Re: New TLDs and Registry charters

[Daniel Kaplan <dkaplan@terra-nova.fr>]

At 20:00 -0000 6/12/96, Kent Crispin wrote:

>Does this mean that NIC-France completely disallows an individual
>person from owning a domain name?  Could I get kentcrispin.*.fr, for
>example?

Truth is, I don't know; but I'll ask. I think (hope) they do allow them.

>> 1/ As the current flow of registrations in .com shows (in september, 6,500
>> on 30,000 came from Hong Kong: why, do you think?), the "First come first
>> served" rule will allow unscrupulous speculators to preempt well-known
>> trademarks SLDs and re-sell them to their legitimate owners.
>
>The problem is much more complex, because, unlike the case of a single
>country, there is no clear, internationally accepted way to decide who
>the legitimate owner might be.
Right. But what probably happened there is that some guys scanned for
well-known trademarks who hadn't yet got a .com domain, and just created
the domain in order to force the companies to buy it back from them when
they need it. I don't know about Hong Kong, but there are some "paradises"
in the world where trademark protection isn't enforced by courts. Imagine
one registry based there: how can, say, Yves Saint Laurent, get its name
back?
In such a case, the only way is for IANA (or whoever licenses registries)
to require that each registrie's (or iTLD's, to take your point) charter
includes some way to prevent such problems - in order to be able to remove
the license.


>> Should there
>> be several registries running one single iTLD, based in different countries
>> with different regulations, court litigation is likely to bring nowhere:
>> only blackmail will remain.
>
>I think your reasoning here is incomplete.  If you have several iTLDs,
>each run by a single registry in different countries, court litigation
>is just as difficult, in fact, it is *more* difficult -- at least in
>the case of shared registries some of the registries will be local,
>and, since the registries will have to cooperate over the management
>of the TLD, the local registries will have influence on their peers.

Yes, but if you have only one registry for each iTLD, the incorrect running
of this registry will clearly invalidate the iTLD, with the (sort of)
positive consequence that serious organizations will just not register with
this iTLD anymore.
Whereas, if you have multiple registries, one "black sheep" may weajen the
whole iTLD's credibility.

>But a more important point -- unlike the single registry in France
>case you describe, the internet is intrinsically international, and
>any court litigation will *have* to deal with that problem.  One
>of the advantages of shared registries that I see is that as smaller
>entities they will naturally gravitate towards policies that avoid
>the liklihood of litigation to begin with.

Not if, in their country, they don't run the risk of litigation... And
international judicial cooperation is, as we know, far from easy and will
not happen globally before some time.

>> 2/ The IAHC should therefore mandate that all registries include a set of
>> rules within their charter, in order to mitigate the perverse side-effects
>> of FCFS. We could help work out those rules.
>
>There is an important distinction between licensing of a registry and
>the creation of a TLD.  Every TLD should have a charter, and every
>registry licensed to serve that TLD would agree to follow the charter
>(on pain of losing the license).

You're right.

>> 3/ Having multiple registries for a single iTLD may not be such a good
>> idea. Or: it may be a good idea if there are very few iTLDs, defined by
>> IANA, but not if the creation of iTLDs becomes an open process.
>
>You don't give much of a reason for this statement, and I can't
>imagine one for it.  Perhaps you could elucidate.

I think I've just answered on this point. Let's say it's a matter of
managing scarce or abundant resources:
- if the number of iTLDs is small and predefined, we will have a strict
charter for each of them and we will definitely want to avoid monopolies,
as one well-run iTLD can have a tremendous value;
- if the number of iTLDs is as large as the registrants' imagination can
make it, then we should let the registries who wish to create them manage
them, and establish their "credibility" (or worth) themselves. If they
don't do a good job of it, they'll just penalize themselves (and their
customers, but these will just go to another iTLD and registry, not loosing
too much in the process).

Daniel