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Small Business Administration Objects to .US Deal
rlarner writes: "The United States Small Business Administration has written a letter to the NTIA that challenges the .US sale. The SBA claims that the UDRP and sunrise period were not properly enacted - they needed comment periods, etc. The letter is here." We've done a few previous stories about the handling of .us. Free registration of second-level domains under .us were supposed to go live shortly.
...but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the organization that doles out .US domains to give trademark holders a brief time to buy their domains. It's not like the sales of domain names would be stagnant, that's for sure, so no money would be lost there. And if a company interested in having their trademark with a .US domain doesn't respond in time (I dunno, a week? Two?) then tough luck. Resolve your cybersquatting issues in court, because you had your chance.
My sigs always suck.
from the letter....NTIA did not submit these legislative rules for notice and comment as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and did not conduct a regulatory flexibility analysis as required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA).
As part of our statutory duty to monitor agency compliance with the RFA, Advocacy requests that the NTIA place the contract for administration of the Dot US Domain Space on hold and submit the legislative rulemaking provisions for notice and comment, and conduct a regulatory flexibility analysis. Alternatively, NTIA can strike the rulemaking provisions from the contract, and the contract would no longer be subject to the APA. Unless and until NTIA does so, the contract for the management of the Dot US domain is unlawful, as it violates both the APA and the RFA.
While I don't agree with the "sunrise" period mentioned in the letter, it really doesn't matter. According to the statement above NITA dropped the ball. They didn't do what they were supposed to do, didn't get the proper regulatatory "stamp of approval" and the contract should be considered invalid.
After they drop the contract, they should re-think the sunrise policies... but first they need to slap that thing with a big "illigeal" stamp and get it out of there ;)
just my 2cents... -ryanThe real problem with trademarks is that before the net, there was no problem with two companies using the same name as long as it was in a different context. Now that both of those companies will want the same domain name, it gets ugly. When you also have individuals and small organizations getting names in the same namespace, it gets really ugly. Having a more hierarchical namespace helps, but doesn't eliminate the problem.
What's needed isn't a chance for trademark holders to get a head start, but a better system for resolving conflicts when disputes arise.
Why bother having new domains if anyone that has a ".com" is going to end up having first crack buying every other "dot" extension under the sun?
Look at the other TLD extensions, like .tv, .cc, etc. How many sites under those TLD's do you actually see?
.cc, they went back home to .com, to the tune of http://zetarocks.com/.
.us domain will be similarly received by business interests.
A local radio station, WHTZ 94.9 (Zeta) swtiched from 949zeta.com to 949zeta.cc, but a few months after going to
I think the
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
Do we really want to trust a company to manage the .us domain when they can't even manage to get the contract legally...
Why not mirror the UK system, which works reasonably well:
.states. makes it legible to a non-american)
co.uk - commerical (sounds better than com.uk)
ac.uk - academic, universities, schools, etc
org.uk - organisations, charities, and the like
gov.uk - official government sites
net.uk - UK network providers ?
Of course, in the US, I guess each state would be interested in providing it's own DNS server:
ak.states.us
nd.states.us
tx.states.us
(the
Here's the problem:
.xxx, but not all of it. Filtering sites would likely be about as effective as it is now.
Define "inappropriate" as well as the penalties for posting something "inappropriate" on non-.xxx domains. Hardcore porn is easy but what about safe-sex guides? Sexual positions manual? Is it inappropriate if you use cartoons? Computer generated models? Unerotic photos of models?
You'll never be able to make it mandatory. Sure, you might be able to move a great deal of the porno business to
Didn't you have secret codes that you and your friends created in the treehouse so that you could pass messages back and forth without your teachers or parents figuring out what it meant? Picture that on a global scale.