Re: Randomly-assigned TLDs

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 09:45 AM 11/24/96 -0500, Paul Ezra Kautz wrote:
>
>Actually, random TLDs such as N3G or ABDD or whatever aren't all that
>bad.  They totally solve one of the biggest problems facing DNS today:
>its use as a directory.  They have the added benefit of eliminating
>the whole value-of-the-TLD and bidding and who-gets-it-first issues.
>You apply and you get assigned one.

The thing is that if the goal of a domain name owner is to register a domain
name that is devoid of any risk that someone with a trademark will take it
away from you, all they need to do is register N3GABDD.COM or N3GABDD.CH or
N3GABDD.TOWN.STATE.US.  Nobody would ever want any of those domain names, so
no litigation would follow, and we don't need a committee recommendation or
a redesigned DNS to make it happen.

This notion of randomly-assigned domain names is discussed by two prominent
trademark lawyers to the Working Group on Intellectual Property,
Interoperability and Standards, U.S. Advisory Committee on International
Communications and Information Policy, in a proposal that may be seen at
<http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/maherand.html> and
<http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/framapro.html#Proposal #1>.





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