Certainly, such activity helps make the case that the trademark lobby (and GAC acting as proxies) have been making -- that more than anything, the new gTLD space is primarily (or at least substantially) designed to make money off of defensive registrations. The ICANN response to trademark owners is to point out the URS and other takedown measures. But if ICANN's oldest registrar(*) continues to propagate the myth that the only assured way to protect one's brand is to register it under every gTLD, the very existence of a registrar's "protect your brand" infers that the built-in mechanisms are insufficient. Michele, if you're here I'd like to hear your PoV on this. On one hand registrars obviously want as much domain tonnage as possible. OTOH, isn't the use of "protect your brand" marketing an open admission that ICANN's brand-protection measures aren't enough? Is this not just an open admission that the IPC and GAC positions are valid, and an invitation for outside (ie legislative) regulation? Note; on trandemark protection, the At-Large position is somewhat in-between the ICANN status quo and the GAC/IPC position (and in some cases we think they're BOTH wrong). Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56 (*) There may be older ones, but this one is on most peoples' heads. On 29 August 2011 14:39, Beau Brendler <beaubrendler@earthlink.net> wrote:
Interesting discussion on the NCSG list sort of pertaining to TLD marketing, I'm guessing they won't mind me cross-posting it. Anybody know these guys? http://www.pfir.org/index.html#info
-----Forwarded Message----- From: Nicolas Adam Sent: Aug 28, 2011 5:23 PM To: NCSG-DISCUSS@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Subject: [NCSG-Discuss] Fwd: "Domain Protection Racket" Promotion on Network Solutions Home Page You'll notice the "Protect Your Brand", in the center. It's not as big as the criticism below make it to be but it's there. Would it be relevant and/or feasible to 'regulate' (read encourage/constrain ==> through types of means that i will leave open to discussion) the way registrar can market those new TLD? First, it doesn't look good. Second, while i don't think anybody (except perhaps established registrars) who are in favor of gTLD expansion have a clear view of what the emergent system of naming and names will or should be, i am pretty sure no-one so disposed would care to advocate that this system should establish itself mainly as a protection scheme. Is forcing advertising to depart with the protection rhetoric a step forward? Is it feasible? Just some thoughts. Nicolas -------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ NNSquad ] "Domain Protection Racket" Promotion on Network Solutions Home Page Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:42:23 -0700 From: Lauren Weinstein [1]<lauren@vortex.com> To: [2]nnsquad@nnsquad.org
"Domain Protection Racket" Promotion on Network Solutions Home Page
This "in your face" promotion currently running on the Network Solutions home page clearly illustrates how the current top-level domains (gTLD) expansion plan is akin to a traditional "Sign up now or something bad might, uh, happen to you, buddy!" protection racket.
[3]http://j.mp/ofrzyv (Lauren's Blog - Screen capture from networksolutions.co m)
As you can see, there is no concept of community service, social responsibility, or even real "value-added" benefits. The promotion for two TLDs is explicitly about *protection* -- as in protecting yourself from someone else grabbing those domains and making you look bad, confusing your customers, and worse -- whether you have any real interest in those TLDs or not.
And this is *only the beginning*, my friends.
--Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([4]lauren@vortex.com): [5]http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: [6]http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: [7]http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: [8] http://www.gctip.o rg - PRIVACY Forum: [9]http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: [10]http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: [11]http://vortex.com/g+lauren Twitter: [12]https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
References
1. mailto:lauren@vortex.com 2. mailto:nnsquad@nnsquad.org 3. http://j.mp/ofrzyv 4. mailto:lauren@vortex.com 5. http://www.vortex.com/lauren 6. http://www.pfir.org/ 7. http://www.nnsquad.org/ 8. http://www.gctip.org/ 9. http://www.vortex.com/ 10. http://lauren.vortex.com/ 11. http://vortex.com/g+lauren 12. https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
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