Re: [wg-c] Unofficial report on L.A. meeting

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

Hi Roeland,
	From the way you write, it would seem that you are talking from a
point of view where you consider IOD to be "owner" (in all practical terms)
of .web, and that anything that gets done with .web would have to be done
with full agreement from IOD. If I've got that wrong, please point out
exactly where you stand, as I just don't get it otherwise.

Against that point of view, I don't believe you can hold (note: HOLD, not
just register it, but actually keep it in a meaningful manner) a trademark
lock on common words with a dot in front of them (but we'll probably have
more info in the upcoming IOD<->CORE shootout). But lets imagine for a
moment that IOD *DOES* "own" .web as an abstract. Fine, ok, then ICANN can't
do anything with .web without consulting with IOD. However, from there
taking that "ownership" over 4 ASCII characters (a dot+"w","e","b") to mean
that it can be forced down the throat of the ICANN root-servers seems to be
going a bit far I think.

If it were to be determined that IOD *does* "own" .web, then seeing that the
type of gTLD that ICANN wants to run (which is where ICANN retains the
rights), would not be compatible with IOD's .web, the result is that it just
doesn't go into ICANNs root.

And Roeland, seeing that you are so keen on the ownership matter, I can't
see how you will deny that ICANN "owns" the root (with oversight from USG).

Yours, John Broomfield.

> > Behalf Of Craig Simon
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 1999 6:34 AM
> 
> > 3.	What is to be done?
> >
> > Finally, I offered what I now call the "the principle of the more feasibly fixed
> > fiasco." If and when new gTLDs are added, I believe it would be wiser to start
> > with non-profit/cost-recovery gTLDs rather than proprietary gTLDs.
> >
> > The underlying presumption is that if either approach is later deemed to be
> > mistaken, it would be easier to parcel off a non-profit registry (say, by
> > auction) rather than to take the registry from a private owner. In short, the
> > public resource blunder would be easier to fix than the proprietary blunder.
> 
> False and FUD, a taking is difficult, if not near impossible, regardless of
> the profit/nonprofit status of the organization. Where do y'all get the idea
> that this is otherwise? I know that Kent floored this first, he's wrong and
> no one seems to notice. If you don't own the asset, you can't sell it to
> anyone else. It's called theft, whether the legal owner is profit or
> non-profit (commercial corp or Catholic Church) you can't just walk in and
> take it from them. If you could, it would apply to both cases evenly. The
> only difference is that the for-profit might afford bigger teeth to bite you
> with. But, relative in-defensiveness doesn't make it morally right. Since
> when did we become a society of thieves?
> 
> > The last four years of experience with NSI provides
> > incontrovertible proof of
> > how difficult it can be to get a powerful proprietary
> > registry to modify its way
> > of dealing with the Internet community.
> 
> They are an independent entity, like you are Craig. From a slightly
> different perspective; you own a plot of non-covenanted land (you own it
> free and clear, no conditions, no zoneing, no covenants, and it's paid-for)
> and you start building a house, then some schmuck decides that they don't
> like your house and start demanding changes. By pure happanstance, you
> happen to like some of the changes yourself and incorporate them. After
> completion, you decide that you'd like to rent one of the extra rooms out.
> That same schmuck decides "Oh may Gawd, we can't have that person generating
> revenue from their own house! Let's take it away from them because that
> would be a blight on society." Now, take that same scenario and pretend that
> you are a pastor and decided to house homeless people and this house is in
> one of the "high-dollar" areas of your town. Would this change anything?
> Absolutely not! A taking is a taking and it is still called theft. That
> asset is still theirs and it is NOT yours.
> 
> Even in the presence of zoning ordinances and covenants, you still can't
> just walk in and start selling parts of the house off without legal action
> (much to the chagrin of many eco-nazis) and when that action is favorable
> some compensation us ALWAYS granted to the original owner. In other words,
> you ALWAYS pay for the privelege of taking that action. Whether the owner is
> non-profit or for-profit is always considered irrelevant. This is current US
> law and is well practiced and covered by much case law.
>