Re: [alac] WIPO2: Advice to board due on 12 May.

[Thomas Roessler <roessler-mobile@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Even the WIPO2 report admits that the recommendations on country
names and IGOs would go *beyond* protections which are already there
in existing international law.  

In other words, ICANN is apparently being asked to extend the UDRP
(which was intended for the "clear cases" in the first place) to
cases for which no reasonably uniform international legal basis
exists today.  Bluntly,

             WIPO AND THE GAC ARE ASKING ICANN TO CREATE
                       NEW INTERNATIONAL LAW.

That alone should be sufficient to recommend against any kind of
adoption (and maybe even consideration) of these recommendations, on
the grounds that this would exceed ICANN's mission.

Besides that, some of the recommendations in general don't look too
good to me -- e.g., the argument about .int (and just that) being
the appropriate place for IGOs seems to have a lot of merit, as
opposed to giving, say, "who" a special meaning in all gTLDs.

If you look at the wording recommended by WIPO (and GAC) more
closely, then you'll notice that there are some places in which the
drafting seems to be either badly or ingeneously broad (for instance
Annex 1 to Gurry's letter, rec. 1.B) -- if (or is this actually a
"when"?) these recommendations make it to the policy-development
process, there'll be a lot to be done.


Discussion of the recommendations will be on the GNSO Council's
agenda for tomorrow; I'll report on any new insights gathered on
that call.  (I don't expect the recommendations to be broadly
supported by the constituencies.)


Regards,
-- 
Thomas Roessler                 <roessler-mobile@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>





On 2003-04-16 16:02:11 +0200, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> From: Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Denise Michel <denisemichel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: alac@xxxxxxxxx
> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 16:02:11 +0200
> Subject: Re: [alac] WIPO2: Advice to board due on 12 May.
> Envelope-to: roessler-mobile@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Delivery-date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 16:02:32 +0200
> X-No-Spam: whitelist
> 
> On Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:06:28 -0700, you wrote:
> 
> >The ALAC received a note on this on 10 March (see below).  As with any item
> >pending in ICANN, the ALAC may submit comments, regardless of whether or not
> >the Cmt. receives an official request to do so.
> 
> I've been reading some comments here and there on this matter, and
> these are some points that I think we could make (subject to deeper
> understanding of the matter):
> 
> - IGO names are very common strings ("ITU", "ISO"...) that are already
> registered in most TLDs; a revised UDRP should allow IGOs to fight and
> prevent misleading or competing usage of their names, but not to gain
> priority rights on such names or to win the domains against current
> registrants (except in cases where bad faith usage is already
> happening);
> 
> - similar considerations apply to country names (though I'm less
> strongly convinced on this - there is some merit to the idea that
> country.anything is reserved to the national government, though there
> is a significant problem with existing registrations, and it might
> simply be too late for it);
> 
> - more generally, in no case existing good faith registrations should
> be transferred (unless when the current registrant has given his/her
> free consent) as this would open the way to unsolvable debates to who
> has "more merit" to a given string; first come first served is the
> only reasonably objective criteria that can prevent instability and
> unpredictability in name allocation, and applicable national and
> international legislation on unfair competition and trademark usage
> already exists; UDRP is for clear bad faith cybersquatting cases, not
> for "more merit" discussions;
> 
> - perhaps the most appropriate solution could be the creation of new
> sponsored TLDs for official IGO and country domains, and/or the usage
> of the existing .int TLD; in such specific TLDs, these organizations
> could get their names reserved;
> 
> - an indication of specific cases in which problems have been arising
> would really help in designing the best remedies; for example, one of
> the few cases that are publicly known is that of a national Red Cross
> branch which forgot to renew its domain and found it registered by
> someone else who redirected the website to a porn site; in this case,
> if one thinks that additional protection (more than the newly
> introduced redemption grace period) is necessary to prevent "ex post"
> inappropriate usage, such protection should be offered to all
> registrants and not just to some categories.
> -- 
> vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
> -------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------