do something but not to do something, or pretending not to do something and doing something. So, there is a summit and he invites Reagan and Brezhnev and he organises say a trip to the Play palata (?) which is the famous lake here and they arrive to a crossroads and the driver, they are all in Kader's car asked Kader which way to go to the left or to the right? Kader hesitates and Reagan says of course you should go to the right Mr. Kader. And Brezhnev said no, Comrade Kader no, you have to go to the left. And the driver asks again which way to go Comrade First Secretary and he said you know what to do, you should signal to the left and you should go to the right. Now, that is why I asked the question whether there is no legal solution. I think that everybody would be against the idea of denying connectivity just because there is a grace period or a safety period. But wouldn't it be possible not to deny, but to give first a number which is not so human friendly for a while to use it. It may be very long but the connectivity would be there and then you are given the name after that. I am very naive and I am out of the business, I am a copyright lawyer, that is why I ask this naive question.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you Mr. Ficsor, yes Ken please.

(Mr. Ken Fockler): I don't know how much you want to extend views and things on this but just to paint a bit of a picture on some of this. I believe it is helpful to ask these questions, but we are asking them in a kind of an isolation and we haven't yet seen an awful lot of things that I think are going to impact the situation. So, a waiting period in order to do what? A waiting period hopefully after many technical things have been done, perhaps that the forms that have been filled out that have been automatically checked. That there are databases that exist, there are famous brand databases, there are trademark databases, there are a number of things that have proceeded so that something has happened or may happen. And in the world of electronics the waiting period could seem long and it was only taking a few minutes. So, those are some of the things that I think the environment we have to anticipate. And I also think that we will have search engines and directories such that we may not even know or care what the URL really is. I don't these days, when I use the Internet I don't go up and try and remember what I saw on a billboard and write down www.Ford.com or something. If I am interested in automobiles I look up automobiles, if I am interested in charitable organizations I will find the Ford Foundation in some other fashion. So, I guess I am saying it is good to have these discussions, but I think hopefully someday in the future we will look back on all this and think that it was a trivial fuss. I also love to tease my friends at Network Solutions and remind them, as somebody did in San Francisco, that the .com was at one point in the early history in the Internet a very useless, worthless top-level domain because the Internet had an acceptable use policy and it was to be used for academic and other purposes so that the trash and other stuff, miscellaneous things ended up in .com. Some of us tend to think it still is a wasteland and I love to kid them, and once we have these procedures worked out we would have a .pure and a .real or a .rational, so that when you go to these areas you understand that you are going to an area that has followed some procedures and you will get to where you want to go. Because in many of the hearings that we have had, one of the biggest concerns from some of the commercial and legal people was that if you put in your Porsche or your Warner Brothers but you did not end up where you wanted to go, so, you were concerned about the dilution of your company's image and many clever people were also using that as a way of switching you into sites that were perhaps obscene or something else. So, the desire is to be sure you got to where you want to go. So, I think, as I say, it is helpful to get views and ideas on a specific subject like a waiting period which helps to focus our minds on what is the concern. But the kind of environment that we are probably going to be dealing in is going to be impacted by many other elements.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you Ken for rightly reminding us that as we said before, it is very true that the Internet will develop and that many, many of the problems that we are currently facing may change, other problems may arise and it is important to maintain some perspective in this whole discussion. Picking up on a point that was mentioned by Geert Glas and I would maybe ask the floor to discuss the following item.

The general tendency of the White Paper and the Process is to formulate recommendations regarding dispute prevent resolution etc. with a particular focus on the generic top-level domains, that is to say the .com, the .net, the .org etc. Geert Glas has mentioned that one risk that could exist is that if one or more other top-level domains do not conform to at least the basics of such policies, then they would be safe havens for activities that are perhaps less than laudable. The question is therefore the following, to what extent does the audience believe that at the national level the ccTLDs also should adopt such policies set by the corporation in whole or in part? Are there any feelings about this in the room and particularly from the persons who are actually in the national registration business? Thank you.

(Mr..................): Well, we would be pleased to have some guidelines and have recommendations of course. It does not mean that every such recommendation can be realised in a country where there are independent laws and organizations and so there is not a common world regime yet. And you have to consider that there may be different rules and regulations in different countries which may prohibit a very equal procedure. But some general rules, some general recommendations would be welcome and as I said there may be some difference between these top-level domain procedures because there are a different amount of domains that you should register. And in a top-level domain I think this is something which is national and so it may have sense to have some different rules. But also some different recommendations for generic and the country code domains are welcome. And I am sure that we will consider whether to adopt what is possible from this.

