[council] NCUC statement on Approval Process for Registry Services

["Philip Sheppard" <philip.sheppard@xxxxxx>]

Marc,
while I think there is much to commend in the NCUC statement on the registry 
services I feel impelled to make one remark to this part of your statement:

" we note that ICANN invested most of its effort in protecting trademarks ... 
interests, and has shown very little interest in protecting consumers and 
users".

ICANN's UDRP is all about protecting consumers and users. The typical 
motivation for a brand owner to seek ownership of a domain name is to prevent 
the bad faith use of the domain name. Bad faith use includes consumer fraud and 
deception. There maybe individual cases where other motivations are apparent 
but please do note that the fundamental reason for trademarks at all is as a 
guarantee of origin - and that is a consumer as well as a brand-owner benefit. 

Philip