KK,

One of the things that was clear from earlier NCSG (primarily NCUC) 
discussion on this issue is that there is a clear majority of us who think 
that whatever the merits of the two cases, they are completely separate cases 
and need to be dealt with separately. Therefore the questions as they stand 
are unanswerable, except for answers which throw out any and all protections 
for the two sets of strings. I think that as a matter of process you should 
be pushing hard for the results not to be pre-judged to be the same for the 
two sets of strings.

My personal position is that although I don't like it, ICANN following the 
international treaties governing the red cross/crescent/star (a smaller group 
that keeps being missed - as a Bright I'm not happy that this major 
international organisation is identified on religious symbolic grounds but 
that's a separate issue) and disallowing registration at the top level for 
precisely those strings limited by the relevant treaties is just about 
acceptable. The Olympics only protects the graphical symbol and not the 
strings and should not be given any special treatment, particularly given the 
mass of existing domain names which make perfectly legitimate use of the 
relevant strings. Why on earth would the Japanese company Olympus, for 
example, be barred from using their long-established global brand name as a 
TLD to go with olympus.com (which redirects to www.olympus-global.com at 
present)?



-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      [log in to unmask]
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/