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[process2-comments] RFC-3

To: process.mail@wipo.int
From: Michael Froomkin
Subject: RFC-3
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 16:07:34 +0200

Name: Michael Froomkin
Organization: U.Miami School of Law
Position: Professor

Here is the executive summary in text format:

1. WIPO's proposed expansion of the UDRP is

* premature;
* procedurally illegitimate and
* substantively wrong.

It is premature to propose expanding the UDRP until a host of very substantial problems with the current system have been solved.

2. It also is wrong to propose 'exclusions' that would remove words from the namespace on the basis of an arbitrary set of criteria. If this arbitrary list of factors is adopted, we can expect many others to follow.

3. In many cases WIPO is proposing solutions to "problems" which it is unable to prove exist, and which do not exist, or are so minor as to fail to justify the highly intrusive proposals advanced by WIPO -- especially when one considers the precedential effect these proposals could have.

4. WIPO is proposing regulations which vastly exceed the current international consensus of the protection due to intellectual property. In so doing it seeks to make de facto law in an undemocratic and illegitimate way. It is striking that the nation whose laws would most frequently be undermined, overruled, or ignored by the current WIPO proposals is the United States. WIPO's proposals amount to little more than an attempt to impose European intellectual property rules on the United States without the consent of the US Congress and the US political process. To the extent that WIPO's proposals reflect a central planning concept of the 'optimal' use of some domain names, or the idea that domain name uses should be curtailed to serve particular social policies, this reflects an orientation antithetical to free market values.

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