If it's a company's trademark, fine -- let them buy the corresponding TLD. No harm done.
Bzzzt, wrong. Trademarks are industry-specific: that's why Apple Records can exist alongside Apple Computer. If there's no likelihood of confusion, there's no conflict.
And of course, trademarks are not fully international.
Winer is right about ICANN being wrong. There's just so much else that ICANN is wrong about.
As an excellent example of this: Consider "Monster". Both Monster Worldwide (e.g, Monster Jobs) and Monster Inc (e.g, Monster Cable) applied for the .monster TLD, and there's at least one other significant claimant to that brand who didn't apply for the TLD (Hansen Natural / Monster Beverage Company, makers of Monster Energy).
Hilariously, both Monster Worldwide and Monster Inc claimed in their applications that granting them the TLD would reduce user confusion:
Monster Worldwide (application #477):
> The proposed .monster gTLD has the following user experience goals: [...] Reduce the risk of Internet users being misled, believing and⁄or acting on erroneous, information about Monster Worldwide, its business partners and⁄or its products and services presented online by unauthorized 3rd parties
Monster Inc (application #271):
> Therefore, .monster gTLD will: [...] represent authenticity and assurance that the domain names are directly associated with Monster thus promoting user confidence...
In terms of reducing the risk that users would mistakenly use a site where a third party was intentionally looking to pass themselves off as the particular variant of Monster, it is a good argument. When a consumer is aware that the only legitimate Monster sites are those with the .monster suffix, this would reduce the risk of them using fraudulent sites.
If on the other hand a user looking to find the jobs variant stumbling upon .monster domains controlled by the energy variant, there is no risk of user confusion in this regard.
In summary, the confusion they allude to is third parties using the mark or a variant thereof in a deliberate attempt to mislead, as opposed to confusion between established brands.
Many do not understand this point. Unlike domain names, which are ambiguous, trademarks have a couple of dimensions that allow ambiguity to be greatly reduced: class and geographical scope.
I have actually developed a solution for the domain name ambiguity problem. It respects all trademark owners, not just the ones who pay ICANN the most. (Aside from squatters, registrars and registries, ICANN takes a small percentage of every defensive registration for every trademark in existence. Now ICANN has upped the ante to well over $200K.)
Of course, it is a simple solution and I doubt anyone is interested. The way things are structured, with ICANN encouraging (by ignoring) conflict and promoting a "winner take all" approach to naming, is beneficial to those who are gaming the system. And it is quite easy to exploit ambiguity, "winner take all", and to game this system.
The root really isn't as important as people are led to believe. It's the large registries that are more important, such as .com. If a user wants to access names in a fringe tld registry, whatever it may be, he can tune his DNS to allow that. If the content on sites in that tld is that good, he'll make the effort to adjust his DNS settings. It is not prohibitively difficuly by any means.
ICANN wants to play the registry game, after years of watching domaining and repurposed cctld's making millions for others. The root is all they have. So, like a registry, they want to open the root zone to domainers, which will also force the hand of trademark holders who need to register defensively. ICANN knows exactly how this all works, and this is a calculated move to enrich insiders.
The person at ICANN who was supposedly running the program just resigned. A replacement was just announced.
I'm always surprised when people defend ICANN and their root. The root is not so important. If you have your system tuned to access the .com/.net servers, you can access the majority of the internet. Add .org and the cctld's and you have almost 99%. The root zone is not very dynamic. You can run your own copy. It rarely changes. But the root is all ICANN has with respect to naming (IANA is the real jewel of their crown, though the US Dept of Commerce may take that away if ICANN is not careful). ICANN wants to play the domain name game. If this whole new gtld proposal does not make you see the level of double dealing going on at ICANN, I'm not sure what will.
ICANN's role is overstated. The addresses of the tld servers we all use rarely change. Any user could manage their own copy of the root. The root really just serves to prime DNS caches. It is not something that should get queried very often.
"Not so sure about Amazon buying .amazon, because it also is the name of a rainforest in South America, and .apple could be a problem for growers and lovers of the fruit."
But you did not cover the critical issue; you have not distinguished between www.sex and www.sex.com:
"the problem. And it extends to words and concepts that weren't created by anyone living today. Sex, love, laughter, babies, books, songs, cars, poetry, etc. These things shouldn't be TLDs, they're too important, too basic to life. Not the kinds of things any company, for crying out loud, should be able to claim to own."
Why is it such a tragedy if poetry is a TLD but poetry.com is no problem? Why is unthinkable that a company could own .poetry but no problem if the same company owns poetry.com?
Okay I'll cover it here (although I did elsewhere in this thread).