(Mr. David Muls): Any other comments on this particular point? I see may people talking in the audience to the person sitting next to each other. Unless these are private matters I would strongly urge you that we would all benefit from your opinions, so please don't only discuss it with the people that are sitting next to you, but let us share it all together in the audience. I think the atmosphere is sufficiently relaxed now that we can do that. Is there any other comment on dispute prevention? Are there any other measures that you may have in mind that you feel would be useful to try to prevent as much as possible the disputes from arising?

Okay. I suggest we move to the next question, dispute resolution. In line with the activity and the speed of the Internet, although people are not in unanimous agreement on this, but certainly there is a large group of persons who believe that relying solely on the national court systems to resolve disputes regarding domain names which in some cases involve international corporate parties from different jurisdictions, and considering the speed at which courts move and the associated costs, that having the courts as the sole venue is not sufficient. That there is a need for other procedures that would allow a more effective and a faster approach to resolving those disputes. Does the public have any views on whether they agree with that or not? Do you believe it would be a good thing to have other procedures in place, whatever those procedures may be, via arbitration, mediation, administrative procedures that come in addition to court litigation in order to be able to challenge a domain name? Who in the audience would be in favor of having alternative procedures as a possibility? Two persons. Somebody wants to make a statement? Who would be against having alternative procedures available?

(Mr. Donald Heath): David, "alternative" does not mean instead of?

(Mr. David Muls): Yes, I will clarify that.

(Ms. Esther Dyson): Very briefly, it seems that alternative dispute resolution that was standardized would be one way of overcoming the difficulties of all these different legal regimes.

(Mr. David Muls): Don reminded me that I should clarify a point. Clearly the prevailing view is that those alternative procedures should not replace court litigation. So, how it would work is that a third party who believes that a domain name infringes his or her right would be able to choose whether to go to a national court to rectify that situation or whether to follow another more flexible administrative arbitration procedure to get the appropriate remedy. Having clarified this point maybe the audience has some views on this?

(Ms. Margit Sümeghy, Head, Legal and International Office, Hungarian Patent Office): Thank you very much. My name is Margit Sümeghy, Hungary. In principle I think that I agree with dispute resolution settlement outside the court but I have not been able to attend the morning session completely so I don't know what resulted then, but I have in principle nothing against this outside court dispute resolution. But I am afraid that until there are very clear legal rules, internationally accepted, on what is the situation when there is a conflict between domain names, trademarks and whatsoever, then dispute resolution outside the court would be very difficult. So I am not sure whether the time is right to start such possibilities. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): If you permit me, I would like to ask a follow-up question to that. The question is the following, do you think that, that's radically different in a national court system? Do you believe that in a national court system context, if one party is from a different jurisdiction that there is a sufficient legal infrastructure to adequately deal with these problems? Or do you also believe that in that court system you are basically struggling with the same issue that is to say it is still developing? If you think that is correct, why do you then think that the courts would be better equipped than the ADR procedures when they are both dealing with the same problem essentially?

(Ms. Margit Sümeghy): No. Thank you, I am absolutely not of the belief that the courts would be in a better situation, but I have doubts whether a legal practice can be created outside the courts, so that is my thinking about this.

(Mr. Donald Heath): I just wanted to emphasize what I think might have already been stated and that is that at no time would any procedure outside of courts preclude court. So, you would not only have the option of going to the court system, but, with the exception in the case of arbitration I guess, you would always have the opportunity to throw aside any alternative dispute resolution procedure and go to the courts. And the purpose behind an alternative dispute resolution procedure is to be more in harmony with the attributes of the Internet, which is very fast paced and instantaneous in its operation and so on. And it affords a way of making something effective that is in the sense of resolution, it is effective it is very efficient and it is inexpensive compared to what a court could do. So, we say look, there are ways you can do this quicker, better, faster, cheaper let’s say, than through the courts. But it does not take away your right to use the courts. The Internet is changing our lives in every way and if we can look back a hundred years from now and say gee, we did create international law, we did not know we were doing it but that was the seed of it and maybe that's not bad. But that is not the intent.

