Re: Domain Names and Trademarks

["Martin B. Schwimmer" <martys@interport.net>]

Mr. Lovell wrote:

>This seems to be a semantic difference in statistical terms, i.e.,
>"mean,"
>"median," and "mode."  The "mode" in terms of hits would clearly be
>yahoo
>and the like, but in terms of the "mean" of general usage KathrynKL is 
>probably right.

My point is that commercial use is significant so that rules regarding the
DNS should acknowledge the necessity for brand protection.  I
simultaneously acknoweldge that there is substantial non-commercial use of
the Net and that a consensus position could take the form of totally
non-commercial name spaces with different registration and dispute
resolution procedures.





>
>And as it happens, Alta Vista had to buy the altavista.com domain name
>from a previous registrant for some $2.3 million, as I recall from the
>public accounts.  Evidently the original registrant had a legitimate
>right to the name in the trademark sense, and was in no sense a cyber-
>squatter, but yet so much mileage is put on the issue of a company 
>being able to use its very own name as a domain name that we get these
>ridiculous situations. 


This was a special situation.  DEC (in retrospect, foolishly) didn't take
into account that in many cases, domain name and brand become synonymous.
They put their search engine at altavista.dec.com, rather than starting
with a brand new SLD.  Once it became apparent that people were looking for
ALTAVISTA at altavista.com, and the relationship broke down between DEC and
Altavista, DEC was over a barrel.  

I don't blame NSI for this one and you're right, this was not a piracy
situation.  You cannot protect all people all the time from their own bad
decisions.




  if Network Solutions had kept .com to mean commercial,
>.org to mean a non-profit organization, things would have been better,
>and
>I agree. 

Except for-profit registries are not motivated to enforce rules.  


(I would personally like to see four-letter domain names, one
>of
>which would be .porn -- we are not in Windows 3.1 any more -- that could 
>then easily be blocked.) However, what is to prevent anyone from
>registering 
>a non-commercial domain and then blatantly using it for commercial
>purposes? 

Rules which are enforced.


>Who wants to try to police the net?

Who wants to try to police newspapers, magazines, flea markets, television,
radio, carrier pigeon?  That is not an argument for the lack of rules and
rule-enforcement.

Nevertheless, I think we can come to some consensus.