Re: [ga] RE: Registrants Constituency
Roberto Gaetano wrote: On one hand, the voice of the registrants in the GNSO (and I want to stress "registrants" vs. "users", simply because past experience has shown that "individual users" will not fly).
The intellectual property industry gets a very big seat in ICANN but mere possession of a trademark has nothing to do with whether the holder of the mark has acquired a domain name or not. Normal internet users - you and I - are just as affected by domain names as is the owner of a trademark. Just like a trademark, our names can be transgressed, our reputations can be besmirched and diluted. The only difference is that that we are flesh and blood people rather than some legal abstraction in the form of a corporate owner of a trademark. So why do the trademark owners get the ICANN red carpet treatment and the individual users of the internet get the shaft? Why are our needs written off as "will not fly" while ICANN accepts the assertions of the intellectual property protection industry without question? Vint Cerf likes to say "The Internet is for Everyone". Seems that that phrase falls flat in the world of ICANN. ICANN is incorporated as a "public benefit" corporation. It is inconsistent with its legal status for ICANN to exclude the public from its decision making processes, while at the same time elevating private commercial interests. --karl--
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