domain dispute policy

[Dan <dparisi@garden.net>]

You are giving a Christmas present two months earlier to WIPO and their
corporate interests who wanted the U.S. Constitution and U.S. trademark
laws out of the way so they could greatly expand their rights to dispute
and take away domain names from people who registered them before they
did. From what I have read there have been only 2,000 domain name
disputes under the current Network Solitions policy out of over
4,000,000 domain names that have been registered or about .005 % so I do
not know why so much effort has been put in this area to help these
coporate interests. Trademarks are only words that used to describe
products or services and from what I have seen you are just trying to
ban words with your policy. I have no idea why you would even put your
policy in place as any company if they lost in your arbitration would
take thier claim to court. You are just adding an extra step and I am
wondering if this is some plan to get the courts completely out of the
picture down the road if the U.S. government cedes control of the domain
system to you. You have significantly increased the corporate worlds
rights with the following two "corporate welfare reforms to the system.
1. Under the current Network Solutions system you had do have a
registered trademark and the the offending domain name had to be the
exact string as your trademark. Example. if someone had a registered
trademark for "whitehouse" they could initiate the dispute policy only
for whitehouse.com. .org or .net.  Now someone with a trademark for
"whitehouse"  or someone who does not even have a trademark can dispute
anything close to "whitehouse" even domain names such as
whitehousesucks.com. As you know in the real world there are sometimes
hundreds of products and services who use the same name to describe
thier products. As an example there are over 200 registered trademarks
for "whitehouse" worldwide. Your system does not seem to want to
recognize this real world scenario and also the use of words or
trademarks in a non-trademark sense. Even Ralph Nader has comlained
about your system using one of my domain names gmsucks.com to make a
point that your system goes too far and does not protect free speech and
expression. How can anyone even make an argument that anyone would think
that gmsucks.com would be endorsed or affilated with General Motors. 2.
Under the current Network Solutions Policy any dispute handled under
thier system could be brought in any court. Your policy restricts that
court to the jurisdiction where the registrar resides. Currently 99% of
all registrations are through Network Solutions who is based in
Virginia. I find it ironic that you changed your base of operations to
Virginia which is in the 4th Circuit from California which is based in
the 9th Circuit. The 9th circuit is probably the most domain name holder
friendly court in the country while the 4th Circuit is probably the most
Business friendly court and anti-domain name holder court in the
country. Obviously any domain name holder with any common sense would
want not want to go to court in Virginia and I am wondering if you are
forcing them there on purpose. I heard all this rhetoric about registrar
portability last year in Boston but at this time I see no way to change
registrars from names already registered from say Network Solutions to
another registrar who is not based in Virginia. Will you be adding the
transportabily of registrars feature soon to alleviate this problem or
is this just another form of coporate welfare.

Dan Parisi
WhiteHouse.com