Friday, Jul 25, 2008
The resolution of a few domain-name disputes offers some breathing room in the crowded Net name arena. But is it enough?
Feb 16, 2000 | 3D Studio: quick, what is it? Industrial design software or a community of graphic artists who trade their work online?
Both answers are right, and thanks to some fleet-footed compromising, neither will be stricken from the Net's record, nor forced to find a new name. Last week, Autodesk, which sells 3D Studio software dropped its threat of a trademark infringement lawsuit, allowing The3DStudio.com to peacefully co-exist -- as long as the community site runs a disclaimer clarifying that it is not related to Autodesk's product.
By allowing for more than one use of a name, this compromise and several others like it offer some breathing room in the crowded dot-com name space, and revive hope in the Net as a home of both copyright and community. But it is an exception to the trademark-sensitive domain turf, where most corporations try to demand unparalleled respect for their names. On the Web, corporate minds assert, "Amazon" should always refer to the e-commerce giant, not the river, not warrior women -- certainly not a feminist bookstore, at least not without a court battle.
That kind of thinking, which has caused corporations to snap up every domain that sounds remotely like their name, combined with the finite number of dot-com addresses and more than a few cyber-squatters who snatch up catchy-sounding names, has led to a perceived shortage of Web addresses for the expanding universe of home-page builders and Net entrepreneurs. "You can't type a noun from the Webster's dictionary, or even a combination of words from the Webster's and find it available," says Sean Foote, a partner with venture capital firm Labrador Ventures.
The "shortage" is one of the issues that Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, agreed to tackle in 1998 when Congress charged the nonprofit with coordinating the management of the domain name system, IP addresses and the root-server system.
But the volunteer board that directs ICANN is moving at a sloth's pace. One idea that the organization is promoting is the creation of new top-level domain names (TLD), such as .store or .arts. But even ICANN insiders say they don't expect to see these new domain suffixes until next year -- if ever. And critics contend that the group is so biased toward trademark holders that even if the new categories appear, there's a good possibility that corporations will again take over the vast majority of available real estate.
Esther Dyson, chairwoman of the ICANN board, says trademark holders do deserve protection -- but that they, like everyone else online, need to learn to compromise. "The real problem is not the shortage of name space, but rather the shortage of names in people's minds," says Dyson, whose reputation as a technology visionary has been overshadowed by her new role as wrangler of all the conflicting interests in the domain corral. "That's what this is all about. You perceive a right to the name space, and you want to claim it as your own."
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