"The INTA proposal creates special membership classes. Surprise,
surprise, one of
those special classes is "trademark and anticounterfeiting Interests."
INTA did not create that membership class. The creation of a membership
class by that name was adopted by consensus in Monterrey (where I, as the
INTA representative, had one of approximately thirty votes). This fact was
available on the dnso.org web site. Also, the class is not "special" but
one of five membership classes.
"You are correct that the opposition of TM interests has been a key factor
holding up the creation of new gTLDs."
What would be an example of a gTLD which would be operational today were it
not for "TM interests"?
"You are not correct, I believe, in then jumping to the conclusion that TM
interests must be given privileged
membership status in a DNSO."
Privileged in what way?
"Why not create 3 seats for a special category of members called "domain name
holders who have been abused by overly aggressive trademark owners"? What
little factual evidence we have suggests that this type of abuse from TM
holders is at
least as extensive as abuse of TM holders by name speculators and infringers.
Your continued repetition of this claim does not make it true. Please
identify the factual basis for this statement.
"Do you understand the point I am making? It is not that TM holders
shouldn't participate, be listened to, or be protected. It is that
membership classes must not be structured to reflect particular policy
positions.
What would be the point of membership classes otherwise?
"TM-domain name interactions represent a struggle over the proper scope of
>property rights. ICANN and its SOs are not the proper arenas in which to
settle
>this struggle. Their job is to administer the name space so that the Internet
>can grow and collisions between name holders don't occur."
Trademark law is the field of law which resolves disputes between business
identifiers, including trademarks, trading names, corporate names, and now,
domain names. If ICANN is to "administer the name space" so that
"collisions between name holders don't occur" then ICANN will need to
develop trademark-like registration procedures and trademark-like dipsute
resolution, at least as far as commercial domain names are concerned.
"I have raised the substantive issue of a special membership class for the
TM interests. That is all I am interested in."
ICANN's mandate is theoretically limited only to gTLDs. If you question
the credential of any membership class other than gTLDs, question the
credentials of all of thise membership classes. You, for reasons known
only to yourself, have targeted TM interests - questioning their position
as a stakeholder but not other groups which were identified as members in
the two DNSO documents. Your vendetta against "TM interests" is destructive
of a consensus building process.
Which raises the question - what is your skin in the game?