60? day dissemination period

[Danny Padwa <padw7068@sparky.cs.nyu.edu>]

A few things on the proposed 60 day waiting period - there seem to be
many conflicting conception sof its motivation.

As I understand it, the primary (and perhaps sole) motivation for this
was to protect domain name holders.  This protection was two-fold:
prevent use until DILIGENT potential infringees could sue (thus
limiting the damage to the domain holder of a restraining order issued
by a valid court - not CORE or the IAHC), and provide a defense
against future infringement claims, since lack of action during this
period would be construed in a (real, not CORE) court as failure to
properly protect the trademark.

Am I correct on this?   There has then been discussion on the amount
of extra defense to be gained by this hold-down period, as well as the
damage to new domain registrants of slow turnaround.

Might an n-day "dissemination" period achieve some of the same
benefits (protection against future lawsuits) without requiring the
same inconvience (make the wait be m days, with 0 <= m << n)?

During the dissemination period, the domain name would be on the CORE
Web site.  Perhaps also legal notices in newspapers in the
jurisdiction where the new domain owner lives (and thus could be
sued).   These would be paid for, of course, out of the registration
fee.

This would seem to provide:

- quick access to domain registrations.  Speed of completion here
could become a competitive edge among registrars.

- possibly (for m>0) a short period where active trademark enforcers
could seek an injunction to prevent infringement before it happens
(again - this would be in a real court).

- a period where new domains would be publicized, so no trademark
owner would be able to later claim ignorance.   I'm not sure if this
helps any from a legal standpoint, but I'm sure many on this list do.



Does this fly?    It loses what I (personally) consider the best thing
about the 60-day waiting period, namely the effect it would have on
short-lived SLDs (eg for movies).   That 60-day period would be a nice
way to move them down to the third level, where they belong.  But
that's another story.

- Danny

PS>  A recent message (Chris Ambler, I think) said the 60-day period
would hurt startups who just got an ISDN link to the Internet and need
to start branding their SLDs, making third-level domains unworkable.
I'm not sure we have to worry about this so much.......an ISDN
connection from the RBOC and ISP in less than 60 days???