(Mr. David Muls): I would like to throw another thought on the table in this respect, which has to do with enforcement. Let us imagine that a person in Latin America has registered a domain name, and he or she is a cybersquatter, and has registered a domain name that clearly infringes upon the rights of your Hungarian company. And that person has registered that domain name in the .com top-level domain. The registry is located in the United States, it is NSI. Now, the Hungarian company wants to sue this Latin American person. The Latin American person is not conducting any business in Hungary, in Europe he has no connection at all. He is a smart fellow who knows that the Hungarian company wants this name and is maybe willing to pay some money for it, but he is purely based in Latin America. That would I think place a burden on the Hungarian company to start proceedings in Latin America to get enforcement in the United States. Is this not a problem in what may be potentially a manifest case? I think it; s probably fair to say that in cases of cybersquatting nowadays, considering the precedents in the world, would probably be knocked out relatively quickly by a national court. But here we have procedural issues and issues of jurisdiction that may perhaps put some obstacles in the way of the Hungarian company to enforce its rights.

Another approach might be, and again I do wish to stress that we are not saying that this would be the better approach. It is just another way of thinking about it, is to say in such cases the registry, that is to say the company of NSI, has foreseen in its registration agreement a specific administrative procedure whereby a third party anywhere in the world can always contact the same person or entity who will have jurisdiction so to speak for that particular problem. Plus, NSI would agree that any decision coming out of that entity that would solve those disputes would be directly enforced in their database. I would like to hear from the public and also from the lady who made the point about national courts, whether those considerations are not relevant in considering desirability of other approaches that would come in addition to national court systems. I am sure there are lawyers who are familiar with these types of issues in the room and I would hope that we get some reactions on this.

(Mr. Geert Glas): I can give a very clear example which I encountered. There is a Belgium company which is called Inter Brewitser, it is a big brewing company. I think it’s the fifth largest brewery in the world. A year and a half ago they bought the Canadian brewery Labat which is based in London, Ontario. Three months later they wanted to register Interbrew.com and they found out that Interbrew.com had been registered by another Canadian brewery and that, that registration had occurred exactly on the day on which a number of Canadian newspapers for the first time announced on their first page that the Belgium based Interbrew was likely to buy Labat. It’s a nice story because in the end they assigned the domain name to Interbrew free of charge. However, we went through a difficult exercise with Interbrew in saying if they are not willing to give up this domain name, which they believed they had very good reasons to say it was registered in bad faith because they had never used that name, they were not intending to do it, they did it exactly the day that Interbrew entered the name in the market. They asked, they do not give it up what should we do? Sue them in Belgium? The Belgium court may well not be competent. Go to Canada? Yes we could do that, however as a Belgium company that would be at a higher cost. And even then we would then have a Canadian judgement, but NSI in its internal rules may well require us to say well why don't you have it confirmed by a U.S. judge and then we will take it into account in our books so to say. So, it was a quite complicated route from the litigation point of view and that I think is an area where, yes if there are alternatives which are certainly cheaper and as a lawyer I will be the first one to stress that certainly cheaper, quicker etc. is better. It’s a good point, I put one caveat on there. I think the lady asked whether we aren't inventing a little bit international law, and I think she has a point. Before arbitration you could not make very simple rules. However, there may be a defense in saying you may have a trademark, but you have not used your trademark in a normal way, so maybe your rights are nul and void. Now, at that point you will see that trademark case law albeit harmonized more, and more still differs from country to country as to what constitutes, for example, normal use of a trademark. And at that point I think we will have a problem, the deeper we go into the substance of trademark domain name law, the harder it will become for the arbitrators or for the mediators or for the administrative panel people or whatever you call them to deal with those issues, because there are a lot of question marks there, and still lots of differences between the legislation and the case law in different countries. So, I think I waver a little bit between saying, yes we need those procedures, but on the other hand they may venture in some areas where today we do not have a uniform situation.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you Geert. Any more views on this?

(Mr. András Száz, Adviser, Hungarian Patent Office): I should like to mention that maybe it would be useful to have an expert from the given nation in this international authority who can decide something in these domain name cases. Because there are linguistic or other habits which cannot be taken into account by international authorities. So, that would be my proposal, that in the given case from the given nation maybe registered experts can be involved in the procedure.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you for this comment. I think this is something that for instance in a contractual arbitration would be something that would happen quite normally where the Panel would ask an expert from a procedural country to give its views on the law. So, it is something that could be taken into consideration as a possibility. Can I get more views on the question that Geert has mentioned, which I do believe is one of the core ones. If it were to be decided that an alternative dispute resolution system would be useful, principally for enforcement and procedural reasons, how far should that procedure go? This is the essence of Geert's remark. One view is to say that should be restricted to what perhaps may be described best as clear instances of abuse, where it is pretty obvious that there is a bad faith activity on the other side. For instance the clear cybergrabbing case. Another example would be these names which would lead you to a sexually explicit web site. So, those types of cases, where let’s say the balance of the rights between the two parties are so obvious that it would be easier to solve the problem, versus situations for instance where you have as we said in the beginning, Porsche the car company versus Porsche the library who both want to have the name. I would like to see whether the audience believes that if an alternative dispute resolution system is put in place whether it would be wiser to restrict it to the clear cases of abuse, or whether it should also apply to situations where you have a more equal situation between the parties. Any views on this? Who would be in favor of having a more restrictive approach? And who would be in favor of having a broader approach where even if the rights of the parties are equally balanced there would be a possibility of following the ADR procedure. Who would be in favor of this?

