I am delighted that you believe that the press communique is entirely
consistent with the board resolutions. I hope everyone else is of that
view as well.
I was concerned about this paragraph:
"The Initial Board noted that a uniform dispute settlement mechanism was a
necessary element of a competitive registrar system. The Initial Board
noted that the scope of this policy should be wider than the cases of
abusive registration with which the WIPO report deals, and ultimately
cover all commercial dispute issues linked to Domain Name registrations.
To this end, ICANN-accredited registrars are being encouraged to develop
and voluntarily adopt a model dispute resolution policy while the DNSO has
been asked to consider the relevant chapter of the WIPO report, chapter 3,
by 31st July, in time for public comment before the Initial Board's next
meeting on 26th August. "
The words "uniform," "necessary" and "should" seemed to me to sweep
somewhat more broadly than the (pious?) hope that the registrars (which
registrars?) would agree a policy themselves. What if some do not
voluntarily adopt a policy ICANN likes? I thought I detected the signs of
something rather more muscular....In short, I focused on the first two
sentences; you suggest that the full import of them in contained in the
subsequent one.
I accept this is a reasonable reading of the press communique. I hope and
trust your very benign reading of this is accurate. I regret to report
that it appears that whoever is deciding the topics for the working groups
seem to have read it (or something else?) somewhat more energetically.
[As it happens, I don't see why a uniform policy on commercial disputes
involving trademarks is all that urgent, nor part of the technical
functions of ICANN. I certainly don't see why it's a higher priority than
a privacy-enhanced gTLD, or other new gTLDs. Trademark laws differ in
different parts of the world -- there is not a uniform rule and it is
unclear if there should be. But that's another debate...]
--
A. Michael Froomkin | Professor of Law | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285 | +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) | http://www.law.tm
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