The Newzealand.com Decision

[draqon]

it could be argued that trademark infringment IS unethical. Therefore there is a moral as well as legal difference. Personally i dont think it matters if you own MGMfilms.com or not. If they want, they will just take it from you in WIPO.

 

[DomainPairs]

Obviously they can't just take it from you in WIPO as has been shown in a number of cases. The other issue is what is trademark infringement. Printing a report on a newspaper about a new MGM film could be a trade mark infringement if one followed some arguments.

I still don't see why depriving a country of its domain is morally defensible, and using a trade mark to promote the interests of the trade mark holder is not.

Sorry to hijack your thread on this Ari, and this is not an attack or criticism of you or your actions. It is more of a defence following an attack on my morality.

 

[Drewbert]

> There was no supplemental filing by Complainant of which to respond. However, I can state, without question, that WIPO was absolutely fair to both parties in all aspect of this proceeding, and has always been fair to the respondents in cases I have handled.

That's great to hear. Yes, they treated me fairly in my sole case at WIPO. Sure made a difference compared to NAF.

Is there ANY way NAF can be reigned in? I'd contribute to a combined effort, as would a number of people here, I suspect.

 

[Drewbert]

>I understand the legal difference.

>I was more interested in the moral difference.

Whoop! Whoop! Logic alarm!

error 4AF3: Poster mentioned "legal" and "moral" in the same posting. Fatal error - divide by zero exception. Jump:BSOD

But thank you for playing.

 

[DomainPairs]

Thanks for introducing some humour into this thread - and it did make me laugh.

 

[dtobias]

Originally posted by DomainPairs

Please could someone explain why I should be attacked for my comments as above, yet the depriving of the country of New Zealand of its domain name seems to meet with general approval.

Nobody is depriving the country of New Zealand of "its" domain name. New Zealand has the .nz country code domain, which is the proper place for any official sites of that country. They have no particular special rights over a .com name that happens to refer to that country; the country's government is not even a commercial entity themselves, so .com doesn't make sense as the location of any official site of theirs.

 

[DomainPairs]

Following the TM logic, NewZealand.com would have no value were it not for the existance of the country.

I don't think .com means commercial entity any more does it?

I suspect that we should agree to differ rather than run this thread, and as always the legal decisions will prevail. My efforts are to understand the basis and the quirks of the law, rather than to discuss moral views. I just react when my personal morality is attacked.

 

[Drewbert]

>My efforts are to understand the basis and the quirks of the law

People who make an effort to understand the quirks rapidly find themselves in a padded cell. Do your brain cells a favour - put that one in the "too hard" basket. :^)

 

[TurNIC.com]

I have read all thread from beginning to end. Some people say s/he does not want to take side in this decision. Some say s/he only respond moral issues when s/he was attacked morally, so there is no moral point to discuss in New Zealand issue. Some people say what is wrong that a company uses newzealand.com, it is just a commercial commodity. Some people say .com is useless for country names and New Zealand could use .nz extension instead.

Come on people! ARE YOU ROBOTS? nutritionized by cash. I TAKE side in this issue:

Country names are the PROPERTY of respective countries. I do not care about the lawyer$ success or failure or how the WIPO panel looked at the case and turned the complainant to a “reverse name hijacker”.

You can not take country names in your portfolio, put a standard same web design for all of them and then milk income from them.

>The panel noted that VCI itself had a US trademark for newzealand.com and that the domain name was connected to a website which appeared "at one time to have been a genuine website concerned with New Zealand."

Oh really?!! Is it really genuine. Spend your 5 minutes and look
www.newzealand.com
www.sweden.com
www.turkey.com

They have SAME template and same design. The were all registered in May 1995. They probably were registered to take the advantage of these unique country names when times come. And the times came after 2000.

Besides, how can a Trademark office can give a US company a trademark of another countries name. What do you call it? If you call America where “wild capitalists burgeon” then I ask this question. Assume that I registered USA.com or America.com around 1993 and get trademark for them by some way. Then make them portal site. I get a hosting from a singapour company and transferred the income I got from USA.com to Saudi Arabia to fund Al Queda. Would the American government let me do it?

