RE: [ga] Interesting WIPO ruling re: NewZealand.biz

[Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Rodrigo  Orenday Serrato wrote:

> I strongly disagree; the naming of States is a matter of public interest,
> which supersedes private interests in the DNS.

I'm not willing to agree to that.

Countries have ccTLDs to do with as they please.  That should be the
beginning and ending of their sovereign-related powers over names in DNS.

Some countries may have sold their ccTLD name to a private concern.  For
example, the United States has done this.  If a country made a bad 
bargain, that's their concern, not ours.

Nations are, of course, free to exercise their national powers over DNS
related acts of people and entities that occur within their jurisdictions.

As for "public interest" - I tend to prefer that "the public" say what is
in their interest and what is not.  Considering that ICANN is banishing
the public from ICANN's decision processes, I would say that ICANN is not
in a position to make any credible statement about what is or what is not
in the public interest.

> ccTLDs help individuals refer their websites...

The Internet is not the world wide web.  The internet is a much larger
entity in which the web is but one service out of many.  In addition,
please do not confuse URL's with domain names, the two systems are quite
different.

If one wishes to try to defend DNS as being some sort of global uniform 
name space, I suggest that one apply the following tests:

  - Location invarience: Do names have the same meaning no matter where 
uttered?

  - Client invarience: Do names have the same meaning no matter who utters
them.

  - Temporal invarience: Does the meaning of a name, once a meaning is
attached, remain unchanged with the passage of time?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then the naming system is 
neither global nor uniform.

Content management systems have knocked out the first two kinds of 
invarience for DNS and DNS itself has never tried to meet the third kind.

> ... but they are no DNS substitute for the name of a country

With internationalized DNS, one has to ask whether the ASCII forms are 
"the" name of a country.

		--karl--


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