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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.
The 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?
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