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Small Business Administration Objects to .US Deal 130

Posted by michael from the standing-up-for-the-little-guy dept.
rlarner writes: "The United States Small Business Administration has written a letter to the NTIA that challenges the .US sale. The SBA claims that the UDRP and sunrise period were not properly enacted - they needed comment periods, etc. The letter is here." We've done a few previous stories about the handling of .us. Free registration of second-level domains under .us were supposed to go live shortly.
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Small Business Administration Objects to .US Deal More

Small Business Administration Objects to .US Deal

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  • I'm probably going to get flamed for this... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mystery_bowler ( 472698 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @01:02PM (#3013989) Homepage
    ...but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the organization that doles out .US domains to give trademark holders a brief time to buy their domains. It's not like the sales of domain names would be stagnant, that's for sure, so no money would be lost there. And if a company interested in having their trademark with a .US domain doesn't respond in time (I dunno, a week? Two?) then tough luck. Resolve your cybersquatting issues in court, because you had your chance.

    • trademarks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 )
      The real problem with trademarks is that before the net, there was no problem with two companies using the same name as long as it was in a different context. Now that both of those companies will want the same domain name, it gets ugly. When you also have individuals and small organizations getting names in the same namespace, it gets really ugly. Having a more hierarchical namespace helps, but doesn't eliminate the problem.

      What's needed isn't a chance for trademark holders to get a head start, but a better system for resolving conflicts when disputes arise.
      • It sounds very much like: if Acme motors and Acme chemicals are fighting over a domain name, the registrar should just split it down the middle, and give chemicals.acme.us to one of them, and motors.acme.us to the other.

        After all, if you don't have a monopoly on the Acme name, you shouldn't have a monopoly on the acme.us domain either.

        Would the registrars be technically able to split contested domains into 3rd-level domains?

        • Re:trademarks (Score:2, Insightful)

          by crow ( 16139 )
          The problem with that is what happens if Acme motors registers the domain several months before Acme chemicals? Then you have a situation where Acme motors has invested in the acme.us domain to identify it with them. It may be mentioned on Television advertisements and brochures. It may be in people's bookmarks.

          Now if Acme motors had been told that they couldn't register acme.us, but only acme.autos.us, then Acme Chemicals would never have noticed them when registering acme.chem.us.

          But you're not going to get the hierarchy perfect, so you'll still have conflicts. Ultimately, I think it should go to the first person to register the domain unless it can be proven that the domain was registered to take advantage of someone else's trademark.
    • No, there is nothing wrong with Sunrise. But the letter is not questioning whether the Sunrise (trademark) rule should be in the contract with NeuStar, but that the NTIA didn't answer the questions the SBA provide, and the NTIA initial sought with the RTQ process.

      Also, SBA is stating that the NTIA is skirting any questions by thinking the contract to NeuStar is exempt from Legislative process.

      Personally, I wish NetSol was given this much analysis and review before it sunk it's teeth into getting the Gov't contract for TLD's

      The least we can do is follow our own advice on making domain delegation fair and not *#$k our own country domain registration. The NTIA is a classic example of the Gov't doing shoddy work and claiming to say, "We don't need to answer your questions."
    • ...but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that the organization that doles out .US domains to give trademark holders a brief time to buy their domains.


      I think it's completely unreasonable to expect the holder of a trademark to pay for the right to exclude other people from using it. That particular scam is called "protection" and it's not any more legal because it's cheap.

      -- Is posting a "no solicitors" sign spam?

  • What do we want for .us? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @01:04PM (#3014001) Homepage Journal
    What sort of policies do we want for .us domains?

    I would like to see them become widely used, but I would also like to see some degree of hierarchical naming enforced.

    I think all .gov and .mil addresses should be changed to .gov.us and .mil.us addresses.

    There should probably be a small set of foo.us domains pre-defined for which people could register bar.foo.us domains.

    mybiz.com.us (US business)
    myname.indv.us (individual)
    mybiz.com.ma.us (Massachussetts local business)

    Or should we require any .co.us domain to have one more generic level in the domain, such as cnn.news.co.us? That would cut down on the problems of namespace collisions.
    • I think all .gov and .mil addresses should be changed to .gov.us and .mil.us addresses.


      We should leave the .mil namespace alone - so when the Three-Headed Mars Menace takes over our military thought their mind-rays, we can easily find the .mil DNS servers and cover hem with aluminum foil (shinny side out) to keep them under our controll. That and, .mil and .edu is kinda of an homage to the people who helped develope the internet.

      • That and, .mil and .edu is kinda of an homage to the people who helped develope the internet.

