At 23:54 05/09/2012, Edward Morris wrote:

Domain names are identifiers, no more and no less, and may be subject to regulation under national trademark laws as are any other identifier.

Edward,

Sorry to contradict in part: names are OpenUse. They become identifiers within and by way of the taxonomy of a referential system. Such referential systems may be the lexicography of a language, the repertoire of a company or of a city, the IRI system, the biological taxonomy, History, etc. In this specific case, we are speaking of two different categories (mathematical meaning: a structure of properties) that are applied to names:

1. the commercial trademark system, which comes per countries and classes (i.e. a third level system: country+class+name)

2. the Internet DNS and, more specifically, the first level of the ICANN/NTIA "IN" CLASS (actually a third level system: Internet+CLASS+name).

There are many other uses utilized by the human brain. OpenUse (cf. very young http://open-use.org everyone welcome to join and help) actually means that we are free to think what/how we want with our individual brain and its digital facilitation tools and peripherals. The recent OpenStand ( http://open-stand.org after the ISOC-IAB-IETF-W3C-IEEE Affirmation) seeks to constrain our brains to abide by famous commercial trademarks, market accepted standards, and commercially acknowledged global communities in order to keep building and reaping the commercial benefits induced so far by the Internet.

The key point of this strategy is to make us forget that the Internet DNS is a 65,536 root files system. Actually, RFC 5507 documents that: "in fact, most users of the [domain name] system don't even realize that the [CLASS] mechanism exists". However, if most forgot it, the IANA fully documents it here: http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters. And its use was advocated by ICANN to address the open-root issue (ICP-3 document: http://www.icann.org/en/about/unique-authoritative-root).

This is why the whole US (Gov and industry leaders) rigmarole is:

1. to take control of the IANA by ICANN and of the IANA content by ISOC.

1.1. This was administratively achieved by RFC 3860: "Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Technical Work of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority".

1.2. This was practically achieved (but defeasible) by RFC 4646: which loaded the langtags tables on the IANA. Due to their size, this permits Mark Davis (President of Unicode, a Google employee) to DoS the IANA in making ICU functions to update from the IANA. This would force the IANA to be transferred under a powerful private system as suggested by former IETF Chair Harald Alvestrand, who is now a Google employee. Please remember that Vint Cerf, Internet evangelist at Google is on the Board of Unicode. I do not think Google has any problem to replace ICANN in minutes should it be necessary.

1.3. The ownership of the RFC IP has been progressively transferred under ISOC Copyrights, RFC 5378 (BCP78) successively obsoleting RFC 3978 and RFC 4748, and updating RFC 2026.

2. to change the vision of the DNS in the people's minds (this seems to be de facto achieved for the signatories of the quoted paper): in making them forget the Internet environment, so that the use of the name is considered as universal and the CLASSes are de facto removed with the support of US law (and the confusion created by the TMCH ( http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/trademark-clearinghouse). Let us remember the true purpose of the New gTLD Project: the money spent by the applicants, the TM related rules, the "pseudo legal" international institutions, etc. make the ICANN contracted project too big to die or being killed, making the whole thing “ICANN and TM holders centered”, instead of “people centered” as proclaimed by the WSIS.

3. and eventually to change the DNS definitions and RFCs to make them "market acceptable" (by the FTM - famous trade mark - owners and the so-called ICANN community, i.e. "naming industry").

This is why I think, before it is too late, it is time for the CS to start its own counterwar to this war on the users. The only feasible way I see to do so is to use the IETF channel in order to introduce and deploy an IUse/OpenUse RFC on the Intelligent Use Digitalized Names Syntax (IUDNS). There will probably be three steps:

a. the introduction of an IUCG Draft tending to protect the compatibility of the various digital namespaces, including the Internet DNS.

b. the operations of an IUDNS prototype and further on of a ML-DNS version (for a multilayer resolution pile support in order to resolve names in the context of different namespaces)

c. the probable appeal for denial of acceptance of this Draft, to permit the clear identification of the border between the IETF market referent and the IUTF intelligent use referent.

If some people wish to join me in this endeavor they are welcome. It might be interesting. It is probably absolutely necessary for a people centered society, digital human rights, and the digitally sustained millennium development goals ( http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/).

jfc