Re: [wg-c] breaking up (names) is hard to do

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

(...)
> I would agree that changing a domain name does hurt goodwill, although I
> wouldn't go sofar as to say it is a customer confusion issue per se.
> Search engines take care of most of that confusion easily, especially given
> that names like "delta" or "continental" or "genesis" are so common that
> one usually finds a search engine helpful to find the "right" company.
> However, this is also the same problem when a domain name is reverse
> hijacked.  Other businesses and individuals, some using the same domain
> name for years and establishing goodwill and customer familiarity are
> forced to change names.  I think that problem would be lessened if we had
> enough gTLDs.
(...)

I know it's the biggest example around, but would you mind telling me how
you would go about a domain name change for "aol.com" seeing that there are
millions (literally. What was it, 14 million customers last count?) of
people with a FRED-BLOGGS@AOL.COM type email address?
Millions who have written out business cards, publicized their email
addresses etc...
How would you deal with that? The answer is that you CAN'T realistically.
For better or for worse, AOL will have to continue using "aol.com" for the
forseeable future no matter how pissed off it got with NSI.
If NSI tomorrow demands US$10million to renew "aol.com", they might get sued
by AOL, but AOL would most likely pay up in the meantime while seeking their
legal remedies (hey, you don't suddenly want 14 million customers calling
the hotline wondering why their email doesn't work, do you?).
One of the largest amongst the many BIG problems to deal with is the lock-in
that so many on these lists seem to live in denial of.

Yours, John Broomfield.