Check out http://auda.org.au/domain-news/dn-news for
the latest domain news. Within 24 hours of this news
being posted, a more recent edition of the news will
normally be posted to the auDA web site. The domain
name news is supported by auDA.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Harry Potter and the Order of the Typo
Popular author JK Rowling has won her case at the
World Intellectual Property Organisation for the
control of two domain names.
 http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160016
 http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1417912004

http://out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=jkrowlingwinstypo1102601770
 http://demys.net/news/2004/12/09_harry.htm

au: Capital Networks Pty Ltd v .au Domain
Administration Limited
Decision in Federal Court of Australia whereby Capital
Networks failed in their appeal against auDA that
originally decided "auDA is entitled to suspend
Capnet’s accreditation".

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCAFC/2004/324.html
Original decision at:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2004/808.html

Third-Level Domain Name Hijacking
A new type of domain-name hijacking is being carried
out unnoticed. It involves third-level domain-names
associated with affiliate programs.
 http://www.circleid.com/article/826_0_1_0_C/

Africans fight for a piece of the Internet pie
The regional conference of the Icann saw a strong
emphasis on the importance of Internationalised Domain
Names (IDNs) that accommodate African languages. This
could be a giant leap towards achieving communication
and economic development in the continent.

http://www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=idgml-2aa74898-2c48-43f5-a468-2c359f93274b
 
nz: Whois Policy Review: Draft Policy for Comment
InternetNZ, through the Office of the Domain Name
Commissioner, is reviewing the Whois Server Policy
 http://dnc.org.nz/content/whois.pdf
	
German Supreme Court rules in favor of 'generic domain
grabbing'
The German Supreme Court has ruled that merely
registering generic terms as domain names does not
constitute an unethical intent to cause damage, online
magazine Heise Online reports.

http://www.theregister.com/2004/12/06/german_supreme_court_allows_generic_domain_grabbing/

Red Herring Selects VeriSign For Prestigious Red
Herring Top 100 Innovators Award (news release)
VeriSign announced today that it has been selected as
a Top 100 Innovator by Red Herring.  VeriSign was
given this prestigious award in recognition of its
development of the Advanced Transaction Lookup and
Signaling System (ATLAS), a sophisticated software
platform designed to scale the Internet’s core
infrastructure, the Domain Name System (DNS), and
support the convergence of voice and data networks.

http://verisign.com/verisign-inc/news-and-events/news-archive/us-news-2004/page_020003.html

African Internet Leaders Express Support for ICANN
The ICANN yesterday announced that during the ICANN
meetings in Cape Town, South Africa, African Internet
Service Provider Associations (AfrISPA) released a
statement of support for ICANN and its successful
co-ordination of IP addresses and the Internet domain
name system.
 http://news.webhosting.info/t-3488

Domain Registries Line Up to Run .Net
While the .com domain might get most of the attention,
its smaller but still popular cousin .net is starting
to gain renewed scrutiny.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/zd/20041208/tc_zd/140608
 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1737689,00.asp

ICANN Releases .NET Request for Proposals
(announcement)
In accordance with the announced procedure, after
publication of a draft RFP and consideration of public
comment, ICANN today released the RFP for operation of
the .NET registry.

http://icann.org/tlds/dotnet-reassignment/net-rfp-final-10dec04.pdf

uk: Apple Goliath meets UK David in domain name spat
Apple is attempting to wrest control of a domain name
from a UK entrepreneur, but faces a tough fight from
the current owner of the Web address.
 http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041208/101/f84xx.html

jp: WIPO strips Tokyo man of Moomin domain rights
A Tokyo man who controlled the domain "moomin.com" has
been stripped of his rights in favor of the Finnish
company that owned the merchandising rights to the
famous troll characters.

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20041211p2a00m0dm012001c.html

nz: Major Internet Policy Meeting to be held in
Wellington in 2006
ICANN has just announced that its March 2006 meeting
will be held in Wellington, New Zealand.

http://internetnz.net.nz/ICANN_2006/announce041206.htm

From EuroDNS newsletter:
Economic Growth and Expanding Internet Usage
Growth rates for domain name registrations have
reached historically high levels in each of the past
four quarters.
Country Code domains lead the Growth
The ‘.com’ remains the most popular domain name
extension, accounting for almost half of all domain
name registrations globally.
Analysis of DENIC’s Clients
A recent analysis of DENIC’s clients made by the
‘Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft’ (BVDW) shows that
2/3rds of the German-based Domain Name holders (some
35% are non-German companies) are in the Business
Sector.
 http://www.eurodns.com/info/alerts/06122004.php

dotMP, First Mobile Internet Domain Open for
Registration at http://get.mp
Open registration for dotMP commenced on December 1st
and a wide spectrum of business and personal users
from Europe, America and Asia have registered their
.mp domain names and published mobile content on their
dotMP sites.

