Agenda for next NANOG - interest in domain names?

Sat Aug 31 13:33:33 UTC 1996

At 02:08 PM 08/30/96 -0400, Susan R. Harris wrote:
>Greetings - Here's what we've lined up so far for the Oct. 24-25 NANOG
>agenda: 

[deleted]

>Are there other topics you'd like to hear about?

Is there any interest in a presentation explaining:

- the latest changes in NSI's flawed domain name trademark policy, 

- the never-ending risk of loss of a domain name (with only 30 days'
warning) that any domain name owner faces even if they aren't infringing
anybody's trademarks, 

- the very few steps that a domain name owner can take to reduce the risk of
loss of a domain name.

The owner of clue.com, a computer consultant in Colorado, is in *two*
lawsuits with NSI in an effort to keep from losing the domain name.  After
he got a court order directing NSI not to cut off the domain name, NSI sued
him back in federal court asking for permission to cut it off.  All because
Hasbro wants it for a board game.

The owner of regis.com, a public relations firm in California, is in a
lawsuit with NSI to try to keep from losing its domain name.  All because a
cosmetics company wants it.

The owner of disc.com, a software company in Colorado whose four initials
spells "disc", is in *two* lawsuits with NSI to keep from losing the domain
name to some other company that has the same four initials.  In that one,
too, NSI sued them back in federal court asking for permission to cut it off.

The owner of dci.com, a company in Tennessee whose three initials spell
"dci", had to sue NSI to keep from losing its domain name.  Some other
company with the same three initials asked NSI to cut it off, and NSI was
happy to do it for them.

And don't forget the case where the owner of ty.com (named after his
three-year-old child, named "Ty") had to sue NSI to keep from losing it to
some company called "Ty".

(For more about all of this, see <http:www.patents.com/nsi.sht>.)

Probably almost every attendee at Nanog is responsible for some domain name
or another.  To each attendee, I would say, what would you do if you were
minding your own business, not infringing anybody's trademarks, and a letter
showed up from NSI stating that they had scheduled a cutoff of your domain
name in 30 days because some trademark owner had asked them to do so?

If this topic would be of interest, let me know and I could probably help
with setting up a panel to discuss it.

Carl Oppedahl