RIPE TLD-WG Action List

On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, Hank Nussbacher wrote:

> This implies that the current members from IAB, ISOC and IANA represent
> USA interests.  What I don't understand how there is a specific
> "European" interest that is different than a USA or Japanese interest
> in regards to gTLDs.  No one from Europe has ever fully explained this
> difference to me.

My impression is that while there may not be a specific European 
interest there is certainly a clearly visible US interest.  Oddly
enough, that US interest is best expressed as "there is no 
significant non-US interest".

The problem that the PAB/POC/CORE/gTLD MOU are supposed to solve 
has two aspects: first, the existing gTLDs (com/net/org) ignore the 
existence of the rest of the world.  Secondly, the US is excessively
fond of litigation.

If .com was .com.us, there would be no PAB/POC/etc.  Unfortunately
those who originally designed the DNS forgot about the rest of the 
world.  They set up a series of global categories (.com, .edu, .gov)
that are universal, global.  Then national TLDs for other countries
were added more or less as an afterthought.  The underlying 
assumption was {the rest of the world doesn't exist, there are no
borders, only the US matters} blurred together.

If the companies now in .com were in .com.us, then any trademark
disputes would go to US courts and no one in the rest of the world
would care.  This is certainly what happens in the UK where there 
are disputes: the people involved are asked to go sort it out in
the courts.

Unfortunately .com is global and generally speaking there is no
sane way to resolve disputes, because the holder of a .com domain
name may be in any country of the world and their right to the use
of the name may be challenged from any other country in the world.
Therefore it is impossible to set up a general mechanism for dealing 
with disputes, because to do that you have to resolve hundreds or 
thousands of contradictory trademark rules, something similar to 
trying to solve 1,000 simultaneous equations in 3 unknowns.  

The gTLD MOU approach does little to resolve this unsolveable problem;
instead the proposal is to create many new gTLDs, each of which has
the same unsolveable problems as .com.  From an American perspective,
this makes a certain amount of sense.  From outside it looks mad.

Basically, the problem is that the Internet is excessively US-centric.
We need people in the POC and elsewhere that are aware that there
is a world outside of the United States.

There are arguments for gTLDs.  But I think that if there had been a 
strong non-US involvement in IAHC/the POC, that the whole thing would
have been redesigned to where it made more sense.  As it is, this 
American problem is being exported to the rest of the world in all
of its mad glory.

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015




-------- Logged at  Sun Sep 21 07:53:26 MET DST 1997  ---------