At 02:08 PM 08/30/96 -0400, Susan R. Harris wrote:

Greetings - Here's what we've lined up so far for the Oct. 24-25 NANOG agenda:

[deleted]

Are there other topics you'd like to hear about?

Is there any interest in a presentation explaining: - the latest changes in NSI's flawed domain name trademark policy, - the never-ending risk of loss of a domain name (with only 30 days' warning) that any domain name owner faces even if they aren't infringing anybody's trademarks, - the very few steps that a domain name owner can take to reduce the risk of loss of a domain name. The owner of clue.com, a computer consultant in Colorado, is in *two* lawsuits with NSI in an effort to keep from losing the domain name. After he got a court order directing NSI not to cut off the domain name, NSI sued him back in federal court asking for permission to cut it off. All because Hasbro wants it for a board game. The owner of regis.com, a public relations firm in California, is in a lawsuit with NSI to try to keep from losing its domain name. All because a cosmetics company wants it. The owner of disc.com, a software company in Colorado whose four initials spells "disc", is in *two* lawsuits with NSI to keep from losing the domain name to some other company that has the same four initials. In that one, too, NSI sued them back in federal court asking for permission to cut it off. The owner of dci.com, a company in Tennessee whose three initials spell "dci", had to sue NSI to keep from losing its domain name. Some other company with the same three initials asked NSI to cut it off, and NSI was happy to do it for them. And don't forget the case where the owner of ty.com (named after his three-year-old child, named "Ty") had to sue NSI to keep from losing it to some company called "Ty". (For more about all of this, see <http:www.patents.com/nsi.sht>.) Probably almost every attendee at Nanog is responsible for some domain name or another. To each attendee, I would say, what would you do if you were minding your own business, not infringing anybody's trademarks, and a letter showed up from NSI stating that they had scheduled a cutoff of your domain name in 30 days because some trademark owner had asked them to do so? If this topic would be of interest, let me know and I could probably help with setting up a panel to discuss it. Carl Oppedahl