<VCI's representative Ari Goldberger in a supplementary response. This showed that, during the WIPO second domain name process, New Zealand had taken up a formal position with regard to country names which was at odds with the present complaint. New Zealand had stated in a response to a WIPO questionnaire that New Zealand law did not preclude the use of country names "in any circumstances" and consequently as that there should be no special exception for domain names>

I would like to see that questionairre. What is asked and what is responded for that question. To preclude (exclude, prevent) something does not mean I give up my rights for that thing. Situation changes and I can change my mind. May be I did not care so much about newzealand.com in 1993, but in todays world I do care about it.

<Speaking to Demys.net yesterday, Mr Goldberger said "I was very pleased with the decision which is consistent with longstanding trademark principles permitting third parties to freely use geographic terms.">

To use geographic names freely? How can you use a country’s name freely. Who gives that God given right to use country names freely? No rules, no guides or nothing just freely, 100 %? Ok then turn back to my above-mentioned example. Can I use USA.com as a porn site? Or a link site to Al Queda? Or can I use sweden.com to support some kind of terrorist groups. They like these groups and house them in Sweden. Ok then open check to VCI, I wanna buy sweden.com whatever price you want. Come on I wanna “freely” use it to show the world real face of terrorist groups they have been supporting since 1980s.
In brief, do not try to make the world a ball in which there is no colors, races, ethnicities and differences. Let countries own their culture and valuables and let them show it in their websites.
New Zeland.com BELONGS to New Zeland people. Nothing can be used freely in this world.

 

[dtobias]

While I would rather see such country-name domains as newzealand.com, sweden.com, etc. in the hands of separate entities, based in their respective countries (though not necessarily part of or endorsed by their governments) rather than owned by a single company that puts up cookie-cutter sites about different countries, I disagree that the country's government has any sort of proprietary rights over the country name. Geographic names have always been regarded as generic identifiers that can be used by anybody to refer to the place in question; the makers of world atlases don't need to stick "TM" symbols all over the place.

The .com domain was intended for commercial entities (even if it's been heavily abused for other purposes), so one can hardly claim that putting up a guide to a country operated with the intent to make money is an improper use of such a name. The proper place for official government sites is in the country code domain (.nz, etc.). Or they can use .info, where country names were reserved (at the last minute) by ICANN for this purpose.

To answer some of the rhetorical questions, no, I don't think the U.S. government would (or should) have any recourse if usa.com or america.com were to become porn sites. They haven't done anything about whitehouse.com being a porn site, and that one must be very embarrassing to them.

 

[TurNIC.com]

Dtobias,
You assumption has a fatal flaw:
NewZealand.com or sweden.com are NOT solely geographic names. There are dozens of other parameters back to New Zealand.com other than geography such as culture, people, religion etc. We are not talking about arctic.com here.

Besides, you are not actually defending anything new in your post. That was just a rewriting of before-mentioned rhetorics.

 

[jberryhill]

I imagine that Turnic would have travel agencies be required to pay royalties whenever they advertise trips to "New Zealand" or other countries.

The bottom line here is that the country of New Zealand itself, in its submission to WIPO on the subject of country names, stated that the names of countries should not be considered the legal property of the respective countries. You are free to differ with them, but they simply can't make a statement like that and then turn around and claim that they should own newzealand.com. It's that simple.

 

[Ari Goldberger]

SirAlexFerguson >I would like to see that questionnaire. What is asked and what is responded for that question.

Here you go:

http://ecommerce.wipo.int/domains/sct/comments/0009.html

 

[TurNIC.com]

Ari,

Thank you very much for the document. However, I would like to take your attention to this point. My moral rules say that "if you want to call yourself a new zelander, swedish, turkish or whatever country citizen you need to born on that land, your parents need to born there your grand parents need to born there you need to drink that land's water, you need to feel something about that land in your blood.

