RE: [ga] Alt.root'ers resorting to spam?

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

|> From: steinle@smartvia.de [mailto:steinle@smartvia.de]
|> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 2:39 AM

|> With the TM "sex.shop" for tanning oil (LoL) he wanted to 
|> reverse hijack my domain name registered with new.net (I got 
|> some threats via e-mail and phone).
|> http://www.new.net/search_whois.tp?domain=sex&tld=shop
|> 
|> But as long as I don't sell tanning oil on www.sex.shop 
|> (LoL) I won't lose my domain. ;-)

This is getting to be a royal PITA! www.sex.shop doesn't resolve here.

|> What should this analogy tell you?
|> Don't waste your money at the TM office. ;-)

It's not an analogy, it's a case study <g>. The fragmentation, started by
the ICANN created colliders, is getting to be inconvenient. Rather than
mediating and negotiating TLDs, ICANN is stubbornly declaring it's own TLDs,
not caring what happens to the rest of the Internet or the fallout from
those decisions.

The thing is, the USPTO changed their minds, wrt trademarking domain names,
about 6 months after a legal mechanism was developed and proposed, to
protect TLDs regardless of root zone. I still don't agree with the ruling. I
think that it was a serious mistake, by US DOC. IMHO, it was done
specifically to remove legal protections from, at that time, non-US DOC
TLDs. One of the major reasons that it was a mistake is that the sword is
double-edged. It means that US DOC TLDs have no such protections either. I
also can't imagine WIPO (as much as I dislike them) having gone along with
this as quietly as they have. The whole thing smells of rank stupidity,
rather than malevolence. Whomever came up with that ruling, did so for
reasons having nothing to do with business, internet or otherwise.

In the long run, what's going to do us all in, is the fact that we can't
protect our business.
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