[Gnso-igo-ingo-crp] World Bank Cease & Desist letters?

[George Kirikos]

Hi folks,

During yesterday's call, David Satola of the World Bank mentioned that:

"....when the guidebook came out for the new gTLD round in late 2011,
2012, we took a look at the number of domains that others had
registered using World Bank in one form or another. And at that -
excuse me - at that time there were - I forget the exact number but
something like 300 domains. And we looked at them and determined that
there were about 50 or 60 that we really cared about. And were able to
deal with most of them through cease and desist letters."

That quote was from page 8 of the PDF transcript, see:

http://gnso.icann.org/en/meetings/transcript-igo-ingo-crp-access-14jul16-en.pdf

Firstly, I found the last sentence very odd. A typical cease and
desist letter, in its basic form, tells the recipient "Stop doing what
you're doing, and don't do it again, OR ELSE...."

What did the World Bank use as their "OR ELSE"??

I'm assuming that their C&Ds don't contain an "OR ELSE" of "we'll buy
you dinner" or "we'll have a good cry" or "we'll call your mommy".

Most senders (perhaps all?) of C&D letters will threaten a lawsuit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cease_and_desist

So, I find it puzzling that the World Bank is sending these C&Ds,
which likely contain either explicit or implicit threats of some sort,
yet is telling our PDP working group that they're concerned about
"immunity" -- certainly they would have to waive immunity to implement
any legal threats contained in their C&Ds, otherwise those C&Ds are
toothless.

Secondly, it was educational that the numbers (50 or 60 domains they
cared about, most dealt with successfully by C&Ds) are so small, even
for a relatively large IGO like the World Bank. When we weigh the
costs vs. the benefits of any policy recommendation, the magnitude of
the claimed "problem" is a critical consideration. Here, the magnitude
is extremely small. We don't make "special rules" for Lego, as an
example, which has filed an enormous number of UDRPs to deal with
cybersquatting. Nor for companies like Microsoft, Verizon, Google,
Disney and others which each have tens of thousands of defensive
domain name registrations and many UDRP cases.

It's very sad that we are getting this important data so late in this
PDP. I think if the prior working group (the one that preceded the
creation of this PDP) had these kinds of miniscule figures, it would
have weighed heavily against the creation of our PDP by the GNSO
Council. There are many, many "minor irritants" on the internet, and
we should be prioritizing limited resources to handle the major issues
first. It's disturbing that a small group of well-connected IGOs has
"jumped the queue" to have their minor irritants use up so much time
and energy of the many volunteers (and paid staff) over the past few
years.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/