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.

Comments

Dodging the problem

[gaijin99]

I think that a large part of the problem is that the WIPO is ignoring the fact that much of the abuse comes from corporate entities who think that they own all domain names that include their trademark name. See the "www.veronica.com" issue for an example, or 2600's fight against Verizon for the verizonREALLYsucks.com domain name.

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.

The rules won't matter

[Kagato]

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.