Dispute resolution - followup

[thomst@netcom.com (Thom Stark)]

> On Sat, 21 Dec 1996, Thom Stark wrote:
>
> >In essence, my proposal is:  "Agree to binding arbitration or no SLD
> >will be issued."  This applies equally to challengers as well as first
> >registrants.

Paul Svensson asked:

> Could you explain to me the merit of using such arbitration instead of a
> court ?  Specifically, it would be interesting to know why anyone contending
> a name would wish to bring it to the arbitor instead of to a court ?

Certainly.

The first reason is that, as things currently stand, there is no court
anywhere which can claim jurisdiction over DNS assignments.  I suspect
that we will shortly see courts begin to arrogate this authority to
themselves, but the plain fact is that, due to the global nature of the
Internet, (and thus SLD assignments,) any and every such attempt is
likely to meet with fierce resistance by every other country as an
infringement on their own respective sovereignty.  (Can you see France,
for instance, permitting to stand a US court's adverse trademark
decision on the assignment of a SLD to a US company over the objections
of a French company?)  And this condition will persist unless and until
a global treaty to establish a corpus of law and a court system to
regulate the Internet is brought into being.

By contrast, binding arbitration is a private contract and is recognized
as legitimate everywhere by every nation.

Secondly, arbitration is (relatively) inexpensive (by comparison with
lawsuits) and (again, relatively) quick to produce decisions.

Thirdly, if an agreement to abide by binding arbitration of disputes is
made a REQUIREMENT for obtaining SLD registration, anyone contending a
name would HAVE to agree to arbitration if they wished to use the name
themselves.

If they did NOT wish to use the name themselves, why would they bother
to contest it?

Again, my purpose in suggesting this mechanism is to offer a substitute
for the 60-day holding period in the draft recommendation.  It appears
to me that very few of the responses to the draft have endorsed the
60-day wait and most have been pretty strongly negative about it.
Instead of simply complaining, I've chosen to suggest an alternative
which, in my opinion, is fair, easily-implemented, more palatable than a
60-day wait period and is designed to eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic
overhead, rather than increasing it.

Regards,

Thom Stark

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