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WIPO Seeks Comment On Domain Name Process
Scott Robinson writes: "WIPO has released their Interim Report of the Second WIPO Internet Domain Name Process. More importantly, they have requested for comments on this report. Read, respond, be a good netizen." Michael mentioned the report's release in this story as well. Unfortunately, WIPO doesn't make it available as either html or plain text; your options are Word and pdf -- but it's worth downloading, to see how WIPO justifies its role in determining (among other things) which common words, pharmaceutical identifiers and geographically-linked terms the ordinary domain registrant is allowed to use. The comment period ends June 8th.
Jesus, you crazy folks are always ready to pull the trigger on your race-biased arrests flare gun, aren't you? If I was pulled over and had a suspended license, I'd be fucked too, regardless of what tint my skin might be.
-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
While it is true that some individuals are buying up corporate domain names with the intent of selling them for a big profit, I have to ask what is wrong with that? If a corporation isn't bright enough, or savy enough, to buy the domain name they want, then they should suffer the economic consiquences.
Still, one possible way to eleminate much of the problem would be to localize the internet. Implement a change that a) eleminates the requirement that the .us TLD include state and county data, and b) alter all domain names to reflect the nationality of their owners, and c) add a localization to browsers.
The purpose of this is so that the US corporation "Nike" would then own the domain "nike.co.us", a person who's browser is localized for the US could type "nike.com" and be automagically redirected to "nike.co.us". A person in Greece, where a religious group has grabbed the "nike.co.gr" domain name could type "nike.com" and get "nike.gr.co", or, if he wanted the US corporation he could enter the fully qualified domain "nike.co.us" and get the Nike corporate website.
This is similar to the way telephone dialing works, if I simply dial a number, the telephone system assumes that I am intending to dial a number in my own area code.
The ".com" delima seems to have at its root the problem that internationally there are several corporations with the same name, by eleminating the .com domain entirely (and teaching browsers how to sub .co.[country of user] for .com) we can sidestep a lot of problems. Same thing ought to go for the rest of the traditional TLD's. A university named "Rice" in the US gets "rice.ed.us", while a university name Rice in Russia gets "rice.ed.ru", etc...
Adding a bit of localization to the net would have problems, true, but I think that the advantages might outweigh them.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
The solution to the problem is not, as some people have suggested, doing away with domain names altogether. Neither is the answer to establish IP guidelines for all of the Inclusive Name Space.
Rather, the solution is to establish an Inclusive Name Space which has a few very simple rules relating to the introduction of new top-level domains. The inclusive name space will consist of a set of top-level domains, each of which has a charter. That charter defines the kind of IP rules which will apply within that TLD. .edu is a good example. It has an explicit charter allowing registration of domain names only by 4-year post-secondary educatiobnal institutions. While some errors have been made in the application of this charter (see www.exeter.edu. e.g.), for the most part it has made .edu a meaningful TLD. You can type [university].edu and get where you are going.
Further, within .edu, some institutions have something like a prior right to their names. Therefore, harvard could not register stanford.edu, since this would be prohibited by the charter. When was the last time you heard about a domain name dispute in .edu? They are mostly in .com, because it is 1/2 chartered (it is supposed to be for commercial organizations after all, at least it was originally) and 1/2 general (NetSol, since they were out to make a buck, sold domain names to anybody who wanted one, so you got a lot of non-commercial orhanizations and individuals in there). This ambiguity is why we have so many problems with .com, .net and .org.
This is why we need new TLDs, and we need new chartered TLDs. And this is what the OpenNIC is all about. We already have a few new strictly-chartered TLDs (.oss for open source projects, .bbs for BBS things, web-logs and the like, .geek for geek-related pages, .parody for parodies). Within these TLDs, IP considerations are more or less non-existent. McDonalds could never register mcdonalds.oss, unless the open-sourced their cash-register software or something. :^P
There is a place for generic top-level domains. These should be operated on a first-come first-served basis, however. For everything else, we need strictly-chartered TLDs. And this is precisely the difference between the OpenNIC and other TLD operators. We believe in strict charters. Everyone else (including ICANN/Verisign/etc) seems to just want to sell a bunch of names and get rich. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, in principle. But it's no way to run a namespace.
