Re: [ga] An open letter to Louis Touton

["Dennis Schaefer" <apsdps@mediaone.net>]

Greetings, John  --

Re:  "...  the ICANN root would dilute our service mark and damage our
company financially..."

As the first manager of the EARTH TLD, are you claiming  a service mark for
any and all registered
names in your domain (e.g., NBC.EARTH)? Or just  for EARTH?  Or are  you
claiming that ICANN's action constitutes damage to your company's name
(ADNS), even though the damage doesn't originate in ICANN's use of that
service mark?

Any one of these seems like a potentially scary extension of trademark law
over free speech (which has
fallen onto pretty hard times under ICANN).

In spite of this, I'm sympathetic.   ICANN's action with respect to
pre-registration demonstrated
that ICANN intends to operate as global governing body -- free of the usual
restraints imposed by civil
liberties, due process, ... yatta yatta.

Regards,

-----Original Message-----
From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
To: John Palmer <jp@ADNS.NET>
Cc: ga@dnso.org <ga@dnso.org>
Date: Sunday, October 29, 2000 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: [ga] An open letter to Louis Touton


>
>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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