For whatever it's worth

[Tony Linares <linares@caribe.net>]

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am sure that your organization receives many complaints of trademark and copyright infringements by the use of domains.  Our company is currently in the process of filing a Domain Name Dispute with Network Solutions, Inc. because of the use of a competitor of our registered trademark as their domain name.

To top that, we were recently offered to register a domain name under the .cc Top Level Domain.  An internet company called eNIC is selling second level domains under .cc.  After some research through yours and IANA's very informative websites, we found that .cc is a country code top level domain for a place called Cocos Island.  I know, as you state in your policies, that you are not in the business of determining whether countries exist or not.  I am quite literate in geography and am sure that Cocos Island is a fictional country, and is now being used for profit by eNIC.  

>From your policies, I can tell that yours is a very vertical organization and that your main objective is to keep the internet clean, honest and in continuous operation.  I think that loopholes like .cc takes us away from that goal.

I have one suggestion.  I know it's a longshot but it's worth a try.  To protect existing registered corporations, limited liability corporations, limited liability partnerships and trademarks, why not open the following TLD's: .inc, .llc, .llp and .tm.  That way, for example, our company's domain would be travelservices.inc or destinationpuertorico.tm ("Destination Puerto Rico" is our registered trademark) and nobody would be able to mess with it.  If for these TLD's we required proof of corporate name or trademark ownership registration, we would avoid the legal costs of having to challenge domain names in the courts.

If it looks like too much trouble and paperwork, I would even be personally willing to help in establishing and managing those TLD's.  It's just that corporations such as ours have worked very long and hard to establish a name to then have a pirate take it away from us.

Sincerely,

Gilbert Anthony Linares
Travel Services, Inc.
1052 Ashford Avenue
San Juan, PR  00907 USA
Tel. (787) 724-6281
Fax (787) 725-6245
e-mail: linares@caribe.net
On the World Wide Web: destinationpr.com