Claim your namespace.
What am I thinking? Then they would have to sift through all the First Posts, Natalie Portman and CowboyNeal references. And can you imagine then getting a Go@S*x link?
----
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
If "walmart.com" happens to come free, and I grab it, and I just redirect to "wallmartsucks.com," you think that's obvious abuse.
.com not having any kind of a charter. If it did then you'd probably have to prove to had authority to represent corporate entities called "walmart" and "wallmartsucks". (Also that these existed in the first place.)
That's the problem with
The thinking your asking for, though, would be like getting rid of all the card catalogs in all the libraries and expect any and all library patrons to have the Dewy Decimal System memorized. It's redundant, time-consuming, and easily solved.
Think smart, not hard.
What does it matter if the WIPO creates some rules. We already have rules, and laws that are ignored in arbitration. Give me a call when the get a system that actually enforces the rules fairly. Then I might care.
I was referring more to the idea of using a domain such as afamousepersonsname.com
Problem is that famous do not have unique names. Whilst there are rules to ensure that actors have unique names amongst actors there is nothing to be sure that some dosn't have the same name as a more famous person.
Maybe someone could check how many people with the name "George Walter Bush" there are in the US...
From: Daniel R. Tobias
.com addresses, though this
.mil TLD, they
.com, though
.com rather than
.com, commercial or
.com, making
.com like .biz -- adding new generic
.museum and .aero better than .biz and .info, out of the
.fan for fan sites
.sucks for protest sites.
.int, if they're an international treaty
.com or .org.
.name TLD should be helpful for this, if it's not abused
.name. Some use of the UDRP in
.fan and .sucks should be created for positive and negative
.org as
.com
To: process.mail@wipo.int
Subject: WIPO2 RFC-3 Comments
Date sent: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 15:20:11 -0400
WIPO2 RFC-3 Comments by Daniel R. Tobias --
dan@dantobias.com
I'm not the sort of entity from which comments to WIPO or
ICANN usually emanate, or about whom WIPO or ICANN
give any sign that they care when drafting policies regarding
Internet domain names. I'm not a government, corporation, or
organization. I'm neither a trademark owner nor a domain
speculator. I'm not trying to get rich off of either the current
domain system or a proposed future system, nor am I trying to
protect my current economic status against threats from either
the current or a proposed future system. I'm merely an individual
who has been familiar with the Internet since it was still the
ARPAnet, and has been involved with it for years as a user, a
hobbyist, and a professional developer. While I've made my
living from the Internet for years now, I've never attempted to
get rich from it (and, hence, haven't lost my shirt at it either, as
have some "dot-commers" these days). I have nothing in
particular to gain or lose economically through the evolution of
domain name system policy, unlike most others who write
comments to these RFCs. I'm writing merely from my own
conceptions of why the domain name system was created in the
first place and how it was intended to be used, and the ways in
which it has been abused in recent years (leading to much
conflict), and the ways which have been proposed to resolve
these conflicts (in some cases just making the situation worse).
Unlike most of the governmental, corporate, and organizational
respondents, I'm submitting my response in plain ASCII text,
rather than as an MS Word, PDF, or other specially-formatted
document. This guarantees that, when it's put up on the WIPO
website, everybody will be able to read it no matter what
browser they use and what auxiliary viewer programs they have.
This is in keeping with my "Keep It Simple, Stupid" philosophy --
getting the information across is more important than being
fancy and flashy. If people had been using the domain name
system with this philosophy, too, things would be so much better.
