Re: Adding two letters and a dot renders unoffensive?

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 03:59 PM 12/16/96 -0500, Vince Wolodkin wrote:

>Carl Oppedahl wrote:

>> I am not advocating banning anything.  I am merely reporting my lack of
>> understanding.  I have read suggestions that there should be no more
>> non-geographic top-level domains, that it's impossible for the registrar of
>> a top-level domain to check whether a proposed second-level domain means
>> something bad in any and all the countries of the world, and that if only
>> we were to confine people to two-letter (country-specific) top-level
>> domains, this would somehow be better.
>> 
>> In the face of all this, I can't see how the registration authority of a
>> two-letter domain would have any better progress at screening words through
>> all the countries of the world than the registration authority of a
>> non-geographic domain would.  For either of them, the task is enormous and
>> nearly unworkable.
>> 
>> Please help me by explaining how it is that placing a two-letter country
>> code at the end of a URL renders an offensive domain name non-offensive.
>
>It doesn't.  But what it does do is place a reference point to work
>from.  If something is offensive in france, then I wouldn't expect to
>find it under .com.fr.  Just as if something is trademarked in france,
>having french-trademark.com.us shouldn't be a problem.  

Oh, I suggest to you that this is not so.  A company (e.g. "Yankee
Framistans") that is located in the US and that perceives that someone from
France is trading off its good name by stealing its US-located customers
through "www.yankeeframistans.fr" is going to be angry and the two letters
at the end won't make much difference.

This sort of lawsuit has already happened.  Some company located in Italy,
called "Playgirl" if my memory is correct, set up a web site that was
picking up US-located customers.  But (again, if my memory is correct) the
US-based "Playgirl" got angry, because ten years before the Italian company
had promised not to do business in the US.  The web site, of course, knows
no geographic boundaries.  The web site led to trademark troubles.  I can't
see how adding two letters ".it" at the end would have changed the outcome
of this case.

>I have tried repeatedly to get this point across.  It doesn't matter WHO
>runs the registry (the ISO registry).  What matters is if you run .FR,
>then you will be expected to obey the laws of france within your
>registry.  

I suggest that while you are correct that a web site operator whose URL
ends in ".fr" is going to have to obey the laws of France, it is not at all
clear that obeying the laws of France is enough to avoid legal liability.
If the web site irritates someone in the US, who sues the site operator, I
see no reason why the happenstance of the last two letters being "fr"
instead of "us" or "com" should permit the operator to shield itself from
the US laws.

>If you run .US, then you will go by the laws of the United
>States.  

Same point.  If some web site with a URL ending in "us" violates some
French law, or infringes some French trademark, I would be shocked to
imagine the last two letters of the URL making a meaningful differene.

>If someone from france feels that french-mark.com.US infringes
>their mark, then they will have to go court to prove it.  

Yes, but that's no different then if french-mark.com.fr infringes the mark.
 In either case the trademark owner goes to court and proves infringement
and the domain name owner has to stop.  Again, I see nothing meaningful
about the last two letters.