| Senior Member Location: CSite.Net Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 2,172
NP$: 607.25 ( Donate)
| The main problem with this bill is that it seems to be written by people with no understanding of the net and trademark law. The problem with these bills is to the uninformed, they probably sound like a good idea. Especially to a guy who thinks that the internet is just a series of tubes.
Can you imagine how many places named Acorn there are in the country? Imagine if 20 of those are dry cleaners. And there is a domain AcornCleaners.com. Are they then going to start all claiming the domain under this act? Who decides under the provisions of ANY business in ANY location who has the rights to the name?
Under her system, there is no name that can be registered as long as some business somewhere is using that name or a part of that name. You couldn't even have AppleSauce.com, a recipe site that has ads, since Apple is in the name and thus would make it unlawful to have it because it contains a TM word.
The law could be easily clarified to apply to what content the domain name points to. If it's a site that is posing as another site's business, for whatever reason, phishing or otherwise, then it would be a valid law, but just to say any word that belongs to any business or person is ridiculous.
There is one other hope. Even if this law gets far enough to be passed, there is still the hope that the judicial will find it too vague and send it back. After all, how are you going to enforce that with so many like named companies. The law is also clearly against the TM law (and perhaps the Electronic Privacy Act) as well unless the 31 pages says something more than what is listed here.
By the way, is there a place to read the whole 31 pages of the bill beyond just the synopsis?
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