I can remember when I first heard of the domain name system,
back in the mid-'80s when it was first implemented. My feeling
was that there was a big gap in the naming system -- no top-
level domain existed for individual computer hobbyists, just for
various categories of organizations such as government, military,
educational, commercial, etc. I wished they had created a TLD
for hobbyists, perhaps ".hob". While I understood that the
ARPAnet of the time didn't permit anyone not affiliated with an
organization from gaining a direct connection, I expected that
this would change over time, and the naming system ought to
accommodate it. As it turns out, I was thinking too narrowly
myself. Current personal use of the Internet has expanded vastly
beyond the computer hobbyist community. Finally, the proposed
".name" TLD provides a proper namespace for such use, though
I would have preferred the earlier-proposed ".per" for
"personal" (.name sounds silly to me -- aren't all domain names
"names"?).
Though I found gaps in the namespace, I still understood its
purpose and proper use. It was to replace the earlier chaotic
naming of Internet hosts in a flat namespace, where every
machine in the world that was on the net had to have a unique
name -- if somebody at MIT named their net-connected
computer "Foobar", then nobody else could. This was solved by
creating a structured namespace where each entity with a net
presence could have its own domain it could use and subdivide
as it wished. There could be separate machines at
foobar.mit.edu and foobar.cmu.edu without conflict. There also
could be separate entities at foobar.edu and foobar.com -- one
of them a university and the other a commercial company. With
several different top level domains, and the unlimited opportunity
to create subdomains and hostnames within any domain to the
desired level of hierarchical nesting, there would be plenty of
opportunity for anybody on the net to obtain stable and
meaningful names. A nonprofit group called "FooBar" could
obtain foobar.org, then delegate subdomains like
miami.foobar.org and boston.foobar.org to its chapters -- they'd
all have logical names, and so could the completely independent
commercial outfit that also happened to be named "FooBar" and
which could have its own site at foobar.com.
This system started breaking down when the Internet became
commercialized in the mid '90s. A large influx of newbies arrived
who were unfamiliar with the proper structure of the domain
name system, and unfortunately, the commercial entities who
were driving the expansion of the net found it more profitable (at
least in the short term) to pander to their ignorance than to try to
educate them out of it. Because a large number of commercial
sites came onto the net at addresses of the form
www.SomeName.com, the general public became convinced
that all web addresses were of this form, and so all the
"marketing types" then felt the need to obtain separate domain
names for every single site, subsite, product line, or marketing
gimmick, rather than to use subdomains like the logical structure
of the DNS intended. Eventually, even nonprofits and
governmental entities started getting
was really stupid given that they weren't commercial, because
"that's where the public expects to find the site." You've now
got idiocies like "navy.com" for the U.S. Navy recruitment site --
even with the U.S. military's monopoly over the
still feel the need to clutter up the namespace of
they're not in any way commercial.
Naturally, with everybody scrambling to grab names in what
they perceived incorrectly to be a single flat namespace, much
conflict ensued. Once governments and nonprofits started
thinking that their Internet sites ought to be in
the properly structured namespaces created for their sorts of
entity, they got peeved if some commercial site managed to grab
"their" name first. Maybe barcelona.com and southafrica.com
are being used legitimately as commercial sites about their
respective cities or countries, and the governments of those
respective places ought to have their sites in their appropriate
country code domain, but because the drooling imbeciles on the
net these days expect everything to be in
not, then the government had better sue to get the name "back".
This has produced lots of bad cases, both in the courts and in
the ICANN arbitration process, where big governments,
corporations, and others with money and power have tried
(sometimes successfully) to bully a legitimate user of a domain
into giving it up because it happened to resemble their name,
even if it wasn't even in the correct TLD for the complainant
organization.
Of course, domain name holders aren't always the "good guys"
either. Many are speculators trying to get rich off of domains
named after corporations and trademarks, either by selling the
domains to the corporation or by "typosquatting" to draw traffic
to some sleazy pseudo-portal that no Internet user would
intentionally go to. For many of the domain disputes, I say "A
pox on both your houses," having little sympathy for either side.
If domain names were used as originally intended, as a manner
of giving logical and stable addresses to things on the Internet,
then in most of these cases neither the complainant nor the
respondent would have any legitimate need for the domain
they're fighting over. FooBar, Inc., which already owned
foobar.com, could logically name the site of its Memphis branch
office memphis.foobar.com, and wouldn't have to worry about
whether some cybersquatter grabbed foobar-memphis.com
already. The cybersquatter, on the other hand, has no legitimate
need for this name either.
