Evan, 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. For example, consider the following perspective drawn from the WIPO2 documents: 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. In WHO's opinion, the registration and use of the Organization's name and acronym in the first three examples is parasitical and misleading, may easily give rise to confusion as to the source of the information provided by the domain name holder and could potentially adversely reflect on WHO (i.e. bearing in mind that these domain names are used to sell commercial, health-related products and/or to provide health-related information to the public and health care professionals). The fourth example relates to an organization (the Oklahoma Metaphysical Society) which has the same acronym as WHO (i.e. in French "OMS")." B). The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) stated: “The Commission is aware of two domain names that, although not in bad faith, abusive, misleading or unfair, may create confusion: (I) http://www.clw.org/coalition/ctbindex.htm This site, called 'Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Site', was established by a non-governmental organization, the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. The word 'ctbindex' contains the letters 'ctb' referring to the Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the treaty establishing the Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty Organization, and it is possible that the impression may be created that the site contains official information on the CTBT. This site was thus mistakenly cited in an article in CNN-online instead of the official web site of the organization (www.ctbto.org). (2) http://www.ctbtcommission.org This site was established as the site of the Independent Commission on the Verifiability of the Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The funding for the project was received from various private sources and the governments of Germany and the United Kingdom, with the secretariat of the commission being provided by a non-governmental organization, the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC). It is possible that the domain name 'ctbtcommission' may be confused as that of the CTBTO Preparatory Commission, although upon opening the site, it is clear that it is not the organization' s official site." 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). The vast bulk of registrations that potentially conflict with IGO acronyms are registered by North American interests that have managed to secure a good number of 3, 4, or 5 letter strings. While the issue indeed is global, should the IGOs succeed in obtaining enhanced protections there is a strong risk that North American interests will be the ones most impacted by such a development. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/