        Wouldn't we need .al.gore.us too, then?

      • I think all .gov and .mil addresses should be changed to .gov.us and .mil.us addresses

        Can you imagine what a hassle it would be to change all the .mil and .gov web sites? I think it would be easier for the US to just overthrow the rest of the world, and then we can get by with the .gov and .mil domains.
    • Why not mirror the UK system, which works reasonably well:

      co.uk - commerical (sounds better than com.uk)
      ac.uk - academic, universities, schools, etc
      org.uk - organisations, charities, and the like
      gov.uk - official government sites
      net.uk - UK network providers ?

      Of course, in the US, I guess each state would be interested in providing it's own DNS server:
      ak.states.us
      nd.states.us
      tx.states.us
      (the .states. makes it legible to a non-american)

    • I believe .gov and .mil should stay the way it is. With the amount they spent on initial infrastructure, they should at least get the privledge of keeping those two nice TLDs.
  • Huh? .us has been live for a decade.
    • Perhaps if you read the whole quote it would clear things up - "Free registration of second-level domains under .us were supposed to go live shortly."

      From the website:
      What are some of the expected changes to .US?
      Soon, for the first time in history, .US registrations will be available at the second level (e.g., johnsmith.us, publicservice.us, mycompany.us). Currently names are only available in the "locality space" at the third level and above (e.g., www.county.arlington.va.us).
    • This is a new use of .us, so instead of ford.detroit.mi.us as has already existed, you would have ford.us.

  • looks illegal... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by soap.xml ( 469053 )

    from the letter....NTIA did not submit these legislative rules for notice and comment as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and did not conduct a regulatory flexibility analysis as required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA).
    As part of our statutory duty to monitor agency compliance with the RFA, Advocacy requests that the NTIA place the contract for administration of the Dot US Domain Space on hold and submit the legislative rulemaking provisions for notice and comment, and conduct a regulatory flexibility analysis. Alternatively, NTIA can strike the rulemaking provisions from the contract, and the contract would no longer be subject to the APA. Unless and until NTIA does so, the contract for the management of the Dot US domain is unlawful, as it violates both the APA and the RFA.

    While I don't agree with the "sunrise" period mentioned in the letter, it really doesn't matter. According to the statement above NITA dropped the ball. They didn't do what they were supposed to do, didn't get the proper regulatatory "stamp of approval" and the contract should be considered invalid.

    After they drop the contract, they should re-think the sunrise policies... but first they need to slap that thing with a big "illigeal" stamp and get it out of there ;)

    just my 2cents... -ryan

  • This is getting silly. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @01:13PM (#3014052) Homepage Journal
    Why bother having new domains if anyone that has a ".com" is going to end up having first crack buying every other "dot" extension under the sun?
    • This is not exactly how the sunrise period works. During the sunrise period only valid US trademark holders (or pending trademark holders) can register a dot-us domain name. Just having a dot-com doesn't mean that you have a dot-us.

      After the sunrise period is over the remaining domains will be allocated randomly in cases of multiple people registering the same domain.
      • Yeah, until the trademark owner with the ".com" domain sues the ".us" domain holder and gets it anyway.
        • The trademark owner doesn't have to sue. They can just get it in the sunrise period. That'sthe whole point. After that they wouldn't sue. Under dot-us they are bound to the uniform dispute resolution policy.

          Take a look at the letter or the website and a lot of your questions will be answered.

  • TLD's (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PowerTroll 5000 ( 524563 )
    Look at the other TLD extensions, like .tv, .cc, etc. How many sites under those TLD's do you actually see?

    A local radio station, WHTZ 94.9 (Zeta) swtiched from 949zeta.com to 949zeta.cc, but a few months after going to .cc, they went back home to .com, to the tune of http://zetarocks.com/ [zetarocks.com].

    I think the .us domain will be similarly received by business interests.
    • Here in New York the MTA went from www.mta.nyc.ny.us to just www.mta.info. Before that I also had to search for them (as I just did to get their old address) but now I can easily memorize it.
      • Heh, I never could remember that nutty MTA address either. However, I use http://www.lirr.org to reach the MTA's main site since the true LIRR homepage is at http://www.lirr.org/lirr
  • if somebody knows about domain-name origins: Why is South Africa .za? My wife asked last nite.

  • Way to do business guys. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Do we really want to trust a company to manage the .us domain when they can't even manage to get the contract legally...
    • It has not been alleged that Neustar acted illegal in obtaining the contract. The complaint made by the SBA is against the NTIA improperly requesting certain things be in the contract.

