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

["Sebastian Ricciardi" <sricciardi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The principle of  "first come, first serve" bring on some problems detailed
in the WIPO report. But it's also true that this criteria is so far, the
only reasonably way to prevent instability and unpredictability in name
allocation.

I share Vittorio's feeling about IGO names. Shouldn't be priority rights
here, and a  revised UDRP should allow IGOs to fight and prevent misleading
or bad faith usage of their names. However, there is a more efficient
solution in having a new TLD for IGO (dot IGO ?).

I don't really feel that geographic names, International Nonpropietary
Names, Personal Names and Trade names should have a special protection or
any priority.

As Wendy pointed out on her message dated april 10th, at-large Internet
users are both domain name registrants and users of  the domain name system.
As users, they are well served by names that are not confusingly similar,
enabling them to differentiate the names they encounter and minimizing
typographic or semantic mistakes. But as registrants, they should have the
right to register any name if their do no harm (or results in a conflict
with higher interests) and act in good faith.

In the Personal Names issue, is seems to me that, if I ask to register
"sharon-stone.com" of any of its variants, I'm less entitled to the name
than Mrs. Sharon Stone herself. However, there could be a hundred Sharon
Stones in the world (please tell me where they are !). It doesn't feel
correct to asign a priority to one Sharon Stone, but to all of them (or non
of them?).

INNs and Trade Names shoudn't be discuss beyond the UDRP.

Regards,

Sebastian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vittorio Bertola" <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Denise Michel" <denisemichel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <alac@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: [alac] WIPO2: Advice to board due on 12 May.


> 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/ <-----------------------
>