So what to do about the whole mess now? How about admitting
that putting everything in SomeStupidGimmickName.com just
won't work as a long-term scalable solution, and trying to
educate people about the fuller structure of the system?
Companies and organizations of all sizes can help by putting up
their sites under subdomains where appropriate -- every
subdomain name that's advertised to the public helps educate
them that such things exist. A company that took the high road
and used logical subdomains of its main domain for all of its sites
could then make a point of this in their advertising by saying to
"Accept no imitations -- Only sites of the form
Sitename.Foobar.com are official sites of the FooBar
Corporation!" Once this point has been driven across, FooBar
would have little to fear from cybersquatters adopting names
with FooBar as a substring.
The addition of new TLDs will also help, by presenting the
public with more names ending in things other than
them think a little more about how the names are structured. It's
desirable to adopt new TLDs with clear meanings, not just
generic substitutes for
names will simply result in the same group of trademark owners
registering them in addition to the other TLDs they already have,
or filing challenges against others who get there first, but won't
expand the namespace in any meaningful way. Thus, I actually
like
current group of new names to be added -- though their
application is very limited, at least it's clearly defined. Some
more well-defined TLDs, hopefully with broader application,
would be desirable. Ones I'd like to see are
(e.g., about celebrities and genres) and
Some TLDs can be explicitly defined as being for
noncommercial commentary, where the presence of a name in
them does not imply endorsement by the entity having that name
as a trade name or trademark. I don't know if the lawyers can
be kept at bay by this in the present climate, but at least it could
be tried...
This doesn't mean that the UDRP ought to be repealed. There's
still a valid function for a dipute resolution process in cases
where somebody intentionally and abusively registers a
misleading name to try to profit from somebody else's
trademark. But this process should be limited to a narrow
category of clearly abusive registrations, not for every case
where two entities both claim to have rights to some string of
characters. The policy as now written covers the relevant cases
very well, if it's interpreted as written (which, unfortunately, the
panelists haven't always done; sometimes, they've stretched
points very far to achieve their desired result). There is no need
to expand it to cover cases outside the realm of trademark
rights, as the current proposals do.
More on the specific things that are being proposed to regulate:
International Nonproprietary Names for Pharmaceutical
Substances:
Well, these are by *definition* nonproprietary... duh! Thus, they
belong simultaneously to everybody and nobody, just like any
other generic word in English or any other language. Therefore,
"first come, first serve" is the only rational way to deal with them.
Just as whoever registered "pets.com" first has the right to keep
that name, develop a pet-related site there or sell it to somebody
else who wants to do so (and the fact that the current owner of
that name just went bankrupt is beside the point...), whoever
gets one of these nonproprietary drug names first owns it in that
particular TLD (but doesn't gain trademark rights to it in any
other context, including in other TLDs). If he wants to use it to
sell his version of that drug, or to provide generic information
about the drug, or to warn people of the dangers of the drug, or
to run an avant-garde artsy site having nothing to do with that
drug just because the site developer happens to like the sound of
the name, that's his own business. Maybe that'll give the
registrant an "unfair" advantage over other sellers of the drug, but
them's the breaks. Life ain't always fair. Imposing a heavy-
handed exclusion over all of these names in all TLDs is an
example of the "nuclear flyswatter" approach, dealing with a real
or imagined problem with vastly excessive force. And why do
generic names of drugs deserve more protection than generic
names of any other kind of object or substance? Maybe all
words in the unabridged dictionaries of all human languages
should be excluded too?
Names of International Intergovernmental Organizations:
Why are you limiting it to that, anyhow? Even *intra*national
*intra*governmental organizations seem to want to control
"their" name in all global TLDs these days. I say, screw 'em if
they didn't get the name they wanted first. Let them use the
properly structured name in
organization, or in their own country code if they're an agency of
a particular nation's government. If more such groups do so, the
public will gradually learn where to find these sites instead of
stupidly expecting them all to be in
Personal Names:
The new
by corporate trademark owners trying to preclude anything they
think is an "infringement" -- it would be asinine if McDonalds
could stop all people named McDonald from putting their
personal site appropriately in
.name would be desirable in the case of attempts to hoard or
speculate in sites with names other than the registrant's actual
name or nickname.