(Mr..................): Two, zero.

(Mr. David Muls): The slight majority is in favor. There are a lot of non-voters.

(Mr..................): Let me just make a short comment that I think that this dispute resolution by arbitration will be very good for the intermediate period until a clerk can decide. Because, I don't know how it operates in other countries, but in Hungary you may have three to five years until you get the judgement. So, you have to do something in between. So, this could be legal advice for the registry and for the participants as to what to do in the meantime until this is finally and clearly closed by a court decision. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you very much. Any other comments? Okay, following up on this point the next question could be, if such alternative procedure is in place and a decision comes out, but then one of the parties is not happy with that decision and goes to a national court and gets a decision that is contradictory to the first decision. What should happen? What do you think should happen then? Should the first decision by the alternative body stand? Or should the second decision by the court overrule that first decision and where would that be your position for a decision coming out of any court from any country? Where are the lawyers?

(Mr. András Száz): Thank you very much. András Száz, Hungarian Patent Office. So, I don't want to repeat my colleague, but I think this is not the first point to be solved. I think without the harmonization of the effects of a court or an arbitration proceeding this question cannot be answered. So, I think, similarly to arbitration, I think there is an agreement between parties that they will go to the arbitration court. The members of the arbitration court are elected in some manner, so I think there are rules prior to an organization, prior to its inception. So I think a conciliation would be very, very helpful without any international rules or compulsory rules. But, I think it should be called conciliation and harder and better work could be enforcement of the positions. Thank you very much.

(Mr. David Muls): Thank you. I think this is a very valid point and many persons who know the registration business well would say that as a first cut in trying to resolve these conflicts it is useful to try to get the parties to talk to each other and often that by itself can lead to a solution. So, mediation, conciliation without any legal effect may be quite a constructive and simple approach to the problem and cost effective.

(Mr. Donald Heath): In fact the fellow who just spoke has written an article and I am sure he wouldn't mind if, since it’s a public document, if I quoted it. It is in a pamphlet called 'Role of Copyright in the Cultural and Economic Development of Developing Countries: The Asian Experience'. And the quote I am going to give you is "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present, the occasion is piled with difficulties and we must rise to the occasion, we must think anew and act anew". Sounds appropriate.

(Mr. David Muls): Absolutely. Now, let us think a little bit more on the question of mediation. Who do you think should be involved? Who should do that mediation? Who should try to get the parties together to talk to each other and who should try to practically resolve the problem? In some cases currently it is the registrar himself who does that. At least in one very well-known, not necessarily .com but very well-known top-level domain, the registrar spends a lot of effort and money also in trying to mediate and resolve domain name conflicts. Does the audience believe this is a good approach? Or does the audience believe that it would be better to leave that type of mediation and conciliation activity to an entity other than the registrar itself?

(Mr. Ken Fockler): David, it’s Ken Fockler. Could I just ask you to clarify, the terms registrar and registry have been intermixed a fair amount but I think in the last little while the intention is that whoever is setting policy and controlling the top-level domain like a .com or a .shop or whatever might come or .AQ, that is a registry. And the individual person, small company, ISP, your neighbour, yourself might be the registrar that goes and gets the name registered. And I think it is going to be very important as we go forward that we be sure we know which term we are talking about and where the onus is placed and who is doing what.

(Mr. Donald Heath): Just to further clarify it. An easy way to think of a registry versus a registrar. A registry is the database or if you like the clearing house. A registry is a natural monopoly it’s only one. It’s a clearing house, essentially, to make sure that two registrars don't register the same name. And I think by just saying that I defined what a registrar is as Ken says.

(Mr. Ken Fockler): You have been using registrar when you meant registry I think in my terminology.

