RE: [wg-b] me thinks thou dost protect too much ...

["Rothnie, Warwick" <Warwick.Rothnie@msj.com.au>]

Mallesons Stephen Jaques
Confidential communication
 
Milton Mueller wrote:

>Based on real statistics

>We don't have ten thousand disputes per million names.

>After three months of UDRP, we have exactly 577 disputed names.

I guess I can only offer an ad hoc or qualitative insight on this test: for
just one of my clients I am currently running at about 20 to 30
cybersquatting disputes for each one that gets as far as the ICANN UDRP.
For another client,  we are running about 10 disputes for each one that gets
as far as ICANN (taking into account the ICANN complaints being prepared).

Unfortunately, almost all of these names have been registered since June
1999.
  
Warwick A Rothnie
Partner
Mallesons Stephen Jaques Melbourne
Direct line (61 3) 9643 4254
Fax (61 3) 9643 5999


-----Original Message-----
From: Milton Mueller [mailto:mueller@syr.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 13 April 2000 12:11:PM
To: Hartman, Steve
Cc: wg-b@dnso.org
Subject: Re: [wg-b] me thinks thou dost protect too much ... 



The number of com/net/org registrations during that period is not known for
sure, but can be estimated at somewhere between 160k and 400k per week.
Thus, most conservatively, disputed names in the UDRP are coming in at a
rate of about one quarter of one percent of all registrations in
com/net/org. The other figure would give you .0005, or 5 percent of 1
percent.

That ratio will decline going forward because these disputes are handling
names registered between 1994 and late 1999; as the backlog is cleared the
number of UDRPs filed can only decline (if the number of TLDs is held
constant). The NSI drp followed a similar pattern, declining in both
absolute and ratio terms from 97 to 98.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hartman, Steve"

> The percentage of cybersquatters may be small, but the absolute numbers
are
> large.The one percent rate is ten thousand registrants per every million.
> But that aside, no one would argue that we shouldn't have laws against
theft
> or pollution because the number of thieves or polluters comprise only a
> small percentage of the population.

This is a rather poorly thought out argument. The laws exist. No one is
arguing that we shouldn't have laws against trademark infringement or even
certain blatant forms of cybersquatting. The issue is whether we need to
re-engineer DNS and create major legal risks to free expression and small
business to combat a miniscule problem.