On 29-Apr-15 19:29, Kathy Kleiman wrote:
> Hi Timothe,
> I think we are saying the same thing in different words.
If so, it doesn't come across. I don't think I'm overly sensitive.
The entire discussion about registrant rights has become focused on
trademarks & their owners to the exclusion of a large part of the
non-commercial constituency. Your comments are still framed in that
context. If adopted, they would help around the edges, but the
individual registrant is still a 5th-class afterthought.
As I've pointed out in the past, there is no protection or consideration
for the registrant whose family name happens to overlap a trademark.
E.g. 'coke'. Or 'orange' (a major telecom company in France). Or
'ford', which is a common family name - not just an automotive brand.
(Henry was a Ford long before he founded Ford Motor Company. Many
"Ford"s today aren't related to him.) Or the ham radio group that picks
'radioshack.org'. Or...
Everything is framed in terms of trademarks and commercial rights.
There is no place in the DNS where purely non-commercial registrants
come first and can't be displaced.
NCSG continues to frame 'non-commercial' in terms of non-commercial
services and organizations that can claim trademark, corporate or
similar protection. 'harvard' is a non-profit corporation. So is the
Red Cross/Crescent, etc. When we talk about what I call the 'individual
registrant', we conflate domain names with 'free speech', 'human rights'
- but generally, we assume a blog or other website service. We meekly
accept the proposition that trademarks are valuable, but family names
aren't. We ignore individuals/families, informal clubs and others who
can't qualify for a trademark (which must be used in commerce(1).) Or
can't justify the filing/maintenance/defense fees. And generally don't
even know enough to copyright their content.
The individual registrant gets, at best the left-overs. And can get
displaced by trademark priority. E.g. One colleague of mine had
registered a domain name that he liked because it was a palindrome. He
got a lot of e-mail, and then web traffic on his technical manifesto.
And got evicted several years later because a pharmaceutical company
trademarked the name and called in the staff attorneys. His 5-character
palindrome was replaced by a 3-word hyphenated bit of
techno-cryptography. IIRC, he wasn't allowed to have any 2 of his
original letters adjacent in the new name...
Individual registrants need:
o places where their names have priority over trademark and other IP
rights in names. I've suggested TLDs with such rules, but other schemes
are possible.
o mechanisms for fair allocations of names in the face of conflict,
not based on trademarks or commercial IP. This could be FCFS based on a
family name, a given name, use in other contexts, a lottery -- or any of
a number of schemes that TLDs could compete to develop.
o freedom from name-squatting and name-sniping -- the typical
individual registrant can't afford to pay the extortion demanded by the
squatters, and has no name-based income to offset the cost. (For
example, one squatter has been holding the .com version of one of my
names for ransom, suggesting that £5000 might be a starting point for
negotiation - upwards. "somehow" he grabbed it while I was registering
under another TLD.)
o affordable conflict resolution.
Under the current rules, even if someone besides me recognized the need,
and had access to the $Ms required to setup one or more TLDs with these
properties, they could not. Because "trademark and IP" priority and
"squatting is OK, except if it conflicts with established IP" rules
conflict with these requirements.
I have no problem recognizing the issues and rights of IP holders.
(Rather to the dismay of some here.) But it's past time to recognize
that the individual registrants need a place where their issues are
addressed and their rights assured. That can't happen as long as the
issues are framed in terms of trademark and IP protection - first and
everywhere.
> I would truly support your submission of a statement with your words
> -- and all who want to sign on to them. The more the merrier -
> especially since only trademark owners have responded so far!
I think that approach just supports the 'divide and conquer ' strategy
of the commercial interests.
If NCSG can't have one voice with many signers, many voices with a few
signers won't have any effect.
I would like to think that after writing on this topic at least a dozen
times over the past few years, I've sensitized the rest of our community
to the issues. But as usual, it's the last minute and we're responding
in the framework set by the IP interests.
I probably should stop talking into this particular barrel. The
acoustics "suck" and it's probably too late in the day for it to make
any difference.
>
> Best,
> Kathy
>
>
(1) Yes, this is a simplification. Raising money to deliver charitable
services, as the United Way does, counts as 'commerce' in this sense.
But 'tim's family network', used for intra-family communication does
not. Nor does 'sally's quilting club', which has no dues and just
shares designs and schedules bees.
Timothe Litt
ACM Distinguished Engineer
--------------------------
This communication may not represent the ACM or my employer's views,
if any, on the matters discussed.
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