2009/12/29 Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>
One might want to consider the personal and institutional risk of becoming the defendant in a defamation or other civil action if one does go forth and issue an "alert".
There is a fine line between an unlawful scam and a clever marketing ploy. And publishing a negative statement about someone based merely on looking at a domain name and not examining actual activity and behavior may not be a safe course of action.
Nowhere in my mail did I indicate an intent to identify specific bad practise, let alone bad actors. Registrants ought to know that they cannot be the successful target of an IP takedown attempt by a similar-meaning or soundalike IDN, even within the same TLD. If they still choose to buy IDNs for defensive or other purposes, that's their business. The Business Constituency has the task of making sure that commercial domain owners are aware of these rights; I suppose that NCUC/NCSG should be taking up that cause on behalf of non-commercial registrants; I can raise the issue with my contacts at NCSG about this. But whether the catalyst is the BC, NCSG, At-Large of ICANN corporate, all I'm asking for is an effort to make sure that registrants make decisions (such as the need to make defensive registrations) based on awareness rather than uncertainty. The intended result is that they may react in an informed manner to any campaigns targeted at them. Would this also be actionable? In the long term, a GNSO committee (of which I'm a member) is working to define statements of registrants' rights -- both to enumerate what exists and to develop a manifesto, so to speak, of what they ultimately should be. - Evan