Maybe those domains shouldn't have been issued, but they were. And that's why you want to deal with these things before you get an installed base, not after.
You did not cover it...What is the harm of having a .poetry TLD? Or what are the personal+societal costs of the private/exclusive registration of poetry.com?
But you are right we should deal with these things before there is a large user base. So let's sort it out now and come up with a solid framework for what alphanumeric strings are acceptable. What are the rules? Which alpha-numeric strings are too important to let a company own?
My name is Doug, can I register .doogie? Can I register .poetree? Is .oybt acceptable, even if it is rot13(blog)?
It's simple, really. A domain name like poetry.com is as accessible to the average person as it is to a company. A TLD on the other hand is something you need to take out a mortgage to own.
The difference is in the democracy of it all. Acquiring domain names is a very democratic process even if you take into account squatting and other shenanigans. Scrounge up ten bucks and a web connection and it's yours. TLDs aren't even close. It's a total plutocracy and ICANN seems totally unapologetic about it while the companies snatching them up look ridiculous when they put a line in their proposal about how their ownership of some random word as a TLD is in our, the users, best interest.
How can anyone overlook that? It's practically beating us over the head, taunting us.
And how many mortgages do you suppose it would take to buy poetry.com? It's not even close to accessible to the average person. Maybe if the average person saved every penny they earn for a lifetime, they could buy poetry.com.
Yes but domain names that are unclaimed all start at the same price. Now poetry.com is unattainable but before it was bought anyone who wanted it had an equal chance. TLDs are starting their life as unattainable unlike domains which only end up that way later.
You are right to extent, however, even in the absence of a lack of confusion, an action can be brought where a third party in using a similar/identical mark to the original takes unfair advantage or causes detriment to the original mark.
In fact, Apple Inc and Apple Records engaged in a long-standing legal spat over the usage of the Apple mark before finally reaching a settlement in 2007.
While all of your points are correct, I think you missed the point.
That line of argument is expressly what the author was trying to avoid. The author acknowledged there were issues with it but stepped beyond them because there's a larger point that he was trying to make. (One I think has its own issues, but that's for another post.)
Comments
If it's a company's trademark, fine -- let them buy the corresponding TLD. No harm done.
Bzzzt, wrong. Trademarks are industry-specific: that's why Apple Records can exist alongside Apple Computer. If there's no likelihood of confusion, there's no conflict.
And of course, trademarks are not fully international.
Winer is right about ICANN being wrong. There's just so much else that ICANN is wrong about.
As an excellent example of this: Consider "Monster". Both Monster Worldwide (e.g, Monster Jobs) and Monster Inc (e.g, Monster Cable) applied for the .monster TLD, and there's at least one other significant claimant to that brand who didn't apply for the TLD (Hansen Natural / Monster Beverage Company, makers of Monster Energy).
Hilariously, both Monster Worldwide and Monster Inc claimed in their applications that granting them the TLD would reduce user confusion:
Monster Worldwide (application #477):
> The proposed .monster gTLD has the following user experience goals: [...] Reduce the risk of Internet users being misled, believing and⁄or acting on erroneous, information about Monster Worldwide, its business partners and⁄or its products and services presented online by unauthorized 3rd parties
Monster Inc (application #271):
> Therefore, .monster gTLD will: [...] represent authenticity and assurance that the domain names are directly associated with Monster thus promoting user confidence...
In terms of reducing the risk that users would mistakenly use a site where a third party was intentionally looking to pass themselves off as the particular variant of Monster, it is a good argument. When a consumer is aware that the only legitimate Monster sites are those with the .monster suffix, this would reduce the risk of them using fraudulent sites.
If on the other hand a user looking to find the jobs variant stumbling upon .monster domains controlled by the energy variant, there is no risk of user confusion in this regard.
In summary, the confusion they allude to is third parties using the mark or a variant thereof in a deliberate attempt to mislead, as opposed to confusion between established brands.
Or .acme or .ajax.
Glad to see this is the #1 comment.
Many do not understand this point. Unlike domain names, which are ambiguous, trademarks have a couple of dimensions that allow ambiguity to be greatly reduced: class and geographical scope.
I have actually developed a solution for the domain name ambiguity problem. It respects all trademark owners, not just the ones who pay ICANN the most. (Aside from squatters, registrars and registries, ICANN takes a small percentage of every defensive registration for every trademark in existence. Now ICANN has upped the ante to well over $200K.)
Of course, it is a simple solution and I doubt anyone is interested. The way things are structured, with ICANN encouraging (by ignoring) conflict and promoting a "winner take all" approach to naming, is beneficial to those who are gaming the system. And it is quite easy to exploit ambiguity, "winner take all", and to game this system.
