[NA-Discuss] Regional Advice on .HEALTH Objection

Wed Mar 6 04:41:33 UTC 2013

The WHO is obviously aware of the process, having applied before.

It could have applied in this round as a community application, and had an
immediate leg up on others, but chose not to. Why it would apply then and
not now is puzzling, but it has made the decision to not contend for the
string and other entries should not be enjoined simply because they are not
the WHO. And as interesting as the 2000 application was, the fact remains
that it was not granted. If its existence is not well known, the reasons
for its rejection at that time are even less known.

In any case, that was then and this is now. There is no WHO application for
.health at this time. There may indeed be sensible reasons to advance some
or all of objections against the Latin-string applications(*), but putting
the string on hold while waiting for the WHO to (maybe) apply for it at a
later round is not one of those reasons. Nobody -- with the possible
exception for dot-brands based on invented words -- is merely entitled to
any string. And given the conduct of the WHO and other IGOs in the current
GNSO working group regarding non-profit name blocking, I actually have
little reason to believe that their interests in gTLDs are any less
self-serving than the for-profits.

(*) Based on recent feedback from Hong, Rinalia and Cheryl, I oppose
advancing any objections on the Chinese variant.

- Evan

On 5 March 2013 22:27, Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>wrote:

> On 3/5/13 3:33 PM, Garth Bruen wrote:
> > The region must answer a series of questions (one for each applicant) in
> > response to the .HEALTH objection:
> >
> https://community.icann.org/display/newgtldrg/Advice+from+the+RALOs+to+the+A
> > LAC+regarding+the+objection+statements
> >
> > My recommendation is to answer "NO" or to abstain in ALL FIVE cases and I
> > will explain why.
>
>
> My recommendation is to answer "YES" to ALL FIVE cases.
>
> I spent some of my Toronto meeting time in consultations with Dr. Joan
> Dzenowagis, of the World Health Organization, who worked with CORE in
> submitting an application for a sponsored TLD in 2000, and Ms. Rosa
> Delgado, whom I've known since the 2000 round, when she represented
> the interests of the .aero applicant, and who was, and is, consulting
> for the World Health Organization.
>
> I am convinced that (a) ICANN has not extinguished the WHO's interest
> in the label ".health", arising from the WHO's submitting a qualified,
> and deferred, application in the 2000 round.  For those who were not a
> part of Working Group C, in 1998-2000 the majority proposal was to
> accept 7 to 10 of the applications, split evenly between the sponsored
> form and the open form. Seven applications were selected, the .health
> application was one of those deferred until a future date.
>
> I appreciate that staff legal asserts that it has unilaterally
> extinguished all prior applicants' interests, and that long running
> claim for .web has finally resulted in a court ruling adverse to the
> claim of that applicant, but the general claim of unilateral
> extinguishment of all prior applicant's interests in their qualified,
> but deferred applications, has not yet been tested in a court of law.
>
> I would not like to see ICANN profit by "efficient breach" of contract
> with the World Health Organization, return to it $45,000, in cash or
> in future application fee credit, with interest, and taking the
> auction price from the highest speculative interest bidder. Not only
> would this be poor past contract management, there is no reason to
> believe that ICANN would refrain from similar conduct in the present,
> or future rounds. When registrars do this to individuals and business
> that attempt to register a name of value, we call it "front running",
> and condemn the practice. If ICANN can "front run" the
> World Health Organization, taking its 2000 round application for the
> string "health" and award it to the highest bidder in 2013 (or 2014,
> or ...), it can "front run" other public interest applicants and
> privatize the assets those public entities have created in common
> identifiers.
>
> I am also convinced that (b) the underlying purpose of marks
> protections, articulated in part by national law, and subsequent
> treaty based international law, concerning trademarks, is the
> prevention of harmful confusion in the market, and the difference
> between a registry operated by the World Health Organization and a
> registry operated by any for-profit operator seems to me to be
> self-evident. Having worked diligently, first with Jon Postel, then
> with members of the Intellectual Property Constituency, for two
> decades, to protect the interest of public bodies -- initially
> indigenous governments in the Americas and Oceania, now these and
> municipalities and regional governments and treaty organizations which
> do not rely upon trademark to protect their name from expropriation by
> third parties pursuing private profit, I am certain that snipping off
> the valuable bits of public identifiers and selling them to the
> highest bidder will only produce harmful confusion in the market. It
> is not surprising that we see multiple speculative claims for "health"
> and none for "world" or "organization" or "worldhealth" or
> "healthorganization". That's where the public reliance is, and
> therefore that is where there is money to be had by first mover theft.
>
> Having worked with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of
> Information in the past, and having maintained a relationship with
> senior members of each subsequently, I'm certain that whatever Mike
> Rodenbach is up to is unlikely to be consistent with the public
> interest in public health in the Han Script market of ideas and names.
> Mike has always struck me as one of the least intelligent, and least
> principled persons to have ever been on the GNSO Council.
>
> I appreciate the concern that Garth expresses, and the invitation to
> disagree or engage in discussion, however, as we know different
> things, and I knew the .health applicant team in 2000, worked with the
> individuals associated with the then proposed technical provider
> (CORE) while Chief Technical Officer of CORE, 2007-2010, and am well
> acquainted with Dr. Joan Dzenowagis and Ms. Rosa DelGado, I know that
> the objection to the string does not "represent a narrow interest in
> the string itself and not the meaning", but is an objection to both.
>
> Eric Brunner-Williams
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-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Toronto Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56