[ncdnhc-discuss] Board Positions on .ORG; Answers from V.Cerf-- full text

[Karl Auerbach]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, James Love wrote:

> Michael, regardless of what national law might be, there is still value in
> having the registry explain if there is any policy regarding how the TLD
> should be perceived, in terms of the UDRP rules regarding confusion.

I was with you until the "in terms of the UDRP"...

Let me begin with my standard into: There is a common misconception that
the net is the same as the world wide web.  If one examines only the TCP
port 80 based web offerings that one can reach via A records found via a
DNS name one obtains a potentially very restrictive view of the resources
and services that that domain name covers.

For example, a single name like "ctrc.org" (one of mine) can cover web
sites, e-mail services, voice-over-ip mapping (either via things like H323
gateways or ENUM), geographic coordinates, raw text, etc etc.

Anyone who undertakes to review, much less audit, all the aspects of how a
given domain name is used can be in for a rather long exploration.

(In many cases, even the operators of a computer don't know all the
services it may be offering.  And sometimes bad folks have loaded new
"services" onto a machine thus extending the services. ;-)

> If the TLD is designed to provide a space for non-commerical domain
> holders (losely defined), and the registry say that use of a string on
> the .org TLD for non commercial purposes was an appropriate and indeed
> an expected use of the TLD, and therefore one should not automatically
> enforce a commerical trademark in .org, this would be both helpful and
> responsible.

The commercial/non-commerial question can be very muddy.  For example,
suppose a non-profit has links on its web page to commercial sites that
pay for click-throughs?  Here in the US the IRS requires that tax exempt
entity account for such revenues as if it were not tax exempt.  And the
theatre company I work with - and which has a .org name - acts in many
respects exactly like a for-profit.  For instance it spends hundreds of
thousands of dollars every year promoting our shows.  And although we are
involved in the performing arts and are a non-profit and tax exempt
entity, we are still in the stream of commerce (broadly defined) and
really do like the concept of protecting our company's name.

But the deeper issue here is something that is akin to the idea of
goodness or badness by association.  Here what is being suggested is that
there may be some sort of legal or or UDRP-visible aura that might attach
to a domain name simply by virtue of the company it keeps, i.e. the TLD it
is in.

That has always bothered me.  My own personal preference is that actual 
use is what must be objected to or what must be used as a defense.

Over the last year or so I've been asking people whether we might improve
things a bit, at least here in the US, if the US trademark law were
amended to say something along the following lines:

No holder of a registered mark would be placed in jeopardy of losing that
mark because the holder did not obtain a domain name in any or all of the
domain name registries available to it.

(Of course, one would want more precise language.)

My feeling is that something like that might help mark owners feel a bit
less compelled to register early and often as TLDs (and subdomains of
ccTLDs) open up.

		--karl--