Re: (Original) Conflict resolution revisited

["Gert Blij" <gert@itst.co.za>]

From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@imc.org>
Date: Wednesday, November 20, 1996 10:30

>At 12:09 AM -0800 11/20/96, Gert Blij wrote:
>>simply fail to grasp that the majority of societies outside the US are a)
>>not as "lawyer centric" :-) as the US  and b) that it is virtually
>>impossible for people residing in other nations to partake in this US
based
>>legal bun fight.
>
>	My own, non-lawyer assessment to the various lines of commentary is
>that this is all impressively complicated, difficult, frustrating, and
>tenacious.  Not a good combination.  Added to this is the fact that the
>relevant courts are national but the DNS is international.

No excuse for not trying to solve it. This is a wonderful opportunity to
get going on a solution, who knows when we get another chance like this.
Not doing it now is simply pushing the problem forwards to a later date. In
the mean time the problems and issues are getting bigger and nastier to
solve.

I appreciate the difference between the (present) relevant courts and the
International nature of DNS. In fact it exactly describes my point. The
present solution (and the idea of maintaining the status quo) is trying to
fit a square peg into a round hole, i.e. there is no solution unless one
resides in the US.

>	I'm told by some folk involved in the task of developing
>international trademark law that the subject has been actively worked on
>for about 100 years.  Bottom line summary is that there is no
international
>trademark law yet, so I think it's reasonable to be less than sanguine
>about the likelihood for an immediate resolution.  That doesn't mean it
>won't happen or that it won't happen quickly, but being good engineers, we
>try to design for likely outcomes.

Hence my suggestion to keep it out of the courts, any court, altogether,
except for the jurisdiction of the court covering a standard DNS agreement
which could be based on a similar concept like arbitrage. 

Although also not being a legal person, the way I understand arbitrage is
that two parties entering into an agreement  up front agree, that in case
of
a dispute they will not go to court, but go to a pre agreed third party
whose "judgment" is final and will be accepted by both parties. This third
party arbiter could be the entity administering the TLD, thus bypassing the
court system (in whatever country).

This concept is quite successfully applied in the EDI world, where the
copied  records at the VAN are final in case of dispute.

And as good engineers we should not only design for likely outcomes, but
for *working* ones as well. One either accepts the fact that the Internet
is a global phenomenon and therefor needs solutions to problems that have
never been faced before, or one sticks to the "USA ueber alles" attitude.
In
the latter case the solution is simple. Close down this list, close down
the whole IAHC effort, because then you are not working on the iTLD problem
where the "i" stands for *International*. In this case you would be working
at the problem how to help US organisations out of the quagmire of the
overflowing .com domain.

( Dave, I am talking in general here, not to you personally. I read your
charter and your postings to this list and I do believe you appreciate our
problems. I just wished you would be a bit more willing to dig a bit deeper
for the solutions.)


>	It seems currently inevitable that the base of operations for a
>registry determines the national court under which it is subject.  If we
>have multiple registries, there is incentive for ensuring that they are
>sprinkled around the globe, to afford users a range of jurisdictions.

Then it will stay a mess, because it would be a natural process for the US
to host the most prevalent and most wanted TLD's. I think it is a pipe
dream for
us to expect .web, .corp, .inc and after 98 .com to be administered from
South Africa, Switzerland or Timbooctoo. It's a fact of life
that through sheer force of numbers the US will take those, leaving the
Internet population outside the US with the same problems we are facing at
present with the .com domain.

Also, every nation  has it's own DNS structure already, like here in South
Africa we have a co.za, gov.za, ac.za, org.za etc. The domains have quite a
bit of steam left in them, as I am sure other nations "internal" domains
have as well. I don't think there is any pressing need for us to have any
localised iTLD's. However, there is a pressing need in many instances to
get easy access to the .com domain.

Cheers
Gert