Re: [ga-org] First Ten Policy Questions

[Alexander Svensson <alexander@svensson.de>]

Thomas Roessler wrote on 11.06.01, 22:55:56:
> How about putting the carrot and the stick into the dispute
> resolution policy, and into the fees?
>
> First of all, we probably all agree that .org isn't the most popular
> TLD for the typical "dotCOM" - in fact, it seems that .org as, so
> far, mostly been attracting individuals and "organizations" of all
> kinds.  That is, even without being chartered, .org is kind of a
> de facto non-profit TLD.
>
> Now, instead of introducing a difficult, complex and expensive
> policy to define who may qualify for .org and who may not do so, I'd
> suggest to think about a dispute resolution policy which makes it
> unfavorable for for-profit organizations.  Instead of checking a
> policy for every registrant, just checkt it in the case of dispute.
>
> Such a policy could, perhaps, be developed along these very, very
> rough lines:
>
> - Businesses may only use the dispute resolution policy in order to
>    get the domain of other businesses removed (!) in case of bad
>    faith.

Hmmmm... This would mean that all companies would 
hold on to and keep registering their domains such as 
aoltimewarner.org to prevent individuals and non-profits 
from registering 'their' .org. (Without having looked
at the UDRP statistics, I would assume that the vast
majority of UDRP respondents losing their case are 
individuals, sometimes pretending to be a business.)
So there would still be competition between for-profits 
and non-profits in the .org name space.

> - Not-for-profits (or individuals) may use the dispute resolution
>    policy to get any domain in case of bad faith.  One may think
>    about making it easier to get a businesse's domain name than
>    another not-for-profit's or an individual's.
>
> Rationale in terms of examples: This should mean that the McDonalds'
> clan's domain could continue to be mcdonalds.org, and that the
> hamburger chain couldn't do anything about it according to the
> policy. 

I think this is what .name also plans (or at least
planned) to do: The fast food chain has to accept that
other people register 3LDs under mcdonalds.name. 

> It should also mean that Westdeutscher Rundfunk (warning:
> this is a public broadcasting institution, so it doesn't qualify
> precisely as a business - work for lawyers, I'd suppose) can't go
> for wdr.org when that's an individual's domain composed of his
> initials.
>
> It should also mean that Greenpeace can easily get greepeace.org
> when it's squatted upon by Esso.

Aside: Under the current UDRP, Greenpeace would easily 
get greenpeace.org -- they hold e.g. US, JP, CA and DE 
trademarks.

> What do you think?

I like the idea of tilting the UDRP in the other direction
for .org. 

Another possible approach would be to discourage defensive 
registrations in .org by penalizing duplication: If e.g. 
AOL Time Warner holds aoltimewarner.COM and aoltimewarner.ORG 
(we can safely assume that it uses the .com for advertisements 
and business cards), it would either have to give up the 
.org version... or have to pay an increased fee which could 
in turn be used to keep the .org price low for those who only 
have a .org (a form of intra-TLD cross-subsidy).

Best regards,
/// Alexander
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