In other TLDs not specifically for personal names, no special
protections for such are needed or desired. If a personal name is
being used as a trademark or service mark (whether registered
or unregistered), as is the case with many celebrities who have
merchandise using their name, then they should have the same
rights as any other trademark owner, but shouldn't be able to
prevail against a less-famous person who is also named the same
thing (as the musician Don Henley has been trying to do against
a different Don Henley who has his personal site at don-
henley.com).
When two people are named John Smith, or Don Henley, then
first come, first served should always rule regardless of the
relative fame of the people, excepting only highly abusive cases
where the less famous party actually used the domain name to
intentionally mislead people into thinking he was the famous
person of that name.
Some consideration also needs to be given to noncommercial
fair use of celebrity names for the purpose of fan sites or
commentary sites. Perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, new TLDs
like
independent sites about a celebrity. But for now, I regard
the most sensible place for noncommercial fan sites, and think
that any such sites should be allowed to continue, especially if
they contain disclaimers that they are not the celebrity's official
site. There's more justification to challenging the use of a
domain by an unauthorized fan, as that TLD implies commercial
use, something which should not be done with a celebrity's name
without permission (other than in limited cases such as
journalistic use).
Geographical Indications:
These should be treated like any other generic word -- whoever
gets them first should be allowed to keep them. They shouldn't
be regarded as proprietary. Of course, within country code
domains, the laws of the country in question apply, and maybe in
some countries place names are proprietary or excluded from
domain registration. But in gTLDs, the first-come, first-served
rule should be maintained. There are plenty of sites named after
cities, states, countries, etc. which are being used in a very
reasonable manner to provide information about that place
(either commercially or noncommercially), or as the site of a
person, company, or organization which happens to have the
same name as a place. Others, however, are held passively by
speculative cybersquatters, but imposing heavyhanded regulation
on this would be another case of a nuclear flyswatter. Once
again, the appropriate governmental authorities of the place
should be encouraged to use the properly structured country
code domains for their official site, like ci.miami.fl.us for the
official site of Miami, and not worry about who else happened to
grab miami.com, miami.net, miami.org, and miami.WhateverElse.
Trade Names:
Actually, domains have more rational correspondence with trade
names than they do with trademarks, as, in the original structure
of the system, they were intended to represent the organizations
on the Internet, not their products and services -- any sites for
particular products and services ought to be subdomains of their
owning company's site.
A trade name should have some protection against abusive
domain registration by others, but not to any stronger extent than
is currently true of trademarks. Somebody registering another
company's name as a domain name with intent to profit from this
association and lacking any rights to the name themselves
deserves to be challenged under the UDRP, but it's an abuse of
the system for one company with a given trade name to initiate a
UDRP case against another company which also has a similar
name -- trade names are not globally unique. Once again, first-
come, first-served should rule.
For more of my comments and links regarding the domain name
system and its structure and conflicts, see my site at:
http://domains.dantobias.com/
Daniel R. Tobias
Boca Raton, Florida
April 15, 2001
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
As BlowCat and sulli said, localizing the browsers is a bad idea. Everything else you said is right on the money. Generic TLD's are the source of all the domain disputes we've seen. If every domain were all under the purview of the country the corp/org is from, there would be applicable laws in place to deal with the situation.
What should happen if there are multiple nike.com.* domains is a simple response 300 - Multiple Choices response. Let the user choose!
I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Constitutionally Correct
Well, according to their page:
http://www.chi.il.us/stats/
that site is getting a lot of hits, considering that it doesn't seem to actually have any content other than the stats!
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
Maybe someone could check how many people with the name "George Walter Bush" there are in the US...
Why would someone do that?
I just did... see my message... I guess that means I've fulfilled your quota (unless somebody else here busts the quota by submitting a comment to WIPO too...)