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=24318143

us: Registration of "foradodge.com" Violates ACPA (reg
req'd)
Addressing the applicability of the
Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) to
a domain name incorporating the famous trademark
DODGE, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
recently affirmed a lower court’s granting of summary
judgment transferring the domain name where the
defendant registered the domain name "foradodge.com."

http://www.mondaq.com/article_preview.asp?a=29885&e=on

"Unauthorized Use of Another's Trademark on the
Internet" by Erlend Bakken (UCLA Law Tech Journal)
Erlend Bakken addresses familiar questions in
trademark law as they relate to the Internet. However,
Bakken notes that these questions are difficult to
answer applying the old doctrines of trademark law,
and raise new questions. For example, is initial
interest confusion sufficient to find trademark
infringement when trademarks are used in metatags? To
what extent will the unauthorized use of a trademark
in the path of a URL be considered a "fair use" of the
trademark and therefore non-infringing? Can linking or
framing cause dilution of a trademark? Will paid
placement or keyed banner ads cause a likelihood of
consumer confusion? Bakken notes that courts find
themselves redefining the boundaries of the Lanham
Act, and concludes that, with the basic objectives of
trademark law in mind, it is unclear where these
boundaries should be set.

http://www.lawtechjournal.com/articles/2003/03_030629_bakken.php

http://www.lawtechjournal.com/articles/2003/03_030629_bakken.php

ICANN rules out ITU merger
Extending the mandate of the ICANN could do
irreparable harm to it and Internet governance in the
future, says ICANN CEO Paul Twomey. From:

http://www.markle.org/weekly_digest/weeklydigest_vol.3_issue46.pdf

ICANN Three Year Strategic Plan: Call for Public
Comment
ICANN has released a three year ICANN Strategic Plan
for public comment

http://ripe.net/info/resource-admin/news/icann-plan-200412.html

Net24 launches new auction service (news release)
Online businesses searching for eye-catching domain
names to house their websites can now use a smart new
tool for finding and buying names already registered,
but which are about to become available on the open
market.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/BU0412/S00158.htm

BRS Media Announces iDotz.Net to offer .SC Domain
Names via DotzSC (news release)
BRS Media announced today the addition of .SC domain
names to iDotz.Net, a full service multi-domain
registrar service.
 http://www.pressbox.co.uk/Detailed/21649.html
 http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/ido121004.cfm

BRS Media's dotFM to Offer an .FM / .AM / .TV
Multimedia and gTLD Domain Special (news release)
BRS Media's dotFM, the exclusive worldwide registry
for Web addresses ending in .FM, announced today a
special offer of a Free .COM, .NET or .ORG Domain Name
with the purchase of a .FM, .AM or .TV Domain Name!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/prweb/20041208/bs_prweb/prweb186921_1

Premium Wireless Domain Name Now Being Offered (news
release)
Wireless names such as Freephones.com has announced
it's selling its rare and priceless domain name to the
wireless sector. The opportunity to own this quality
name will be of high interest to marketing executives,
major wireless carriers, and all internet based
services.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/12/prwebxml185868.php

Global Domains International now in its Fifth Year
Starts to Achieve Worldwide Recognition (news release)
One of the best kept secrets on the Internet is now
poised to experience exponential growth in the next
several months, as evidenced by their phenomenal
expansion into the single family/small home and retail
business market. Since their inception with the
website.ws domain registration in 1999, they have
enlisted many hundreds of thousands of new domains,
including companies such as Dell, Cisco, Yahoo, and
registrants in over 180 countries.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/12/prwebxml187215.php

*****************
WSIS & GOVERNANCE
*****************
NRO Comments on the WGIG Panel at ICANN WSIS Workshop
in Cape Town
The Regional Internet Registries have been
participating in WSIS for over two years, individually
and more recently through the Number Resource
Organization, which represents RIRs globally. There
are a few WSIS areas where we might like to spend our
time, but WGIG is now demanding all of our attention.

http://www.nro.net/documents/statements/wgig-comments.html

Seventh meeting of the Council WG-WSIS - CCV, Geneva,
13-14 December 2004
The seventh meeting of the WG-WSIS will be held on
Monday 13 December, starting at 10.00 and continuing
on Tuesday 14 December. The meeting will take place in
the  Conference Centre of Varembe (CCV), near to the
ITU headquarters, in Geneva. The work of the Council
Working Group on WSIS is governed by Council
Resolution 1222.
 http://www.itu.int/council/wsis/wsis_WG.html

ITU and Internet Governance - input to the 7th meeting
of the ITU Council Working Group on WSIS, 12-14
December 2004 by H. Zhao (Director of TSB/ITU)
Internet Governance is one of the two hot issues that
emerged during the first phase of WSIS, requiring
further work during the second phase. While Financial
Mechanisms is being handled by a Task Force (TFFM),
Internet Governance is being addressed through a
Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)
established by Mr. Koffi Annan, UN Secretary-General.
In line with the decision of Tunis PrepCom-1, it is
expected that the WGIG will present a preliminary
report to PrepCom-2 (17-24 February 2005) and a final
report to PrepCom-3 (August/September 2005), for
consideration of appropriate action during the second
phase of WSIS which will be held in Tunis, 16-18
November 2005.

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/tsb-director/itut-wsis/files/zhao-netgov02.doc

Internet Management and National Security: Time for a
Federal Action Plan
Former CIA Director George Tenet recently gave a
speech highlighting the need for federal action on
internet management in order to protect national
security. As reported by the online edition of
Government Executive, Mr. Tenet explained that,
"greater government regulation of the Internet and
telecommunications networks is needed in order to
guard against terrorist attacks."
 http://www.circleid.com/article/824_0_1_0_C/

http://www.markle.org/weekly_digest/weeklydigest_vol.3_issue46.pdf
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sources include Quicklinks <http://qlinks.net/> and
BNA Internet Law News <http://www.bna.com/ilaw/>.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(c) David Goldstein 2004

=====
David Goldstein
 address: 2/4 Dundas Street
             COOGEE NSW 2034
             AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David&#167;yahoo.com.au
 phone: +61 418 228 605 - mobile; +61 2 9665 0015 - home

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