Re: New TLDs and Registry charters

[Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>]

John Young wrote:
> 
> Two additional questions:
> 
> 1.      How about two US holders of identical federal trademark registrations?

This is where additional categorical breakdown becomes necessary much
like that discussed by Simon Higgs.  In fact, this situation will arise
no matter what unless additional categorization is implemented.

> 2.      How about a mulitnational business; what tld does that go in?
> 
Well, depending on the business, and the level of their international
presence.  They could either be housed under .INT or in each country
where they have a presence.  Since host/domain names AREN'T IP
addresses, I can have any number of "A" records with the same IP address
but differing hostnames.  I think there is something called a "CNAME"
also;-)

> John Young
> 
> ----------

In any case, my goal with this is to eliminate international issues.  It
is my firm belief(and I think that of Don Heath/ISOC also) that
significant international issues will wake sleeping giants(governments)
and cause a push in government circles to sign treaties and regulate.

While I personally feel that a treaty may be the most appropriate way to
handle international issues, I am willing to suggest ways to avoid them
completely.  Removing iTLDs altogether other than .INT will basically
"nationalize" the domain naming system.  Each country will be able to
grant registries as they see fit.  There should be very few
international trademark disputes.  National trademark disputes can be
handled within each country's own legal system.  In fact, disputes of
most any nature will be most ably handled by each countries own legal
system.  It is when legal systems interplay, and international disputes
arise that governments get involved and treaties become necessary.

While I realize that this seems like a major change, it really isn't. 
McDonald's can still have mcdonalds.com in every country where they have
sucessfully litigated their trademark.  In fact, it is my belief that
even multinational companies don't trade in ALL countries, but if they
did, they are quite able to register domains in every ISO TLD where they
have presence, and can comply with local trademark laws.  Surprising how
much this sounds like real-life business issues for international
companies.  These companies that have international presence are quite
well versed at dealing with local governments and would have no problems
acquiring domain names in many countries.

Let's face it, the original naming system, for better or worse, was
devised with really only the US in mind.  The addition of the rest of
the world has made the current scheme(.com, .net, .org, etc)
unacceptable.

The goal is to develop a system that we can all live with well into the
21st century.  This is truly the only one that will keep governments out
of the regulation/treaty business because international issues are
removed.

Vince Wolodkin

> > From: Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>
> > To: joe@spiderweb.com
> > Cc: newdom@vrx.net; DOMAIN-POLICY@LISTS.INTERNIC.NET;
> iahc-discuss@iahc.org; tmcghan@gill-simpson.com
> > Subject: Re: New TLDs and Registry charters
> > Date: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 12:40 PM
> >
> > Joseph A. Falejczyk wrote:
> > >
> > > > > From:          Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>
> > > >
> > > > > Anyway, lets say I look up xyz.com, I would get back my local(.US)
> > > > > xyz.com.  This immediately could satisfy lots of international
> > > > > trademark disputes.  In addition, though I hadn't mentioned it
> > > > > before, a Maryland company and a Virginia company both holding
> local
> > > > > trademarks could be xyz.com.va.us and xyz.com.md.us.
> > > > >
> > > > gee, vince, I wish I'd thought of that!     ;-}
> > > >
> > >
> > > Good effort, but...what if xyz.com company in Virginia has a Federal
> > > trademark??
> >
> > No problem, then they are xyz.com.us.  Since they have the federal
> > trademark, no other xyz but them can have xyz.com.us.
> >
> > Vince