[nc-udrp] Authoritative Texts of UDRP Decisions

["John Berryhill" <john@johnberryhill.com>]

I find the silence on the question of copyright in UDRP opinions from the
DRP representatives to be somewhat baffling, as the question has taken on
some urgency.  It's a simple question which merits a yes or no answer.

As of today, the plug appears to have been pulled on eresolution.ca.  Hence,
there is now no authoritative source of the text of any eResolution
decision, and all of the links from the ICANN UDRP index to eResolution
decisions are now broken.  This may come as some relief to certain attorneys
in New York who were sanctioned by a federal judge this month for having
brought the cello.com UDRP proceeding in violation of the final order in
_Cello Holdings v. Lawrence-Dahl Companies_.

I have become aware that several individuals have privately backed up copies
of these decisions, and have offered to make them available to me on the
condition that I not identify them, since these individuals do not want to
be accused of copyright infringement.  This is a ridiculous way to practice
law - citation by Napster.

On the upside, though, I guess we are all free to amend the text of these
decisions as needed to fit, since nothing cited from an eResolution decision
can be checked against an authoritative text.

The ICANN-DRP agreement, which requires DRPs to post their decisions, is
obviously flawed in that it fails to contemplate the possibility of a DRP
going belly-up.  While I realize that a similar vulnerability exists due to
ICANN's failure to implement a registar data escrow system for domain
registrations, surely it is not a great burden for the authoritative text of
UDRP decisions to be maintained by ICANN, rather than in potentially
unstable proprietary databases.

WIPO posts an express disclaimer on the website which permits copying.  The
NAF website has no terms of use at all.  CPR-ADR and the Asian DRP coming
online are too insignificant to worry about.

Tim?  Does the NAF claim a copyright in NAF UDRP decisions?

Jim?  Does the NAF require you to sign a release when you write one?