The real ire here is that a "free" resource has become incredibly valuable.
Not cost recovery, or somewhat valuable, but EXTREMELY valuable. I mean,
there's a fee to buy blocks of Ethernet hardware addresses, too. (though if
they ever sold out the whole stock, they'd have recouped a few hundred billion
dollars or some outrageous number). Annual DNS rental is nonviable as a
*monopoly* business proposition -- which is why competition will emerge. IETF
will likely endorse private TLDs like .biz and .inc and you name it.
Well, here's some more crap thrown NSI's way [from Infoworld]...
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However, some observers said the new policy, which has been revised once
already since it was written 13 months ago, will do little to quell disputes
because, they say, it flies in the face of established U.S. law.
"The entire policy is based on some misconception of trademark law," said
David Maher, an attorney at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago. "The
policy makes no distinction between registered and common law trademarks."
In American law, Maher said, when a company adopts an original trademark or
tradename it acquires, in most cases, common law rights to its exclusive use.
"There is no requirement in American law to register a trademark," said Maher,
who is also co-chair of the International Trademark Association's Internet
issues committee.
The new policy, he said, runs roughshod over parties who may claim common law
rights to a tradename.
"It's a very complex problem with no easy solution," Maher said. "Right now,
they'd probably be better off having no policy at all."