William Allen Simpson <wsimpson@greendragon.com> wrote:
In Spain, the City of Barcelona has trademarked barcelona.es, .com, .net, and .org. Excessive (in my view), but no surprise with the actions of Llena.
This thread makes me wonder why the city of Boston didn't try to grab Boston.com. Perhaps they did, but the current holder (a large daily newspaper owned by none other than the NY Times) has deep enough pockets to engage in a lengthy battle. The original holder of that domain was Au Bon Pain, based in Cambridge: a croissant and coffee shop. My $0.02 on the nature of naming: this is just exactly like the 800 toll-free prefix. As soon as 888 opened up, whoever held 800-FLOWERS then had to reserve 888-FLOWERS. (I recall trying to get a mnemonic 888 number, but gave up after learning that all the good ones were taken within 60 days.) Now there's 877 and 866. The mnemonic names are, no doubt, all taken by the same folks who got the 800 prefixes. People who create a trademark want to have it protected globally. It's human nature. We *want* a flat namespace. If someone tries to spread it out across a hierarchy, we instinctively use our resources to *grab* our piece of the rest of the hierarchical turf. Therefore any company which creates a broader hierarchy is not motivated by what's best for Internet users, who are best served by a simple hierarchy (IBM is IBM is IBM no matter what you append to it). The company is motivated by collecting a toll from those lawyers representing companies who seek to grab their piece of the turf. Corporate entities should be *required* to register in the flat dot-com namespace, IMHO, and not be *allowed* names in any other namespace. All DNS does is complicate network management. Vadim's position is extreme, but not too far off the mark. Keep it simple, stupid, should be ICANN's guiding philosophy on this. Wonder how to implement this without turning it all over to the bureaucrats at the US Patent & Trademark Office? -rich
On Thu, 8 Mar 2001 richb@pioneer.ci.net wrote:
Corporate entities should be *required* to register in the flat dot-com namespace, IMHO, and not be *allowed* names in any other namespace.
First I'll remind you that there is a world outside of the United States. Then I'll ask: are you at all serious? You expect to ban UK companies from registering in .co.uk? Precisely how would you enforce this ban? -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
Jim Dixon wrote:
First I'll remind you that there is a world outside of the United States. Then I'll ask: are you at all serious? You expect to ban UK companies from registering in .co.uk?
Last I checked, dot-com was never a US-specific domain. I don't see anything US-centric in my posting, other than the reference to the US PTO. As for my being serious--no, a ban would be silly. But it *is* food for thought when contemplating the trend toward globalism over the past ten years. When starting a new corporate entity, should you come up with a name which is unique only to your own state or country? Or should you do a global name search to define a new one and gain global trademark protection for it? If the dot-com registry were operated efficiently and backed by a trademark authority that had respect throughout the world, then it would be less costly to set up and protect a new corporate name. -rich
On Thu, 8 Mar 2001 richb@pioneer.ci.net wrote:
Jim Dixon wrote:
[restoring deleted text:] ::: On Thu, 8 Mar 2001 richb@pioneer.ci.net wrote: :: ::: Corporate entities should be *required* to register in the flat dot-com ::: namespace, IMHO, and not be *allowed* names in any other namespace.
First I'll remind you that there is a world outside of the United States. Then I'll ask: are you at all serious? You expect to ban UK companies from registering in .co.uk?
Last I checked, dot-com was never a US-specific domain. I don't see anything US-centric in my posting, other than the reference to the US PTO.
Well, your proposal was that corporate entities be required to register in .COM and banned from any other name space, which by any normal reading bans them from .co.uk, .de, .fr, and several other name spaces.
As for my being serious--no, a ban would be silly. But it *is* food for thought when contemplating the trend toward globalism over the past ten years. When starting a new corporate entity, should you come up with a name which is unique only to your own state or country? Or should you do a global name search to define a new one and gain global trademark protection for it?
Names in .CO.UK used to be free, but the registry was run by a committee which delegated names slowly and often only after protracted disputes. When Nominet began its very efficient management of the UK registry we noticed an immediate, large jump in the number of customers registering there and a corresponding large drop in the number registering in .COM, despite the fact that Nominet was then charging considerably more than the InterNIC for a name. That is, when given the opportunity, people and companies vote for local name spaces and therefore against a single, global, flat name space.
If the dot-com registry were operated efficiently and backed by a trademark authority that had respect throughout the world, then it would be less costly to set up and protect a new corporate name.
In most countries there are dozens of trademark categories. Having the rights to a name in one category does not give you exclusive rights in all. You are suggesting that the world in effect collapse thousands of name spaces into one, and one that is already more than overpopulated. Some time ago I looked up allTheGoodNamesAreGone.com -- sure enough, it was gone. -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
Therefore any company which creates a broader hierarchy is not motivated by what's best for Internet users, who are best served by a simple hierarchy (IBM is IBM is IBM no matter what you append to it).
Okay. You picked an example which proves your point. However, there's plenty of exceptions. Who should have "apple" in this flat namespace? Apple Computers? Apple Records? Apple Fruitstore? While the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is a fairly well-known name worldwide, what gives us more claim to "bbc" in the flat namespace than "Big Blue and Cousins" or "Baptist Bible College" (bbc.org and bbc.edu respectively)? Have we now got bbc.com because we had a greater claim to it, or because we had the better lawyers? Simon -- Simon Lockhart | Tel: +44 (0)1737 839676 Internet Engineering Manager | Fax: +44 (0)1737 839516 BBC Internet Services | Email: Simon.Lockhart@bbc.co.uk Kingswood Warren,Tadworth,Surrey,UK | URL: http://support.bbc.co.uk/
participants (3)
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Jim Dixon -
richb＠pioneer.ci.net -
Simon Lockhart