Thank you.
> One of our primary goals was to keep the registrars out of litigation. If
> you establish rules about who may or may not register certain SLDs in the
> TLDs, then someone has to enforce the rules. If the registrar is charged
> with enforcement (even something so obvious as saying that "diarrhea.arts"
> is in bad taste and therefore unregistrable), you will have registrars, or
> whoever is enforcing the rules, tied up in court forever. We concluded that
> it was best to have guidelines, but to let each registrar accept SLD
> registrations on a first come first serve basis, subject of course to each
> registrar's exercise of individual judgement.
Yes. The charter provides the "guidelines" for what is qualified for
the TLD. The registrars provide the first line of defense, but notice
that there are no enforcement requirements for registrars, other than
accepting:
"all qualifying
applicants on a non-discriminatory, fair-use, first-come,
first-served basis,
One would expect the registrar to help the registrant pick an
appropriate TLD and name, and help avoid lame delegations, etc. After
all, it is a service, for which the registrar is paid.
(FYI, the text was taken from the MoU.)
Being aware of this consensus, the text carefully says:
3. In any dispute as to the registration of a particular name, the
registrar shall have no role or responsibility, other than to
provide the contact information for all parties, and abide by
the results of the appeals process.
Is this insufficient to keep the registrars out of litigation?
As an example, if Wyland.firm also registers in Wyland.arts and
Wyland.com and Wyland.org, etc, and then the Wyland Galleries come
along, the "guidelines" that the same entity not be registered in more
than one place would allow the latter to challenge the former under the
appeals procedure. Otherwise, the latter has no standing. The former
merely says "I was here first".
BTW, the text is derived from old InterNIC wording, which in turn was
derived from some internet-drafts on this topic several years ago. The
consensus is long-standing.
> There would be no objection
> to a particular registrar refusing registration of "diarrhea.arts", so long
> as this is the private decision of that registrar.
Nota Bene: the example diarrhea is not merely given for its bad taste,
but because it was an actual egregious multiple registration.
> We also concluded that the best way to handle trademark/domain name
> disputes was to create the ACP procedure at WIPO.
And the text correspondingly says:
Appeals are taken by
following the current process designated by the gTLD-MoU
established Policy Oversight Committee (POC).
The appeals procedure is flexible as we gain experience, without
re-writing the charters.
> I hope this clarifies the discussion.
If this consensus wording was unclear, could you help by providing
improved wording?
WSimpson@UMich.edu
Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32