      Of course, that doesn't mean you should trust Neustar - just that they have been accused of anything illegal yet.

      -- Is a sign that says "no solicitors" spam?

  • More on underlying legal theories (Score:5, Informative)

    by Froomkin ( 18607 ) <froomkin AT law DOT miami DOT edu> on Friday February 15, 2002 @01:48PM (#3014209) Homepage
    If you would like a more extensive discussion of the underlying US constitutional and statutory legal issues, please see my article Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution [miami.edu], 50 Duke L.J. 17 (2000), also available in tidy .pdf format [miami.edu].

    Here is the abstract:

    The Internet relies on an underlying centralized hierarchy built into the domain name system (DNS) to control the routing for the vast majority of Internet traffic. At its heart is a single data file, known as the "root." Control of the root provides singular power in cyberspace.

    This Article first describes how the United States government found itself in control of the root. It then describes how, in an attempt to meet concerns that the United States could so dominate an Internet chokepoint, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) summoned into being the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a formally private nonprofit California corporation. DoC then signed contracts with ICANN in order to clothe it with most of the U.S. government's power over the DNS, and convinced other parties to recognize ICANN's authority. ICANN then took regulatory actions that the U.S. Department of Commerce was unable or unwilling to make itself, including the imposition on all registrants of Internet addresses of an idiosyncratic set of arbitration rules and procedures that benefit third-party trademark holders.

    Professor Froomkin then argues that the use of ICANN to regulate in the stead of an executive agency violates fundamental values and policies designed to ensure democratic control over the use of government power, and sets a precedent that risks being expanded into other regulatory activities. He argues that DoC's use of ICANN to make rules either violates the APA's requirement for notice and comment in rulemaking and judicial review, or it violates the Constitution's nondelegation doctrine. Professor Froomkin reviews possible alternatives to ICANN, and ultimately proposes a decentralized structure in which the namespace of the DNS is spread out over a transnational group of "policy partners" with DoC.

    • As Professor Froomkin has pointed out, the absence of a notice and comment period raises issues more fundamental and widespread than the individual conclusion reached in this case. The APA referred to is the Adminstrative Procedures Act. This is the act that makes so much of what happens at agencies like the EPA, FDA, FTC, FCC and other agencies take a long time to do anything. Very, very scary stuff if you desire nimble decisionmaking, but very, very essential stuff if you are going to have democratic accountability of government action.

      (Someone please mod the parent post to 5...)

  • TLDs are useless!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @01:52PM (#3014221) Homepage
    With Trademark law trumping (virtuall) all name issues on the internet, adding a new TLD for use anywhere is simply useless.

    ...well that is, of course, unless it's a personal domain...and only then if your name doesn't conflict with some trademark somewhere.
    • But the .us TLD isn't "for use anywhere"-- unlike the generic TLDs such as .com and .org, it's only for US citizens, residents and businesses [www.nic.us]. So it does have some level of specificity.
      • But the .us TLD isn't "for use anywhere"

        I think he means any new TLD for any specific use (such as US only in this case).

        The problem is that people have registered their own NAME as a domain, and lost it because their name conflicts with a trade mark.

        Say my name is John Q. Exxon and I register exxon.XYZ. It doesn't matter that Exxon corp has nothing to do with .XYZ. Exxon is trademarked, and my use of it "could cause confusion" or "dilute the trademark". I still lose my domain.

        That's why new TLD's aren't solving the problem. Every company wants exclusive rights to their trademarks under every TLD, and every variation on their trademarks, and everything that contains their trademarks (such as VerizonEatsPoop.com [verizoneatspoop.com]), and anything else they can get away with.

        -
  • I feel the same about this "Sunrise" stuff as a vampire would - I regard it's coming with a deep and unabiding dread, as I know it will be a bad thing.

    Consider the "old", location-based, heirarchical system for .us. Under that system, I could register "foo.ks.us", and you could register "foo.ok.us", and there would be no conflict. If I didn't have a presense in Oklahoma, I had no ability to register a .ok.us domain.

    Now, you WILL have "microsoft.us", "sony.us", etc. If I had a small business specializing in fixing Sony TV's, I won't be able to register "wowbaggers_sony.ks.us".

    How does this help small businesses?
    • Well since you are registering a third level domain - ***.ks.us - you should be fine. They are not getting rid of the locality specific domains and Sony doesn't have any special claim on third level domains. You can

      From the site:
      Existing .US registrants (domain name holders) within the "locality space" will retain rights to their existing Internet addresses. In fact, existing domain name holders will benefit from many of the operational improvements and improved security and service levels NeuStar will introduce within .US.

