Hi Robert...
Before acknowledging that 100,000 names are kept on speculation, shouldn't that be verified if it is to be used as a statistic in favor of the wait. When you mention that there are people using URLs for "hoarding, hijacking and speculation", I think we need to distinguish between two groups:
1) those who register a name they know to be a well known trademark name (such as pepsi.com) with the intention being to hold the URL out to ransom and collect money from Pepsi by selling the pepsi.com URL to Pepsi, and
2) those who register a name for their own corporate or private business use. In the real world companies register names regularly where the real intention is for future use, or simply to preclude a competitor from getting it.
The 60 day wait will not reduce the number of speculators. Companies would still grab names and register them before their competitors did. The real issue is: How many cases are there where the motive for registration is ransom? If the ransom problem is very significant, involving tens of thousands of URLs, out of the 800,000 total, then perhaps the problem is significant enough to warrant action. On the other hand, if the problem is limited to a few hundred cases out of 800,000, then how can we justify putting 799,600 people through grief and hassle of a waiting period, when the outcome will affect such a tiny fraction of a percent of the total users?
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From: Robert Shaw <robert.shaw@itu.int>
To: Leo Smith <barter@ntplx.net>
Cc: IAHC Registries <iahc-discuss@iahc.org>; fin <fin@finseth.com>
Subject: Re: Who really benefits from 60-day period?
Date: Thursday, January 09, 1997 10:36 AM
Leo Smith wrote:
> There will be a tremendous amount of inconvenience and hassle endured by
> the wait-ers. By all counts, less than four tenths of one percent of users
> would ever be affected by any claim of trademark infringement...So why put
Another reason for the 60 day waiting period is to minimize intentional hoarding,
hijacking and speculation in domain names.
This is a problem much larger than most realize.
For example, in November 96, of about 700,000 DN registrations, NSI has estimated
that 50,000 to 100,000 were being held by speculators. So the problems are somewhat
larger than one might think.
Robert
--
Robert Shaw (shaw@itu.int)
Advisor, Global Information Infrastructure
International Telecommunication Union (http://www.itu.int)
Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland
Note: IAHC member, expressing personal opinions