The root really isn't as important as people are led to believe. It's the large registries that are more important, such as .com. If a user wants to access names in a fringe tld registry, whatever it may be, he can tune his DNS to allow that. If the content on sites in that tld is that good, he'll make the effort to adjust his DNS settings. It is not prohibitively difficuly by any means.
ICANN wants to play the registry game, after years of watching domaining and repurposed cctld's making millions for others. The root is all they have. So, like a registry, they want to open the root zone to domainers, which will also force the hand of trademark holders who need to register defensively. ICANN knows exactly how this all works, and this is a calculated move to enrich insiders.
The person at ICANN who was supposedly running the program just resigned. A replacement was just announced.
I'm always surprised when people defend ICANN and their root. The root is not so important. If you have your system tuned to access the .com/.net servers, you can access the majority of the internet. Add .org and the cctld's and you have almost 99%. The root zone is not very dynamic. You can run your own copy. It rarely changes. But the root is all ICANN has with respect to naming (IANA is the real jewel of their crown, though the US Dept of Commerce may take that away if ICANN is not careful). ICANN wants to play the domain name game. If this whole new gtld proposal does not make you see the level of double dealing going on at ICANN, I'm not sure what will.
ICANN's role is overstated. The addresses of the tld servers we all use rarely change. Any user could manage their own copy of the root. The root really just serves to prime DNS caches. It is not something that should get queried very often.
"Not so sure about Amazon buying .amazon, because it also is the name of a rainforest in South America, and .apple could be a problem for growers and lovers of the fruit."
Seems like I covered the Apple case.
But you did not cover the critical issue; you have not distinguished between www.sex and www.sex.com:
"the problem. And it extends to words and concepts that weren't created by anyone living today. Sex, love, laughter, babies, books, songs, cars, poetry, etc. These things shouldn't be TLDs, they're too important, too basic to life. Not the kinds of things any company, for crying out loud, should be able to claim to own."
Why is it such a tragedy if poetry is a TLD but poetry.com is no problem? Why is unthinkable that a company could own .poetry but no problem if the same company owns poetry.com?
Okay I'll cover it here (although I did elsewhere in this thread).
Maybe those domains shouldn't have been issued, but they were. And that's why you want to deal with these things before you get an installed base, not after.
You did not cover it...What is the harm of having a .poetry TLD? Or what are the personal+societal costs of the private/exclusive registration of poetry.com?
But you are right we should deal with these things before there is a large user base. So let's sort it out now and come up with a solid framework for what alphanumeric strings are acceptable. What are the rules? Which alpha-numeric strings are too important to let a company own?
My name is Doug, can I register .doogie? Can I register .poetree? Is .oybt acceptable, even if it is rot13(blog)?
Doug, just leave the whole thing alone and worry about solving real problems not invented ones.
It's simple, really. A domain name like poetry.com is as accessible to the average person as it is to a company. A TLD on the other hand is something you need to take out a mortgage to own.
The difference is in the democracy of it all. Acquiring domain names is a very democratic process even if you take into account squatting and other shenanigans. Scrounge up ten bucks and a web connection and it's yours. TLDs aren't even close. It's a total plutocracy and ICANN seems totally unapologetic about it while the companies snatching them up look ridiculous when they put a line in their proposal about how their ownership of some random word as a TLD is in our, the users, best interest.
How can anyone overlook that? It's practically beating us over the head, taunting us.
Well this is a separate argument than above but I will bite:
"Acquiring domain names is a very democratic process even if you take into account squatting and other shenanigans."
Since when?
But more importantly how am I harmed by the new TLDs?
And how many mortgages do you suppose it would take to buy poetry.com? It's not even close to accessible to the average person. Maybe if the average person saved every penny they earn for a lifetime, they could buy poetry.com.
Yes but domain names that are unclaimed all start at the same price. Now poetry.com is unattainable but before it was bought anyone who wanted it had an equal chance. TLDs are starting their life as unattainable unlike domains which only end up that way later.
You are right to extent, however, even in the absence of a lack of confusion, an action can be brought where a third party in using a similar/identical mark to the original takes unfair advantage or causes detriment to the original mark.
In fact, Apple Inc and Apple Records engaged in a long-standing legal spat over the usage of the Apple mark before finally reaching a settlement in 2007.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
While all of your points are correct, I think you missed the point.
That line of argument is expressly what the author was trying to avoid. The author acknowledged there were issues with it but stepped beyond them because there's a larger point that he was trying to make. (One I think has its own issues, but that's for another post.)