RE: [wg-review] 11. IDNH Vote now - all those in favor

[Sotiropoulos <sotiris@hermesnetwork.com>]

1/13/01 10:46:08 AM, Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com> wrote:

>That was established, in law, a long time ago. Look at Copyright law, Patent
>law, and Trademark law. There is no such thing as publically-owned
>information. 

In other words, what you are saying is that Domain Names DO constitute property then, and are not simply a service...?

>Now, before you get too excited, realise that Crispin and
>myself have been opponents for a long time now. Yet, this is one of the very
>few things we agree on. This is why those whom have the most freedom of
>speech (FoS), also are their own ISPs. Those with the least FoS, are AOL,
>MSN, JUNO, customers (all three practice content censorship and state so in
>their AUPs). 

What about content censorship by making a claim to "own" the rights to a specific Domain Name then?  What if I believe that madonna.com should 
contain information about the Mother of Jesus Christ (and also the selling of rosaries and bibles) and that the same should apply for corinthians.com?  is it 
not a type of censorship to force the people who were there first to give up their rights to those domains?  Of course, if you own the hardware, you can do 
what you want with the English language mnemonic tags/desigantions, huh?  This is one tricky proposition and displays a lack of understanding of what  
the real issues that are relevant to the DNSOs are!

>Those of us whom are, in fact, our own ISPs, buy transit, in
>bulk, from our upstream, at business rates. Many of us are multi-homed and
>have our own ASN's as well, they also buy their IP addresses directly from
>ARIN/RIPE/APNIC and negotiate their own peering. In short, we are not
>content censored, because no one CAN censor our content. We own our own
>presses, as Kent says.

But what gives anybody the right to claim that they own the characters of a language, it's syntax, and semantics?  How do you own the bits and bytes 
that travel through your network?  people pay for the service of transmission, and you provide that... OK, but what about the linguistic issue?  Is not 
language Public Domain?  

>But, this isn't free, any of it. It all $costs$. Even USG public information
>is owned by the USG, which is owned by its citizens, and which *may* be
>given out to others freely. Its publication is paid by the USG. Freedom of
>speech is one thing, ability to publish is yet another. Also, let's not
>confuse market forces with "rights".

Seems to me that's what many of the "owners" of trademarks are doing!  the market is based on supply and demand.  Also, first come first served!  If you 
go to McDonalds and they've run out of hamburgers, how does this entitle you to somebody else's which is bought and paid for?  Simply because your 
friends call you by the nickname "Hamburglar"?!?!

Let's put aside the antics and talk about the real problems here!

Sotiris Sotiropoulos
          Hermes Network, Inc.




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