"Steven J. Sobol" writes:
Certainly the legal confusion surrounding the gtld's shouldn't be used as a rational for not developing a process (which is what Barry suggested) for attending to problems associated with the country code domains.
What sort of problems?
Trademark/service mark conflicts come to mind. But in general I would say one function of a legal system is to mediate disputes. Barry raised an issue (valid or not, take your pick) and asked if we should have a system by which disputes related to Internet facilities (such as domain name space) could be handled. To be more specific, an entity utilizing the .TO domain name was misrepresenting themselves using Barry's domain in .COM. Now perhaps if Barry's domain was world.std.com.US he would have a more obvious legal process by which he could defend his use of world.std.com.US because it would clearly be within the name space assigned to the United States. I pointed out that with .TO the legal issue was somewhat clearer than with .COM because .TO is assigned to a legal entity whereas the legal context of .COM is ambiguous. This makes it difficult for Barry to pursue any legal action and it also make it easier for unscrupulous folks to use domains fraudulently (because it is hard to challenge them in a legal context). Of course it works the other way also, if someone from the Kingdom of Tonga were to read this thread and decide they *didn't* want to register spam and porn havens then perhaps it would be a good thing if that government (i.e., registry) had the authority to say who was in and who was out of the .TO domain. One reason why it is so discomforting to have the Internic make policy decisions regarding domain registrations in .com is that there is no legal entity that is clearly responsible for the gtld's. I don't see too many people shouting across international borders about how the .uk domain is managed but I'm reasonably sure if there is a shouting match going on within their borders they probably have a legal process that can be used to mediate the disputes--something that doesn't seem to exist regarding the Internic and the gtld's.
If you're going to make a statement like that, I think it would be useful to first delineate what problems are supposed to be fixed by the TLD admins, and what problems are supposed to be fixed by the admins of the subdomains.
I don't think it is necessary to have an enumerated list of potential and/or demonstrated problems as a prerequisite to developing a process for resolving disputes. All other things being equal, a naming system that facilitates problem resolution is better than a naming system that creates problems to be resolved.