Re: [nc-udrp]uk.com extension

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

It is difficult to avoid the impression that some commentators on these
issues do not understand how the domain name system works, or the functions
it can be utilized to provide.  Consider the website at, for example:

http://john.berryhill.wasarrested.com

I guarantee there are people who will look at that page and who will believe
that someone actually wrote up a story about me being arrested for dealing
crack and established john.berryhill.wasarrested.com as the address for that
web page.  These people will probably never understand, despite the visual
tutorial available at wasarrested.com (and related sites, such as isgay.com
etc.), that nobody has set up john.berryhill.wasarrested.com, but that the
website is simply designed to parse the URL by dropping the 3LD and 4LD into
a general-purpose template in order to generate the web page.

Go ahead, try http://your.name.wasarrested.com - amuse your friends and
family.

Now, consider the website at:

http://cocacola.isshitty.com

...and there you have a website saying atrocious things about Coca-Cola, or
indeed about whatever you type into the 3LD of the URL, trademark or no
trademark.  Maybe I misunderstand the proposal here, but the idea is that the
domain name "isshitty.com" should be subject to a UDRP because it resolves an
infinite number of trademarks (indeed, every trademark in existence), or that
the UDRP should be amended to require the operators at isshitty.com to
configure their software to exclude character strings corresponding to the
infinite number of UDRP complaints that may be filed?

So if there is kodak.isshitty.com, microsoft.isshitty.com, and
xerox.isshitty.com, which all function perfectly well, the idea is... what?
That the domain name isshitty.com should be transferred to the first party
who files a UDRP?  Or that the operators of isshitty.com should be required
to set up DNS for isshitty.com to point specific 3LD's at prevailing UDRP
complainants?

In the specific example under discussion, the idea is to transfer uk.com to
some particular aggrieved trademark owner?  To require all domain registrants
to incorporate the UDRP into any and all contracts for the establishment of
3LD's in their domains (and a pass-through provision requiring any nLD
operator to require it of any (n+1)LD operator)?  Of course, the only
enforcement mechanism would be to "do something" to the 2LD registration,
since ICANN is not a contracting party with whomever runs the name servers
for <example>.com, which is where resolution of <3ld>.example.com takes
place.

Now, there are some people who set up their dns to resolve specific 3LDs,
there are some people who delegate 3LDs to other parties (which is how the
domain name system is supposed to work), and then there are people who set up
wildcard DNS.

For example, there will be certainly clueless folks who will believe, based
on:

http://michael.froomkin.nascar.com

That NASCAR is trying to attract traffic based on the fame of Prof.
Froomkin's name.  Ummm.... not really.   The fact is that
<ANYTHING>.nascar.com will resolve to Nascar's home page.

This issue has come up in UDRP disputes, and in one lawsuit which was filed,
and quickly retracted, by Yahoo (who had believed that yahoo.sex.com was a
deliberately set-up 3LD).  For example, one of the things you can do as a
complainant, when the respondent employs wildcard dns, is to type in a bunch
of trademarks at the third-level, show that the webpage resolves for whatever
you type in, and then accuse the respondent of deliberately having set them
up as third level domain names....

http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2002/d2002-0087.html

"the Respondent desires to clearly set the record straight concerning the
Complainant's false allegations relating to third-level domain names: the
Respondent employs what is known as "wildcard dns" for its various domain
names. Wildcard DNS is a mechanism by which the domain name configuration
settings simply ignore any portion of a URL beyond the domain name itself.
For example, <wipo.usglobal.com> will resolve to the same web page as
<usglobal.com>. The Complainant has printed out web pages corresponding to
combinations of the Complainant's alleged marks along with the suffix
"usglobal.com" and has falsely accused the Respondent of having deliberately
configured the third-level domain names selected by the Complainant to
manufacture this "evidence". The Complainant makes the same false allegation
in connection with other domain names which the Complainant alleges to
comprise a pattern of bad faith registration;"