On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 1:31 AM, David Cake <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This is, of course, a sleight of hand, as Milton should well know.
> The case that being a registrant of a second or third level domain is
> effectively ownership (apart from a number of specific legal ways in which
> it may not be) has been established, but the question of whether being a
> registry for a top level domain is thus the same as ownership, or should be
> considered as administration of a public asset, is not settled and is
> *precisely* what is under discussion.
> And the analogy that the same rules that apply at lower levels is a slick,
> easy, line of generic reasoning that is easily shown to false in operation.
>
> There is a precise analogy with trademark law here. We allow registration
> of a combination of generic words as a trademark, but generally not a
> generic word alone, certainly not for all classes.
>
> Kathys example, that we don't simply allow TLD owners to just chuck up a
> copy of BIND on some cheap commercial hosting,
>


This is exactly how some ccTLDs were run for nearly 2 decades!


-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route
indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel