Re: [ga] An open letter to Louis Touton

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Hi John.  What "right" would anyone infringe?  Jamie

On Sun, 29 Oct 2000, John Palmer wrote:

> Mr. Touton,
> 
> This is to inform you that AGN Domain Name Service, Inc is asserting legals rights to the top level domains .USA, .EARTH and .Z. 
> 
> We have operated a registry for these top-level domains since late 1995. If you check the famous "Postel List", you can see that we were one of the first applicants for new top level domains in late 1995. At that time, we established our registry and have been in operation since that time taking registrations in .EARTH and .USA. In March of 1997, we added the .Z top-level domain. 
> 
> ADNS disagrees with the direction that ICANN is taking the Domain Name System and we do not choose to participate in the ICANN process. Instead, we are
> supporting alternative root server networks and will continue to do so.
> 
> Although none of our three top-level domains have been entered into the ICANN application process at this time, we would like to inform you that we are
> asserting legal ownership of these top level domains. Any attempt to add them to the ICANN controlled root zone under the control and ownership of 
> any other party will be considered by ADNS to be an infringement of our legal rights and we will take appropriate action. For ICANN to assign these
> top-level domains to another party in the ICANN root would dilute our service mark and damage our company financially. In addition to this, it would also
> fragment the internet as there would be two different versions of the same top-level domain.
> 
> In spite of Ms.Dyson's claim, alternative root networks take great care not to allow fragmentation by allowing competing versions of top level domains into their root zones if they are already in existence in another root zone. We would expect ICANN to take the same care and consideration to avoid fragmentation. There is room for all of us on the internet. Please respect our rights to operate our business and respect the rights of alternative root networks. 
> 
> If you have any questions, you can contact me by e-mail. You may consider this an "open letter" and can publish it if you wish.
> 
> John P. Palmer
> President
> AGN Domain Name Service (ADNS), Inc.
> Chicago, IL
> 

--------------------------
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology, http://www.cptech.org
love@cptech.org, v. 1.202.387.8030, f 1.202.234.5176

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