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
WIPO already has it's mind made up. You can contradict everything they say and back this up with the most exquisite reasoning and all you'll get is your name in the back listing "poeple who participated in the process" and they'll ignore everything you say. That's what happened with Version 1 of this nonsense and have we all forgotten how badly they screwed over our own Michael Froomkin? WIPO has no place in the management of the network. Let them stick the court system where they properly belong.
Need Mercedes parts ?
"BOOM"? Some categories on dmoz have a lag time, from submission and listing, of several months.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's daft. If Burger King have offices/stores in the US (as they patently do), they should register the burgerking.co.us domain. That site could contain a link to the parent company if they are not based in the US. The bit about needing county and state is a little silly.
I'm sure they already own trademarks and such-like in the US that would allow them to register that domain under most of the schemes that are proposed to ease conflicts.
That means that, if they operate in 47 countries, they need to host 47 sites (which means taking up 47 different IPs), each physically located in the country in question (which should make mirroring kinda fun), and make sure each of those sites comply with 47 different sets of national laws (which means hiring 47 law firms). Sure, this is just a drop in the bucket for Burger King, but what if I want to start my own on-line store that ships internationally? I sure as hell can't afford lawyers for each of the 200+ countries on the globe today.
Simplifying management alone should be enough reason to let some entities continue to operate in an international namespace.
"The bit about needing county and state is a little silly."
Why? The majority of the laws that affect websites are not at the federal level. Hate/obscene material is regulated by the states. Taxes are levied by the states. Corporations are goverened by state laws (why do you think almost every US bank is based out of Delaware?). If an entity needs to conform to zoning laws in order to publish a certain kind of website, then they have to worry about local (city, county, whatever) laws. All the federal government can do is regulate interstate commerce to some degree.
The Tenth Ammendment makes the problem of juggling interstate naming issues almost as complicated s juggling international ones.
What you propose reduces the extent of the problem but does not solve it. You still need to find a way to resolve disputes within a countries borders. And heaven help the confused user that goes to apple.uk think it is the UK version of apple.us and so on. By your rules, there would be no coordinated assignment effort accross borders. That does not sound like a good idea to me. We can do better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
It seems to me that if someone registers a domain name, and then puts real content on it, they then have the right to that site. However, if they register a name, and forward it to a generic site, that is obviously abuse.
Webmaster - CoasterCount.com
TODO: Something witty here...
Now is it just me or does that suggestion make too much sense ever be implemented?
.ca...
The problem is that people don't just want part of the pie, they want it all. Whether it's corporations who want to register their name on every tld and make the entire internet corporate or it's twits like Paul Garrin running Name.Space who apparently wants to have a piece of every tld. (I don't see much of a difference)...
Of course the real problem is that we screwed up the use of cc tld's. (Witness the developing screw up that is
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
And the ODP will last, what, 2, maybe 3 hours?
Webmaster - CoasterCount.com
TODO: Something witty here...
i agreed with most of your points when you said
.com, .net, .edu, .gov,
.org, and .mil. They are dinosaurs of a bygone
.arpa.
.US TLD to establish com.us, net.us, edu.us, gov.us, org.us and mil.us for US companies and govt agencies.
.com and .net can be removed. there is more benefit in applying the original criteria for .net which was intended for network operators. .com could still be used for international companies.
.com name space becomes more international.
.uk, .au, .jp,
.us (yes, you blokes have .us so why now use
.com name space.
.com name space. short of changing the law to suit an international treaty is the only way to break their hold on .com. a treaty would allow all of the conflicts in the TLD's to be resolved at one time.
> ICANN should get rid of
>
> era just
there is room in the
i disagree with your implication that
this would allow US companies to demonstrate their American nature as the
> Only country codes should remain
>
> it?)
i agree.
at one point i was considering suggesting establishing a treaty whereby the US government delegate the ccTLD to each respective government. this would allow a country to determine [with absolute authority] how their ccTLD is used.
this could be achieved by seperating the profitable registry company from the non-profit TLD administrative roles. while companies control a TLD on a for-profit basis they will put the priorities of their share-holders higher than their clients. the only check to this system is competition which doesn't really exist in the
netsolutions can be expected to defend their lucrative registry position in the
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
But, like the dinosaurs, it will take nothing less than a comet to get rid of all those thousands of .coms.
