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[discuss] Manditory Arbitration vs Optional-WIPO Recomendations

All,

  I an changing the subject of this thread as the discussion has
wondered
off toe subject of the original thread...

==================

  Now to Kents comments.

  I did not experience the same difficulty that Kents seems to
be having with Michael Froomkin's suggestions to the WIPO
final report and recommendations as to recognizing readily the
"Tweaks" to which he mentioned in a previous post on this thread.
See: : http://www.law.miami.edu/~amf/commentary.htm
for more details...

  In respect to the change of subject line of this thread, form the
many legal luminaries that I personally have consulted and in my
own experience, mandatory arbitration doesn't work on a practical
level.  We found this out in the state of Texas for instance, as at
one time not so long ago Mandatory Arbitration for all civil matters
was mandated under state statute.  That changed after three
years.  Why?  Well it is not truly implimentable on that sort of
scale.  There were so few properly trained and available licensed
arbitrators, that the case backload got to be too large to adequately
manage for the court system and the waiting time alone was damaging
to such an extent that the law was eventually seriously modified.

  I believe as do many legal minds that I have personally spoken with,
that the WIPO recommendation for mandatory arbitration on a global
scale is pure folly, for these same reasons.  The scale of likely
arbitration cases would drown the ecommerce business and likely
initially kill off the non-commercial sector of the internet industry.

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number:  972-447-1894
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208



On Tue, Jun 29, 1999 at 08:44:44AM -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
> 
> I suggest you read my report: http://www.law.miami.edu/~amf/commentary.htm
> It's all 1.  There's an executive summary if you need terse.

The executive summary does not describe the tweaks.  And, while the 
body contains many suggestions for changes, it does not indicate 
which ones you consider the "tweaks".

If it is difficult for you to reread your own text and find the
tweaks, imagine how it must be for someone else. 

One could also read Harald Alvestrand's comments (thanks for the
reference), at http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/wiponote.html, which *are*
terse.  I quote part of his statement relating to the mandatory
dispute policy:

  To make a long story short: I support the mandatory dispute
  resolution procedure. 

  I think the value of uniformity is overrated, but having this
  procedure in place is much better than the one NSI has been using
  up to now. 

  The process as specified gives any party accused of or victim of
  cybersquatting a fairly early "day in court", at a much more
  reasonable price than any normal court procedure.  The point has
  been made that this procedure forces people to be subject to a
  process which is strange to them; my somewhat acerbic comment is
  that the normal court system is already totally alien to 95+ % of
  the population of any given country. 

  But this is what I'd call a "second attempt"; we should be ready to
  reevaluate the process when it's been at work for a year.  "Rough
  consensus and running code"....

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain