FW: Questions/Options for Protection of IOC/Red Cross Names at Top Level

[Andrew A. Adams]

KK,

One of the things that was clear from earlier NCSG (primarily NCUC)
discussion on this issue is that there is a clear majority of us who think
that whatever the merits of the two cases, they are completely separate cases
and need to be dealt with separately. Therefore the questions as they stand
are unanswerable, except for answers which throw out any and all protections
for the two sets of strings. I think that as a matter of process you should
be pushing hard for the results not to be pre-judged to be the same for the
two sets of strings.

My personal position is that although I don't like it, ICANN following the
international treaties governing the red cross/crescent/star (a smaller group
that keeps being missed - as a Bright I'm not happy that this major
international organisation is identified on religious symbolic grounds but
that's a separate issue) and disallowing registration at the top level for
precisely those strings limited by the relevant treaties is just about
acceptable. The Olympics only protects the graphical symbol and not the
strings and should not be given any special treatment, particularly given the
mass of existing domain names which make perfectly legitimate use of the
relevant strings. Why on earth would the Japanese company Olympus, for
example, be barred from using their long-established global brand name as a
TLD to go with olympus.com (which redirects to www.olympus-global.com at
present)?



--
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/