"Only country codes should remain .uk, .au, .jp, .us (yes, you blokes have .us so why now use it?) "
Because, for some odd reason, we're not allowed to JUST use ".us" We also have to put in the state codes, and often even the county. For example, if we want the website for the government of Harford County, Maryland, we have to go to the URL http://www.co.ha.md.us/ If you want Baltimore County instead, replace the H with a B.
Can you imagine how confusing that would be for nation-wide businesses? To find out information about a credit card or a bank, you have to remember what county in Delaware they're incorporated. Wal-Mart.com? Nope, you'll have to go figure out what county in Arkansas their central offices are. Boeing would have to change their URL when they move from Seattle. And these are just the lucky examples when I can guess what state they're in.
Not even the USPS requires you to know what county the other person is in.
"Even the UN is in New York City", That's not enough. Each burrough is a different county. I don't know about you, but I can't remember which one the UN building is in. I'm pretty sure it's not Manhattan (New York County)... is it Brooklyn (King's County)?
Besides, what happens if you want to go to the one in Switzerland instead?
"And NATO is in Switzerland"
Um... no.
"No one is so important that they need to exist outside of national boundaries. No one."
And what about all the multi-national businesses? Are you saying that if I want to get information on my Panasonic DVD player, I'll need to remembe that they're really Matsushita and they're located in Japan?
And, what's even worse, what happens when the borders change? Countries change their names. Revolutions succeed. Neighbors invade neighbors. Do youy really think somebody like ICANN can keep track of all that?
... and yet you still come here...
"I have come to memorize the sections I most often use "
Let's say, for some reason, I wanted information about Burger King. Under the current system, I'd just type in "burgerking.com" and see what comes up. Odds are, it'd be what I was looking for. What your suggesting, though, requires a guess as to what country it's based in. Since Burger King is a fast food joint, and most fast food joints seem to be American, I'd be tempted to try "burgerking.us." I'd then find out the hard way that it's not an American company (even though they're all over the US), and then I'd have to go off to a search engine to find out what it is.
If I need to go to a search engine to find out where any new page is, then there is almost no reason for using DNS to begin with. Needing to know information about a company before finding information out about a company is circular. I fail to see how this would make more sense than just abandoning DNS for the raw IP.
What state would you guess /. is hosted out of? C'mon, you've got a good 1:50 chance of guessing right...
Let the WIPO manage their own tld, a .wipo domain.
.wipo for any string of characters.
WIPO can do their own decisions on which party or any should get the
Ah, of course. And that would magically eliminate all disputes over ownership in OTHER top-level domains. How ingenious!
WIPO is just acting as a mediator like any of the other ICANN-accredited mediators. They don't have any special power, the only difference may be that they have vested interests in protecting trademark owners. But so does ICANN: if they can't do the job, they disappear.
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lake effect weblog
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
SALAD BARF! DELI-DUMP SUSPECT NABBED
A gross-out gourmet was caught dumping human waste on a Midtown salad bar - and is suspected in more than a dozen similar stomach-turning incidents, police said.
Workers at the deli grabbed the feces-flinging fiend after they noticed him emptying two bottles of disgusting-smelling liquid onto food trays in the back of the store at around 5:40 p.m., police said.
Cops responding to the bizarre call arrested Arellano and confiscated the bottles, which were sent to the Health Department for testing.
"Oh, it makes me sick just thinking about it," said Alpine customer Dawn Riggins, a 33-year-old beautician from The Bronx. "What kind of person would do that? It's disgusting."
Arellano was charged with reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, criminal tampering and public urination.
And in a twist sure to make Midtown workers lose their lunch - or never eat it again - police said they are investigating numerous other incidents at eateries in Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, and around 42nd Street.
Officials said Arellano has already been identified by witnesses as the man who recently tried to foul the food at Mike's Take-Away Deli in Grand Central, and will soon be charged in that case.
