Your opinion is mainstream, but wrong.>>You obviously
have no problem encouraging that, but you forget that
there's lots of real people
behind these corporations who don't want
to be scammed.<<
I am CEO myself
and have been "scammed" for a number of names we own
international trademarks
of. But where is the "scam"? Nowhere!
I simply said: No, we are not interested
- full stop ... and we used
another name, which we could get at a reasonable
price.
Where is the problem?
If we were to late in registering the best name
for an existing
product, we simply check how much the advertising value of that
name would be ... and offer that price to the current owner.
What's the difference
in paying 500'000$ for 20 tv spots of 30
seconds or paying the same amount for
the domain
name "bestnameformyproduct.com", if the effect in both cases is
similar?
Are
the tv spot resellers "scamming" me? Certainly not.
Nor is the seller of the respective
domain name, who simply was
quicker than we were.
The current situation is
a pure interpretation by companies who don't
mind changing the rules according
to their own advantage.
It has nothing to do with classic trademark law. No more,
no less.
>>Who gave them legitimacy? Why should the wider world be forced
to
respect the TLD of an alt-root which just made it up itself?<<
Please
cite the law saying that the creation of a new gtld
service in an alternate root
is a crime. There is none.
Well then why should they be illegitimate?
>>Do
you really think Pissant Root from Bumfuck, Nowhere can deal
with the flood of
applications that a popular TLD would get? Or maybe
they'd end up something like
"If you want your application actually
processed, send us a $100,000 processing
fee."<<
And what? You may simply use/buy another tld for the name you want
to
register and stay clear off them. If nobody pays $100'000 then they
will
change their mind quickly. If someone does, they certainly won't.
But what are
you suffering from? Hystery?
Please check prices with www.tv.
They are doing
very good, legitimate business. If I am not happy with
their prices or their
services, I simply don't use them. But believe
it or not: Their service is far
better than the one VeriSign offers.
The artificial scarcity of domain names combined
with the completely
changed trademark "laws", leads to a situation which couldn't
be
worse:
Take Neulevels dot biz:
I want to apply for names we registered
as trademarks (internationally).
Do you know how that works?
Well get $100'000
ready for each name, before you even start.
I can see your face crying: WHY??!??
Well,
because you can't really register the names, but you have to
run though a lottery
system (which IS ridiculous, but very lucrative
for Neulevel).
If you want
to get a fair chance, you have to submit at least 20'000
times. Then your chances
are about 1 : 2.5 to get the name (according
to our own statistic research).
But
I still don't know, if we get the names. That means that we are
forced to paying
$100'000 WITHOUT any guarantee of service.
If we don't get the name, we still don't
get our money back. Fair?
It's like paying $100'000 to a tv spot reseller, who
is then making a
lottery to see if he will send your spot or another one.
If
you "loose", he won't send your spot, nor will he pay you back ...!
Do you still
think ICANN is doing a good job?
You must be a fool to think that this is better
than a contract
between ICANN and an Alternate Root. If the alternate root servers
don't
work, I may simply buy new ones for $500'000 for them.
But at least I know that
I get the names I paid for.
Hopefully you can see the difference and hopefully
Mr.
Stuart Lynn is "allowed" to see it, too ...
Regards,
Friedrich Kisters