Is the .to (Tonga) domain completely rogue and should be removed?

Thu Oct 1 14:59:23 UTC 1998

"Steven J. Sobol" writes:
> > Certainly the legal confusion surrounding the gtld's shouldn't
> > be used as a rational for not developing a process (which is
> > what Barry suggested) for attending to problems associated with
> > the country code domains.
> 
> What sort of problems?

Trademark/service mark conflicts come to mind.  But in general I
would say one function of a legal system is to mediate disputes.
Barry raised an issue (valid or not, take your pick) and asked if
we should have a system by which disputes related to Internet
facilities (such as domain name space) could be handled.

To be more specific, an entity utilizing the .TO domain name was
misrepresenting themselves using Barry's domain in .COM.  Now
perhaps if Barry's domain was world.std.com.US he would have a more
obvious legal process by which he could defend his use of
world.std.com.US because it would clearly be within the name space
assigned to the United States.

I pointed out that with .TO the legal issue was somewhat clearer
than with .COM because .TO is assigned to a legal entity whereas
the legal context of .COM is ambiguous.  This makes it difficult
for Barry to pursue any legal action and it also make it easier
for unscrupulous folks to use domains fraudulently (because it is
hard to challenge them in a legal context).  Of course it works
the other way also, if someone from the Kingdom of Tonga were to
read this thread and decide they *didn't* want to register spam
and porn havens then perhaps it would be a good thing if that
government (i.e., registry) had the authority to say who was in
and who was out of the .TO domain.

One reason why it is so discomforting to have the Internic make
policy decisions regarding domain registrations in .com is that
there is no legal entity that is clearly responsible for the gtld's.
I don't see too many people shouting across international borders
about how the .uk domain is managed but I'm reasonably sure if
there is a shouting match going on within their borders they probably
have a legal process that can be used to mediate the disputes--something
that doesn't seem to exist regarding the Internic and the gtld's.

> If you're going to make a statement like that, I think it would be useful
> to first delineate what problems are supposed to be fixed by the TLD admins,
> and what problems are supposed to be fixed by the admins of the subdomains.

I don't think it is necessary to have an enumerated list of potential
and/or demonstrated problems as a prerequisite to developing a
process for resolving disputes.  

All other things being equal, a naming system that facilitates
problem resolution is better than a naming system that creates
problems to be resolved.