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Countries Back Domain Name Restrictions
by Maureen Sirhal
A few countries have offered their support for a bid to exclude a bevy of new categories from the general pool of available Internet addresses.
The countries, including Australia and Switzerland, proposed exclusions for geographical names, generally accepted pharmaceutical terms and personal names and other categories in submissions to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which has begun its second process for analyzing disputes within the domain-name system. Comments on the new process were due to WIPO last week.
In their comments on the WIPO process, some countries called for lists of drug names under the International Non-proprietary Names for Pharmaceutical Substances (INNs) and terms used to defined intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) -- such as the World Health Organization and its acronym, WHO -- to be excluded from a common list of publicly available domain names. Switzerland's intellectual property office supported most of WIPO's recommendations but noted that a new mechanism for dealing with cyber squatting of personal names may be necessary.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) instituted WIPO's first domain-name dispute-resolution process, the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), in 1999. The policy established a mechanism to address obvious cases of cyber squatting, or the act of registering a domain name in a bad-faith attempt to garner money from selling it.
As WIPO considers a second process, Korea, the United Kingdom and several other countries said they support a complete exclusion for names in the INN and IGO categories. But they also recommended that no changes be made to the UDRP.
Various countries that submitted comments to WIPO -- including France, Russia, Australia, Columbia, Mexico, Spain and Portugal -- were at odds on protecting geographical names. While nearly all observers agree that country names and geographical indicators, for example, must be protected from potential cyber squatters, the lack of uniformity in the definitions makes it difficult to exclude such names from the global domain name list.
The United Kingdom does "not support the idea of developing an exclusion list of restricted registrations because it is extremely difficult to draw up a comprehensive list in advance," wrote Jeff Watson, the senior policy adviser for the U.K. Patent Office and Department of Trade and Industry. "It is also difficult to retrospectively deal with existing registrations that are included on any exclusion list."
European Union Approves Rules For Model Contract
The European Commission on Monday adopted a set of standard contract clauses that U.S.-based companies would have to include in business contracts with partners in the European Union to assure that the flow of data between the two regions complies with EU privacy protections.
Under the decision of the commission, which is the regulatory arm of the European Union, EU member states would have to recognize that companies or organizations using the standard clauses offer "adequate protection" to data. The new rule would create some loopholes to the broad rules adopted under an EU privacy directive.
Under the directive, U.S. companies must agree to comply with EU privacy rules. They must provide assurance that they have consumers' consent to send personally identifiable information across the Atlantic, and that consumers and business employees have access to their information and the choice to determine how it is used.
Under the new contractual clauses, companies need not secure specific contracts when sending data to Switzerland or Hungary, whose own data-protection regimes the European Union deems adequate, or to companies that adhere to the "safe harbor" privacy principles issued by the U.S. Commerce Department and backed by European officials.
Data-protection authorities in EU countries still could enforce privacy rules and suspend data flows in exceptional circumstances, but under the new rules, those authorities "cannot refuse data transfers made under contracts that incorporate the standard contractual clauses." Commission officials described the decision as a "first step" toward developing comprehensive contract solutions for the transatlantic flow of personal data.
But some U.S. observers still may find fault with the rules because they would give consumers broad rights to sue for violation of the privacy contracts, essentially opening companies and individuals up to litigation should their data-protection practices fall short.
"You're potentially creating a right to sue for a whole lot of people in a lot of places. That makes companies uncomfortable," said Alston & Bird attorney and EU e-commerce expert Jonathan Winer. "That's why these contracts appear to be so unacceptable."
Chinese Man Jailed For Posting Sensitive Data
Chinese officials have sentenced a man to three years in prison for posting anti-communist articles in Internet chat rooms, a state newspaper reported this week.
Liu Weifang recently was sentenced in Xinjiang in northwestern China, according to Xinjiang Daily. Liu posted several articles on the Internet in 1999 and last year that "attacked" the Chinese Communist Party and "slandered" the government's reforms and policies. He was convicted of inciting subversion against state power, the report said.
The sentencing is the latest in what has become a Chinese crackdown on political content on the Internet. Last December, the nation's legislature passed regulations making it illegal to post politically sensitive information on China's Web sites.
Telecom Operators: Competition May Not Beget Access
While European telecommunications firms are making progress unbundling the monopolistic local telephone networks and opening them to competition, the move is not considered a catalyst for promoting greater access to the high-speed Internet, a group of telecom operators said last week.
The operators were participating in a conference on the "local loop" sponsored by the European Telecommunications Network Operator's Association (ETNO), which represents 45 major operators from 35 countries. They agreed that significant barriers to broadband still would exist even after local networks become increasingly competitive.
"It would be politically naïve for heads of state and governments to expect that unbundling the local loop could be done overnight" ETNO Director Michael Bartholomew told the conference.
The aim of the conference was to evaluate the progress members states of the European Union have made toward increasing local telecom competition. Under a 1999 EU directive, the EU member states must promote "open access" to the copper wires that link homes and businesses to the core telecom network.
But ETNO members said that inexpensive and quality connections to the high-speed Internet would not be guaranteed. "In most cases, competition has already reduced overall costs for European users to lower levels than in the [United States]," Bartholomew said. "Commercially negotiated access to the local loop for wholesale products is the best way to ensure investments, innovation and choice."
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