Comment on the top-level-domains, "unique name", "well known mark",and and trademark issues.

[Chuck Harkness <chuck_harkness@cwix.com>]

I just read your "final report".  I understand that the comment period has expired, but wanted to send you my two-cents worth as a U.S. citizen anyway.

 

I've no 'special' expertise in the internet nor am I a lawyer.  The whole issue of trademarks, 'well known marks', etc. relative to the internet seems to me to be one which you shouldn't be involved with except that perhaps your organization has been subverted by the commercial and legal community.

 

While I can understand that Ford Motor Company might desire that they have exclusive use of the word 'Ford',  that should be their problem, not the internet community's problem.  The idea that the general public will not know that ford.com is different from and may be a different entity than ford.firm or ford.nom or ford.whatever is insulting.  Obviously we are very used to the idea that similar names are not the same entity.  I would not address mail to Jerry.Ford when I wanted to reach George.Ford.   If I sent mail to Gerry.Ford instead of Jerry.Ford, that would be my problem and I think I am smart enough to quickly realize upon reaching the wrong person or company that I misunderstood the spelling.  If I couldn't recognize that Ford.com is different from Ford.sex, then I would be not just ignorant but stupid and either way deserve no special consideration.

 

The whole problem seems to me to be a remnant of the decision (most likely a good technical decision at the time) to restrict the number of top-level-domains.  I have a hard time believing anyone who says this is a technical problem now.  In fact, my technical intuition tells me that having a larger number of top-level-domains would be relatively easier to manage using today's technology than having everybody stuffed into the .com domain.   If you simply opened up the number of tld's it's obvious that the problem would go away, since it would not take long for most everyone to realize that they need to consider the whole name significant, not just assume that everything ends in .com.

 

As far as the "squatters" issue.  So what.  Once people realized that the whole name is significant, their potential economic gains would be greatly reduced.   If they recognized that starwars.whatever was valuable before the producers of the Star Wars movies then more power to them.

 

In summary, it's obvious that this whole thing has been co-opted by special interests that wish to restrict the rights of the rest of us.  My wish is that you open up the number of top-level-domains completely, establish a policy to issue names on a first-come-first-serve basis, and stay out of the trademark/copyright issues.

 

Also, quit spending my money on catering to the special interest groups (probably a hopeless dream).  I realize you are an international organization, but you're still spending some of my money.

 

By the way, a long time ago I found that the domains "harkness.com" and "harkness.org" and "harkness.net" were already occupied.  I realized that those people were more foresighted than I.  My problem, not yours.

 

Chuck Harkness