Re: 60 day waiting peroid.

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 12:23 PM -0800 1/9/97, Dave Crocker wrote:

> At 11:09 AM -0800 1/9/97, Simon Higgs wrote:
> >That's flawed logic. What the IAHC has done in the draft is provide a
> >mechanism for the legal industry to control the delegation of
>
> 	The proposal creates no paths of recourse that do not already
> exist.  On the other hand, it does ELIMINATE one that is currently in use,
> namely independent actions taken by the registrar, acting on its own
> initiative.
>

I'm going to say this capital letters...

INTERNIC/NSI ARE IN VIOLATION OF RFC1591:

4. Rights to Names

   1) Names and Trademarks

      In case of a dispute between domain name registrants as to the
      rights to a particular name, the registration authority shall have
      no role or responsibility other than to provide the contact
      information to both parties.

IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE IANA (AND THE I*) TO ENFORCE THAT A
REGISTRY PROVIDES FAIR AND IMPARTIAL REGISTRATION SERVICES. IF THE
REGISTRY CANNOT FULFILL IT'S DUTIES THIS SITUATION MUST BE ADDRESSED.
THE NSI DISPUTE POLICY FAILS IN THE ABOVE REFERENCE AND HERE:

   3) The designated manager must be equitable to all groups in the
      domain that request domain names.

      This means that the same rules are applied to all requests, all
      requests must be processed in a non-discriminatory fashion, and
      academic and commercial (and other) users are treated on an equal
      basis.  No bias shall be shown regarding requests that may come
      from customers of some other business related to the manager --
      e.g., no preferential service for customers of a particular data
      network provider.  There can be no requirement that a particular
      mail system (or other application), protocol, or product be used.

THE 60 DAY WAIT DOES NOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. IT ONLY PAMPERS TO THE
SYMPTOMS OF THE PROBLEM. IT DOES NOT ELIMINATE THE CURRENT FLAWED NSI
DISPUTE POLICY.

> >registrations. Every law firm will monitor the publication data and
> >automatically issue challenges for the remotest similarity to an
>
> 	What makes them do that more under the new regime than they do now?
> Also your implication is that the cost of placing a complaint won't have a
> limiting effect.
>

Because you are guaranteeing the legal industry a 60 day window before
the domain name holder can start to use it, and therefore provide an
opportunity for it to be challenged before it's use can be established
as seperate and distinct from similar existing marks under trademark
law. The IAHC have violated RFC1591 (section 3 above) because it has
allowed outside bias to be applied to the registration process.

This procedure, unless corrected, will become part of internationally
recognized domain name case law before the end of the century. And you
will have permanently damaged the name space.


Regards,

Simon

--
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.