RE: [wg-review] Re: NC

["Joanna Lane" <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

> Roeland Meyer wrote:- Entitlement to the IP does not confer an obligation
to publish, as near as I
can tell. The legal owner of the name is free to not publish it.>

On the basis that not all disputed names materialize as active URLs after
transfer to the new registrant, I would have to agree with you, but don't
you think it's ironic that the Names Council has not addressed this matter
in detail in nearly 2 years?

I can't get away from this issue sorry. It suddenly seems the most important
item on the agenda, affecting all of the previous and forthcoming topics and
particularly the NC. I'm sorry if this sounds a little harsh, but it
actually defies credibility that any one of the 19 members of a Names
Council of a Domain Name Supporting Organization could actually convince
either the GA or the BoD that they were functioning effectively while openly
admitting there has been no common understanding throughout any process of
what it is exactly they are being asked to advise upon. It just doesn't pass
the reasonable person test, sorry.

To this WG's credit, DNDEF was identified as a significant issue early on
and now I am wondering how the NC could possibly recommend anything to the
BoD with any authority and in particular, 6-10 new gTLDs, when clearly they
did not have a common understanding of what these were. Please correct me if
I am mistaken, but either all 19 members agreed to each have their own
private definition on which to base their decisions, or they agreed to
ignore the issue, in which case they would have no alternative but to base
their decisions on what is their own private definition. Consequently, I
would be interested to know from each of the 19 what they individually
understand a gTLD to be exactly.

The cost of not having a proper DNDEF all this time, I suspect, is that some
businesses might have been spinning wheels to uphold the sanctity of
unworkable terms for what may prove ultimately to be no tangible gain,
depending on the DNDEF that finally reveals itself to be, which inevitably
it will in due course. That would be unfortunate.

Equally, attorneys must be granting options to assign the rights to exploit
domain names on the internet, having little or no idea as to the nature and
extent of IP and creative work inherent in the naming system itself and
therefore what exactly are the exploitation rights that are being assigned.
Of course they have a muddled group of inconsistent judgements to guide
them, but I understand these have never been reviewed as a whole to identify
problem areas. It seems that everybody is left to fend for themselves and
some at great expense by trial.

From the perspective of the ordinary man in the street, they see parents and
teachers making photocopies of books to hand out to pupils, while moms make
copies of well known cartoon characters from which fancy dress costumes and
birthday cakes are crafted, these all being good old copyright infringing
activities indulged by almost every family. This is our heritage, so let's
not forget that copyright and trademark law can be selective and that it is
not essential to be entirely possessive. While today, I don't see any great
difference in attitude from the general public to this issue,  all of a
sudden, this wonderful new medium, the internet, with infinitely more access
to information and space to keep records and bring ordinary families
together, right now cannot even allow a domain name for a photo album of a
pet dog who happens to be called Disney, that is without renaming the poor
creature or burying the URL in third or fourth generation host site full of
banner ads, or risking being dragged before the UDRP having registered
Disneypet.com. By that logic, the petowner would be wise to rename the dog,
or he could be sued for calling the dog Disney in the first place. This is a
ludicrous situation to bring before the general public and must be resolved
on DNSO initiative, in whatever way possible, so as not to appear a laughing
stock before the world.

Just a few thoughts.

Regards,

Joanna



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