  • What will happen to state domain heirarchys? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are the old state.us domain heirarchys grandfathered
    in or are they going to be arbitrarily taken back
    and sold to the highest bidder?

    Since state.us has existed for a long time it would seem rather dumb for the commerce department to yank the state's domain names away from them.

    Are the two letter state abbreviations trademarked by the post office so noone else can use them?
    • At the risk of a redundant mod:

      From the site:
      Existing .US registrants (domain name holders) within the "locality space" will retain rights to their existing Internet addresses. In fact, existing domain name holders will benefit from many of the operational improvements and improved security and service levels NeuStar will introduce within .US.

  • This is all moot to me (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheRealFixer ( 552803 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @02:28PM (#3014391)
    Having a domain other than .com, .net, or .org is like getting kissed over the telephone, or winning a silver medal.
  • So long as I can get "r.us" I'll be happy. :)

    Is "toys.r.us" an actionable trademark infringment? What if it's a site devoted to criticizing society's obsession with the latest technology?
  • The solution to all this domain name crap is to abstract away from it -- users whould not have to type in all this www.load.of.crap.extention.in.Zimbabwe. The interface should be pure hyperlinking, no addresses.
    • What about stuff other than the web - e-mail, ftp, ssh, telnet, etc... Hyperlinks for those as well?

      Let me load up my browser so I can ping that server :)
      • maybe! Although it's really powerful to be able to designate a site/server with a URL, it's intimidating for some folks. In addition, not every XXX.com is going to be the company you are looking for.
  • Anyone know how to go about getting a *.state.*.us domain?
    *.state.ut.us to be more exact.
    have looked all over trying to find out how and even GOOGLE is giving me no love =(
    • If you're looking for something right above state, that's a new locality. Neustar isn't accepting any new locality delegations right now. I don't know whether they ever will--there's no clear indication either way on their site.

      If you want to register a fourth level domain in an already delegated locality domain (e.g. yourdomain.new-york.ny.us), you need to contact the delegated manager [www.nic.us]. Keep in mind that this is a hit or miss--some of them are very good, while some, like hostmaster@prairie.net, are incommunicado, not answering any communication. I hope after things settle out, that those blowing off requests will have their delegations taken away, but for the moment, things are static.

  • Not free. (Score:3, Informative)

    by AnotherBlackHat ( 265897 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @04:39PM (#3015035) Homepage
    Registration of SLD under the TLD .us is not free.
    The fees charged are registrar are $5.50 per name per year, more for the first year. This is explained in schedule f [neustar.us])

    This is about the same amount that Network Solutions charges ($6.00 a year) so you can expect to pay approximately the same amount for a SLD under .us as you do currently for one under .com.

    P.S. Network Solutions took in over $600,000,000 last year, about 1/5 of which was from external registrars, the rest being from their own registration service.
    • Looks like locality domains will remain free (unless the delegated manager charges a fee):

      "For purposes of this Agreement, "Registered Name" shall not include domain names registered or maintained pursuant to the locality-based structure defined in RFC 1480, as amended or superceded by previous or the current usTLD Administrator." (from the document you linked)

  • Fact - Sunrise and UDRP is against Unfair Competition Law and the First Amendment.

    To explain:

    Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over.

    Most trademarks share the same words or initials with many others.

    Any TM lawyer will tell you all that I write is true - though they will certainly disagree with my conclussion.

    Most companies share the same word(s) for trademark, in a different type of business (classification).

    But only one will be allowed to use it, to get the domain name in the American .US ccTLD.

    For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone. Please check at USPTO [uspto.gov].

    In this example, only one can be WTO.us !!!

    What about the other five ???

    As this is the main American country TLD (ccTLD) - is it not unfair on the others, that one should be given priority over them?

    The same goes for all words in the dictionary - a few will get priority over the many.

    Point 1 - I thought it unlawful to award it to just one - is it not against unfair competition law?

    Point 2 - This is abridgement of words that small businesses (without a trademark) and the American people can use - Surely it violates the First Amendment?

    Perhaps a lawyer would like to address these two points.

    None have so far - wonder why?

    No - I don't wonder why - I know the truth of the matter.

    My logical conclussion is this: Big Business is abusing the powers of their trademarks, the Lawyers are making a fortune out of it and the Authorities are corrupt.

    The authorities know the solution to trademark conflict with domain names. It was ratified by honest attorneys - including the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III, UN WIPO panellist judge.

    Please see it yourself at WIPO.org.uk [wipo.org.uk]).

    No bull* propaganda or spin from trademark lawyers - see feeble excuses link on the site.

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