And that is exactly the crux of the issue. This is the first case in which
some trademark owners (not all, of course, because the vast majority of
trademark owners do not have domain names, nor are they on the Internet)
want greater rights on the Internet than they have in any other medium.
There has still been very little answer to the question of why they SHOULD
have expanded rights given that existing laws already take care of cases of
infringement, and cases of non infringement should receive no special
status (except perhaps to allow innocent domain name holders to be awarded
attorneys fees for obvious cases of non infringement brought to court
anyway....but that would be a legislative remedy and not one for government
or private party imposition.)
Vint Cerf was right in his contention that trademark issues should NOT be a
part of the DNS discussions. DNS discussions should be completed along
technical lines, and the court system should be deciding issues of
infringement. I know that if INTA and WIPO weren't involved with the
current DNS discussions, I would happily find better things to do with my
time rather than fight this battle.