Re: [wg-b] me thinks thou dost protect too much ...

["Milton Mueller" <mueller@syr.edu>]

Based on real statistics

We don't have ten thousand disputes per million names.

After three months of UDRP, we have exactly 577 disputed names.

The number of com/net/org registrations during that period is not known for
sure, but can be estimated at somewhere between 160k and 400k per week.
Thus, most conservatively, disputed names in the UDRP are coming in at a
rate of about one quarter of one percent of all registrations in
com/net/org. The other figure would give you .0005, or 5 percent of 1
percent.

That ratio will decline going forward because these disputes are handling
names registered between 1994 and late 1999; as the backlog is cleared the
number of UDRPs filed can only decline (if the number of TLDs is held
constant). The NSI drp followed a similar pattern, declining in both
absolute and ratio terms from 97 to 98.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hartman, Steve"

> The percentage of cybersquatters may be small, but the absolute numbers
are
> large.The one percent rate is ten thousand registrants per every million.
> But that aside, no one would argue that we shouldn't have laws against
theft
> or pollution because the number of thieves or polluters comprise only a
> small percentage of the population.

This is a rather poorly thought out argument. The laws exist. No one is
arguing that we shouldn't have laws against trademark infringement or even
certain blatant forms of cybersquatting. The issue is whether we need to
re-engineer DNS and create major legal risks to free expression and small
business to combat a miniscule problem.