Danny Younger wrote:
The first thing that we need to do is to consider the viewpoint of those arguing for enhanced protection to determine whether (1) such protections are warranted and (2) whether such protections will impact third parties unjustifiably.
So much of this is a red herring. First, IGO issues -- since the are not commercial entites -- should have ZERO effect on .com. Any interest of IGOs in .com domains is more vanity than practicality. Second, IGOs do not have greater entitlement to acronyms than anywhere else. IIRC, in Canada you can't generally trademark acronyms (in an enfirceable manner) because so many conflicting interests can share the same acronym. There is no no magical right for any body, even the United Nations, to acronym-based domains if someone else got them first. Thirdly, don't we have the .int TLD to handle major pan-national NGOs? Since that TLD is closed to commercial and single-country entities, any IGO's placement there will be quite unambiguous (and the availability of acronym is certainly greater) compared to .com or .org. If IGOs insist in being in .com (or eliminating "confusion") if valid .int possibilities exist, then this is to me a matter of vanity and not entitlement or protection. To take your example of FAO Schwartz to an even more absurd example, does the World Bank have more rights to wb.com than Warner Brothers?
A). "The World Health Organization (WHO) stated: WHO's attention has been drawn to the following examples of the registration and use of its name in the DNS: worldhealthorganization.com, worldhealthorganization.org, healthwho.com, and oms.org. The first one is borderline -- the name is the same, but as a .com this is a commercial body so it can't be the _real_ WHO.
The second is the more problematic, and arguably is parasitic. The third could wasily be a legitimate commercial health entity -- or a website _about_ the WHO but not by them.
The fourth example relates to an organization (the Oklahoma Metaphysical Society) which has the same acronym as WHO (i.e. in French "OMS")."
Not anymore. It goes to the WHO. But I would have easily defended the Oklahomans' right to the domain. The group already has www.who.int and www.oms.int -- these are the legitimate, unambiguous, and sensible domains for the org. Complaining about anything else is censorship or vanity (or both).
One of the issues that we are facing is that IGOs are seeking often unwarranted "protection" for their acronyms (usually valuable 3 and 4 letter strings in all of the official UN languages) at the expense of registration opportunities for others. Further, it appears that they also seek a dispute resolution process that will deny others the opportunity for judicial appeal or review (as IGOs specifically seek to safeguard the own immunity from national jurisdiction).
Again, that's what .int is explicitly designed to accommodate. - Evan