Provisions for fraudulent transfers of domains

You have set out to protect the interests of big companies and lawyers who know how to obtain trademarks and rights that most of the rest of us have no clue about. For example, should Disney now be able to make claim to goto.com because goto contains the word go in it? These are two titans who can slug it out in court and otherwise, but what about the little guy. If I own Gotomovers.com, am I going to risk losing my domain name because goto.com has a "trademark" monopoly on a commonly used word. If your argument is that cybersquatters are extorting from legitimate business, then you must come from a communist viewpoint. The reason the US has high availability of goods and services, full employment, and a robust economy is because of "goods-squatters." They purchase goods and then resell them. It is the way of capitalism.

Let's take another example. If a "landsquatter" puchases land next to a major corporation thinking that the corporation may need the land in the future for exapansion, are they not extorting from the company by acting where the major corporation has failed to act? What if another business bought the land instead of the "squatter" and developed it. Wouldn't it cost the exapanding company much more to purchase the improved land as apposed to the undeveloped land? You are way off base with your guidelines. We could talk of "stocksquatters", "commoditysquatters", and on and on. The reason Russia is languishing so horrifically in it's economy is because there are not enough willing "squatters" who will take risks, and realize rewards.

I bring all of this up to show you how misguided you have become by the INTERESTS that have formed your governing provisions. I remember reading about the guy who registered Gateway.com. He had a real business at the site, but was sued by Gateway 2000 for trademark infringement and dilution. The poor guy had his domain name extorted by the big bad Gateway 2000 because they had the muscle in the courts to wrest the name from him. Gateway 2000 is hardly Gateway.com, but the LAW worked for them. Do you think that big business needed protection in this scenario? The answer is certainly not.

Let's take my case. You have no provision in you manditory arbitration for someone like me who has had his domain name taken from him because he was unwilling to sell it. I own (I believe I still do) EFAX.COM. The company who wanted the name from me could not get me to sell it to them, so they contacted a third party and had that third party transfer my domain name to them as if she was me. The third party has said on tape that she told EFAX that she did not own the domain, but that she thought I was not going to use it or had forgotten about it, so she would transfer it to them. She did not own my name, yet was able to transfer it. Network Solutions has yet to reply to my complaint about the transfer, and it has been over a year. Now, with ICANN, I see that I still have no remedy in your new arbitration rules, because you are solely concerned with so called "cybersquatters."

I hope you realize that you are bought by big dollar interests. I hope you realize that you have no more concern for the little guy than a professional basketball team. I hope you sleep well at night...