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