IP: more on : Dead Education Dots becoming Porn sites

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 12:48:41 -0500
> To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
> Subject: Re: IP: Issue: Dead Education Dots becoming Porn sites
>
> (for IP?)
>
> My friend Bob Frankston has been striving mightily to point out that the 
> instability of domain name binding is one of the major issues that we need 
> to solve.  This is another great example of the problem.
>
> People link to sites using domain names.  These domain names change hands, 
> and then the link becomes captured in some new web of meaning.  It's the 
> burden of meaning that creates the problem, and reducing that burden is 
> probably the best place to fix these issues.
>
> It's easy to imagine that in a Utopia somehow domain names should be 
> permanent, but they aren't.  Besides the scenario of running out of money 
> to retain a registration, we also have the scenario of sites being taken 
> over by the weak and WIPO-centric dispute resolution policies being set up 
> by folks like Verisign and ICANN.  Suppose someone like Seymour Papert 
> created a domain name like "hardfun.com" (Seymour is known for likening 
> learning to "hard fun").  And then some major magazine creates a 
> pornography magazine trademarked "HardFun".  Well, if that magazine gets 
> as notorious as Playboy, they have a strong claim to take "hardfun.com" 
> from Papert, possibly even if Papert registered a trademark (IANAL, YMMV).
>
> I recently read a travel writer's column online that strongly criticized 
> Reed-Elsevier for not trying to get "reed.com" away from me to reinforce 
> their brand in the travel business.  He seemed to think that it was their 
> fiduciary responsibility to punish me and those who connect to me for 
> having registered my last name.  I think Reed-Elsevier is doing fine 
> without "reed.com", myself, just as Smith and Wesson is doing quite well 
> without "smith.org".
>
> Similarly, when a business stops using a name (i.e. a trademark) not 
> online, it has no duty to prevent others from using it in confusing or 
> offensive ways.
>
> None of this has anything to do with "good business practice"  but it does 
> have a lot to do with attempts to overload a simple mechanism called DNS 
> with a burden of semantics, public policy, moral values, trademark 
> enforcement, etc. that it cannot support - it just doesn't work that way.
>
> I'm thinking of setting up a non-profit educational site to explain to 
> people what domain names are, and what they are not.


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