(Mr. David Muls): Yes, my apologies for that lack of precision and thank you for pointing it out. Now, I would like to come back to the question. Do you think either the registry or the registrar should do this? Or do you think they should be totally uninvolved in any aspect of the registration business? What do you think is the best approach? I see a gentleman who is basically in the business who has some views on this.

(Mr..................): Yes, the proper terminology is that it is the registry who is involved in making the rules and supervising the rules on the top-level domain. So, I think that the registry itself is such a body who should do this arbitration or mediation, but I think that this organization could be closely related to some other one or some lawyers or some persons or some legal companies who have a sense of these problems on the Internet and who can do this job. And there could be a list of possible companies or lawyers who could be chosen by the partners and then this person or this legal company can do this business I think. And the registry, as I said, should do mediation in between. When this is a final decision, okay. But when there are legal disputes after that as well in this intermediate period, one should do something and that will be what this outcome is I think. That is probably the best solution, not to mix these two roles of doing mediation and keeping some database and then supervising some rules. You should change the rules if they are wrong, but you should supervise the rules. Thank you.

(Mr. David Muls): Okay. Somebody else? Is there anybody else who wishes to say something about this issue? Yes please.

(Mr. András Szász): Maybe it is a crazy idea, but I was thinking that is it possible to reach the same home-page from different countries I mean from where you call the home-page. Maybe you can use different names as in the case of the trademarks it happens that sometimes you can't use the same trademarks’ because for example there are problems. And I think technically it can be solved, then in this case the harmonization of the laws, the worldwide uniqueness of the domain name wouldn't be necessary.

(Mr. David Muls): Following up on this suggestion, I would like to put this on the table. Let us imagine the situation where two companies or two parties have a legitimate right to the name. For example, Porsche the car sellers and Porsche the library selling books. One idea would be to have a gateway page. So, you would enter Porsche.com in your browser and you would go to a first page that says watch out, there are in fact two companies that are related to this name. The first company is the car sellers and the other company is a library, please take care if you want to go to one or the other. There are tactical examples of this. Scrabble has a system like that because they have a conflict with some other party and I don't know whether it still exists, but I have seen something similar for Delta, the airline company and Delta the other company. So, this is certainly a constructive approach to the problem which can easily be implemented if both parties agree to do that. Now my question is, I would like to have some views on whether there could be any imposition of such a solution? Whether anybody, be it a court or an arbitrator or whoever, could impose that on both parties as a solution? What do you think? Is this a good idea or not a good idea? I see people looking quite intently when the idea is discussed and then when we are asking for the views there are no reactions. I am sure there are people in the audience who have ideas about this and I think we should try to draw them out.

(Ms. Margit Sümeghy): Thank you. I think that the possibility of having such an agreement seems to be excellent, but to impose it, according to my view, is absolutely absurd because I am only thinking in the terms of trademarks and it is rather traditional in the field of trademarks to have the same marks on the market with the consent of the parties concerned. But, if they don't have an agreement between themselves it does not work and I can't imagine it in another manner in the field of domain names. However, I am absolutely not an expert in this field, but those structures seem to be so closely related that I think that it would be very dangerous to have very different approaches in case of domain names when in case of trademarks. Thank you.

(Mr. Ken Fockler): I guess we are getting close to lunch. But I would like to maybe pose a question as well, assuming you are coming mostly from a trademark mind set and based on the hearings I have attended, I would really like some feedback on trying to envision a system going into the future. Several minutes ago I kind of jokingly, but only half jokingly suggested that we may have future systems and although we are mesmerized by .com right now, I can envision a time when we may laugh about it or joke 'do you remember .com'. People may shake their heads and say, 'no what is a .com'. We are mesmerized by it now, but if we had good systems and you had some top-level domains that were following some procedures that you were comfortable with and had good look up systems. I am interested in knowing from a trademark standpoint, because things can't be totally scaled up to solve everything, would you be comfortable enough that your name is in these top-level domains and people are getting to where they want to go, there is a minimum amount of confusion but there is still a swamp. You still may have to deal with the country code that is selling anything. Do you have to have such rigidity that you will have to have a system that protects your marks no matter where they are in any old domains?. So, I think that is one of the things, as from Don's quote, that you may have to think about for the future. I am happy that I can find my company, my customers get to me through .firm, .shop, .pure, .rational, .good-guy whatever it is and don't go looking for me in .swamp, .sex, .xxx if you want to go there you know what you are going to find. So, that is a question I will leave with you.