Other suspected victims of the dung-disher in the past few days include a Krispy Kreme, Zaro's Bakery, and Caruso's Pizza in Penn Station, police sources said.
Police are also investigating him for other alleged incidents, officials said.
Police said several proprietors witnessed what they thought was bizarre behavior by a man matching Arellano's description - while others had customers complain of foul odors coming from certain foods.
Deli customer Keshia Williamson said the incident explains why deli salads often taste like, er, garbage.
"I'm sure this happens at other delis, too," said the 21-year-old college student. "The person who did this is an animal. He could've gotten people sick.
"I'm not going to eat anything more from a salad bar."
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Localizing the internet would make it instantly much less usable by making hostnames not univeral. So users would have to think about what country they are in before typing in domain names; links wouldn't work across borders; and the net would become more balkanized (like DVD regions). Forget it.
sulli
RTFJ.
Not really, just extend the searching capabilities, and deepend the hierarchy (making topics more precise)... I really don't see how that would be so hard?
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MOVE 'SIG'.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Trademarks 'raison d'être'. To use Attorneys words, "The basic tenet of trademark law is to protect consumers and trademark owners from confusion in the marketplace". - "That will be $2,000 please", they say, with big greedy smile on face.
In English, this means - Trademarks existance is so we are all clear as to the source of product or service. It has to be clearly identified. The authorities deceive you - they know how to solve these conflicts. They are without honour.
It is a First Amendment issue. They do this to control the words you can use.
I will prove to you - they do not give a fig about the basic tenet of trademark law. They just care about money and power - the law means nothing to them, they break several. Visit WIPO.org.uk and see.
A trademark is declared invalid through a lack of distinctiveness, they all have to be different - so they all can be identified.
WIPO.org.uk - no connection with the World Intellectual Property Organization - WIPO.ORG, part of U.N., paid for (owned?) by big business.
Only country codes should remain .uk, .au, .jp, .us (yes, you blokes have .us so why now use it?)
What of "multinational corporations" and "international organizations". Tough titties. Do *just* *like* you do with postal addresses and phone numbers for your multi-national operation. Have several in several different nations (Even the UN is in New York City. And NATO is in Switzerland).
No one is so important that they need to exist outside of national boundaries. No one.
So who gets "apple". The computer maker? The employment agency? The record company? Some local farmer?
whu? it already has tons of sites on it and is duplicated across many search engines... what problem would there be?
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MOVE 'SIG'.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
WIPO can do their own decisions on which party or any should get the .wipo for any string of characters.
A .wipo name does what it says, it is what the WIPO says is the owner of that name. If want to find a world company with a company that has a near-global trademarked name, typing theirname.wipo will get you there. It can have its own fun playing with disputed case, and the winner of the case is still representative of what it is: who the WIPO thinks the name should go to.
This is beyond RealNames, since that system is crippled by requiring certain browsers, and also the RealNames authority makes glaring exceptions on its policy (such as if it is a content partner, then we will break our rules of name distribution). Also, as a private company, it may be more likely run up the renewal rates if it became popular. Google has a nice bypass as well, as the most referenced site will often be the official one, but this is an extra step in a search, the most referenced isn't always the official one.
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"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Please take a moment to read through the article and write up a response. The internet is becoming a predominant form of communication with everyday people. If you don't say anything, I'm sure someone else will.
Sure this sounds like political mumbo-jumbo or might sound like the obvious thing to do, but most of you will just read this story and move on. Take a few minutes to preserve sanity in the regulations.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
i say we just all use IPs and the open directory project and forget domain names... that way there wouldnt be these stupid legal disputes and all that.
just submit your info into it and BOOM youre listed. i think this would give the net a much more level playing field, as well as letting other protocols accessed... say i want to list my gopher and hotline IP's, i could put them in appropriate places =]
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MOVE 'SIG'.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
I've put together lots of info on domain names, their structure, and the disputes that have occurred about them, in a site at:
domains.dantobias.com
--Dan
--Dan
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