[12338] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Name Reg. Time for Policy Change
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doug Luce)
Mon May 16 11:47:23 1994
Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 10:21:25 +0400 (EDT)
From: Doug Luce <doug@telerama.lm.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: nettech@crl.com
Citizen Stroup writes:
> A new problem that is going to become a profit center for some lawyer,
> will be to sue people who register names that have been covered by a
> Trademark, Servicemark, copyright etc. The NIC should be
> very carefull about this.
Not a new problem nor profit center. The NIC, like the phone company,
does not make any attempt to regulate names in this fashion. Witness
BSDI's former 1-800-ITS-UNIX number, and the settlement between them and
USL to cease use of it.
If the NIC took your recommendation, they would be opening themselves up
to increased legal liability, not to mention an enormous amount of work in
order to verify "ownership" of names. If they set themselves up to police
the namespace, they're setting themselves up as a legal authority. One
bit of sloppiness on their part could spell months of defense and
litigation.
Doug Luce
Telerama Public Access Internet