If you born in england, migrate to australia or new zealand and claim that you are new zealander that is wrong in my opinion.

I expected some kind of new zealander local name for the author of that response but as in the case of french government in south afrika, it is one of the officer of colonial regime that wrote it:

It is normal for that officer to write this kind of extremely liberal and extremely idiotic response to that questions.

Besides, that response has no logic inside, idiot first says that he could see no reason to protect country names then order alot of suggestions about how to PROTECT country names and even suggests the full country names should be protected. I can not believe that this kind of idiot people can colonize whole continent and new zeland. That document is a disgrace.

SAF


PS: turnic.com does not have any travel agencies or supporter. It is my amateur auction site. I just want to earn some money by selling my names. that's all.

 

[Ari Goldberger]

I respect your opinion. But, I'd like to add that some people think it's immoral to profit from the sale of domain names, and I'm out their defending the business you and other legitimate entrepreneurs in this forum are engaged in. I have trouble seeing the moral distinction between the registration of newzealand.com, on the one hand, and the registration and offer to sell rhodeislands.com on the other. I'll defend both owners' rights. If I can't defend one, I'll have trouble defending the other.

 

[TurNIC.com]

<I respect your opinion. But, I'd like to add that some people think it's immoral to profit from the sale of domain names, and I'm out their defending the business you and other legitimate entrepreneurs in this forum are engaged in>

I could not correlate your statement above; "resellers are doing unethical business" with new zealand.com issue. As you noticed in my first reply I defend that newzealand.com should be a portal to show culture, religion and valuables of new zealand. Whether it is owned by new zealand government or a new zealand citizen is not important. the important thing is to be owned by a New Zealander not by an international company that focused on country names.

I registered Rhodeislands.com a few weeks ago. As you noticed the state is called Rhodeisland.

Here is an open check: If there is someone with a proof that he is a patriot of Rhodeisland and want to develop that site to show touristic and cultural identity of Rhode Island, I'll transfer it to him for reg fee of $15. The $200 I could probably get from that name is not an issue...

I am surprized that you brought up a sentence stating "some people think resellers are doing an unethical biz". Since you earn money from resellers and domain names.

Regging names is not an absolute fiscal thing for me. I do it both for earning some money by selling domain names to people who appreciate my long-vision and for fun.

 

[namedropper]

Governments have no legal or moral right to automatically own the .com version of their name. Period.

If they want to go register it first, they should have. If they want to buy it from the current registrant, great. But to try to take it via legal action is pure thievery.

Ditto for any geographic descriptions that aren't trademarks used in business.

I am extremely happy that we have such a clear cut declaration that what New Zealand (aka the Queen) tried to do was wrong. Now if only they'd return Barcelona.com to its rightful owner.

 

[Shiftlock]

Originally posted by SirAlexFerguson
Here is an open check: If there is someone with a proof that he is a patriot of Rhodeisland and want to develop that site to show touristic and cultural identity of Rhode Island, I'll transfer it to him for reg fee of $15. The $200 I could probably get from that name is not an issue...

I am surprized that you brought up a sentence stating "some people think resellers are doing an unethical biz". Since you earn money from resellers and domain names.

So you're just holding that name so you can give it to someone from Rhode Island who wants to develop it? Come on...

He said some people think it's immoral to profit from the sale of domain names. He didn't say he agreed with them, and in fact he implied that he disagrees with them.

 

[TurNIC.com]

Governments have no legal or moral right to automatically own the .com version of their name. Period.

Do you say this as your opinion or do you have some kind of foundation to support it. since you put "PERIOD" as if you are the Guru of these things and know something we don't know. Even the one of the well respected domain lawyers respects moral opinions but you don't !!

 

[Ari Goldberger]

<He said some people think it's immoral to profit from the sale of domain names. He didn't say he agreed with them, and in fact he implied that he disagrees with them.

Exactly. Thanks for the clarification. Of course I do not believe the sale of domain names is immoral, unethical or illegal, provided they are not unique trademarks.