For the life of me, I will never understand why greed is so important. Competition
is healthy. I have intellectual property (copyrighted material). If someone
comes along and uses part of it, oh well. If it is not copied exactly, I'm
flattered that someone thinks enough of it to want to emulate it. (I'm speaking of
graphics and website layout). As for domain names and branding, people no
longer look for businesses on the web based solely on names. They look for
content. Two businesses with the same name can coexist on the internet easily.
If there could be "confusion" the simplest remedy is a reciprocal link, agreed upon
by both. It's done all the time and can be a traffic generator for both.
Why does one special interest have to attempt to usurp all instances of a name or
part of a name simply because an agency makes it simple and inexpensive to do so?
Yes,
businesses have spent money on branding and individuals with little or no money have
expended all they have to get started. It's all relative.
When I had a particular
business in a city which I will not mention, there was really heavy competition in
the area. I decided that competition could be a good thing and contacted every
similar business in the "yellow pages." We formed an association and pooled
our talents. When one was going to close for a vacation, the others pitched
in and cared for their customers, never even considering stealing them away.
It is called cooperation. Reciprocal links can accomplish much the same thing
on the net.
If a "store" in the UK sells the same goods as a store by the
same name in the US and the consumer wants to make a choice, why not freely give
them that choice? What goes around, comes around. The consumer who is
treated well, with a good attitude, will frequent both stores and refer others.
As
I have said many times before, the internet model does not fit trademarks.
If the TM lobby were not so greedy, we could all coexist in a free and friendly atmosphere.
True cybersquatters are extortionists and should be punished as such. Persecuting
any other domain name holder who is pretty much defenseless under ICANN and UDRP
is as disgusting as a cybersquatter and should be handled as such, IMO. I used
the term persecuting, because that is exactly what it is. An entity with some
money behind it decides it does not like an individual or smaller entity holding
a similar name and attacks knowing it can win. That is persecution. In
grade school we called someone like that a bully. It's another form of extortion.
We now call it reverse-hijacking and it is happening more and more.
Let's just
put a stop to it and return basic rights to individual and small business domain
name holders.