Re: [ga] The Real World

[Dan Steinberg <synthesis@videotron.ca>]

As I have said in the past, I strongly object to raising the spectre of
Verisign (shudder!!!!) or any registry or regisrtrar 'policing'
intellectual property.  Please...its bad enough if a court has to
stumble through the minefield of domain name/trademark issues. But
Verisign? (insert your favourite NetSol horror story here...)

Simply put...if it were a simple decision whether or not someones's IP
rights were being trampled....we would not need courts. And we would not
have the barrage of apparently-contradictory court cases and UDRP
decisions that members of this list like to bring up from time to time. 
This is not rocket science. But it is complicated. And contentious. And
people charged with making these decisions in courts are trained.

I think the mere existence of decisions that appear to contradict, and
the existence of lengthly law reveiw articles that attempt to either
explain the difference or explain why the learned judge(s) have been
hallucinating....well if its that complicated...how on earth (or any
other planet) can we expect to insert 'policing' into the process or
registering domain names?
The answer is....we can't.


Besides, this is nothing new. People have been replacing 'o' with '0'
and inverting letters for years...
Go to www.micros0ft.com for a trivial example. I could dream up a dozen.
And the thing is...there is no way to know in advance...if someone using
cyrillic or other characters...isnt creating a perfectly applicable
domain name for them in their own geographic location.
Remember...Trademarks are not international. THey apply to
goods/services/somewhere. ChelseaPlumbing in Chelsea, Quebec is not the
same as ChelseaPlumbing in the UK.


The other thing to remember is, we are in the middle of trying to
automate and streamline and make the system more reliable, as in more
deterministic. what is a delete? can you insert WLS in the process? etc
etc. If you begin to consider the concept of policing IP rights...you
must recognize that it is the exact opposite of building a deterministic
system. You introduce judgement in there...and time. If someone has to
think and decide and judge...that can never be on a time clock.

is this the internet we want?


Alexander Svensson wrote:
> 
> At 22.05.2002 17:15, William S. Lovell wrote:
> >"Need to Know: ICANN CAN'T," Scientific American,
> >June 2002, p. 21.
> 
> Thanks for forwarding this!
> The "ICANN CAN'T" box accompanies a longer article
> about IDNS security risks.
> (http://www.sciam.com/2002/0602issue/0602scicit5.html)
> 
> Lauren Weinstein from PFIR says that a regulatory
> approach will be necessary to prohibit confusing names
> (e.g. homograph names, like microsoft.com incorporating
> Cyrillic "c" and "o") based on the UDRP. "But it will
> require proactive policing on the part of the registrars,
> such as VeriSign, something they have typically resisted."
> 
> Best regards,
> /// Alexander
> 
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-- 
Dan Steinberg

SYNTHESIS:Law & Technology
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