If I may, I find also in all these hearings it is useful to try to define the terminology "cybersqatting." To me there is an activity going on that says people are registering domain names they are not using. That could be called cybersquatting. Lots of people are doing it. Some are entrepreneurs who are thinking up great ideas and great names, for example, .brewmasters, .whatever or something might be a nice name maybe somebody very clever might want to use that or might sell it to somebody, but it is not a trademark necessarily. Are we against that kind of thing? How much entrepreneurial free spirit is there? Companies like Porsche who presented to us in California are saying in order to protect their marks they have to think of all sorts of things. So, they are going away and registering hundreds of names although they are not using them. They use Porsche.com and Porsche this, but they want to make sure that Porsche.mechanic, Porsche.parts and Porsche.other things are reserved. So, we may have to be careful again in that maybe the terminology "cyberpiracy" indicates maybe something done for illegal purposes or bad intent. Have we as a society decided that the act of registering a name that you are not using falls under the definition of cybersquatting, do we immediately assume that's bad and illegal and shouldn't be done. That last part is a little bit more of a philosophy on some of the challenges and things we come up with. The first part was, are you willing to accept that maybe there is a swamp out there with some of your names showing up. As long as there are top-level domains where the name is valid and there is no confusion, people get to where they want to go. Thank you.

(Mr. Geert Glas): There is one famous recent example, Ken as you know, and it is Alta Vista. When the search device was set up and was named Alta Vista there apparently was already then an Alta Vista.com in existence registered by a pretty small company who just thought that, that was a nice name to have. And I think in the end the Alta Vista search engine ended up for a long time with an address which was a little bit different it was Alta Vista digital.com. And actually the Alta Vista.com had on its Alta Vista.com web site a little icon saying if you are looking for the search engine that is not us, that is digital and if you click here it was a hypo-link you will get there. And they lived for a long time in co-existence that way and actually in the end digital ended up buying the digital.com domain name. I think Ken, that, that is an example of the guy who thought Alta Vista.com was a nice name, registered it and sold it for several millions of dollars. He was a good entrepreneur. It was a good move and you could only applaud him for doing that. But what did he do? He came up with a nice name, registered it for himself. Maybe he did not even think that somehow somebody may get interested in it. But there is nothing reproachful in what he did. And I think nobody wants to suggest that there should be a limit on little companies, even individuals from dreaming up nice names and registering them, and hoping maybe that one day somebody will be interested in this nice name. I don't think that anybody is suggesting that, at least I am not in favor of it. However, what people are opposed to is when somebody visited the United States five years ago and says there is this new very trendy shop and its called the Gap, so I will come back home and I will register and I will take out a trademark. People used to run to their national trademark office and register Planet Hollywood and register Coca Cola and Forty-Five etc. And clearly in trademark law there are rules about that which speak about a bad faith registration. And I think that is what people try to impose also in the area of domain name registration. The question of are you willing to share a page with somebody else who has the same domain name, I think the answer is it depends on who it is. If you are Apple Computers, maybe you don't mind sharing a page with Apple Records and asking people what do you want. However, I think a lot of companies would not want to share a page with companies whose business is not very politically correct. And often I think there is a little bit of confusion in a sense, because people say well yes there cannot be a confusion because if you type in Whitehouse.com for a long time you arrived at a pornographic site. And clearly nobody was suggesting that, that was an official U.S. governmental site, so there is no confusion possible. I think from a trademark perspective that is not really the issue. The issue may be is that if you have Hungaro Cum Yung a famous trademark and you typed it in. You said Hungaro Cum Yung.HU.com and you stumble across a pornographic site surely you know its not there, but some people will be tempted while they are there saying, well maybe we will have a look. And the thing is that maybe next time a Hungaro Cum Yung passes by on the highway you will think of the other site. And I think that is what some people are afraid of. It is not so much the confusion, they are afraid that good will invested in their names and their names may over time become a little bit of a joke. And I think that is what some people are afraid of. So, sharing sites, sure, depending on who it is.

(Ms. Esther Dyson): This is not a long statement, it is actually just a question which does not require an answer other than in the comments. Separately from the top-level domains there are of course the country domain systems and I am curious if anybody in their country has a system that is uniquely different from anything else, that might be able to provide some insight into how it works or does not work. So, it is a request for some information. Thank you very much.

(Mr. David Muls): Okay, maybe we can pick up on that after the lunch break unless anybody has any reply to that now? Okay, I suggest we break for lunch and we reconvene at 3 o'clock. I will just briefly say what we are going to discuss two more topics, protection of famous marks which is a very interesting topic usually soliciting many views and the introduction of new gTLDs. So, we hope to see you back here at 3 o'clock. Thank you very much.