Not really. ICANN isn't "selling" single-label domains. They
are selling (and I believe "selling" is probably now the correct
term) plain, ordinary, TLD delegations. If I get one of those
and populate the TLD zone only with delegation records, there
are no problems with what ICANN has done at all, whether you
describe it as a property right or in some other way.
Agreed.
On the other hand, if they delegate one and the enterprise that buys it
chooses to populate the zone with service records, then ICANN's
position will certainly be that any inability to use those
service records isn't ICANN's problem -- any more than
difficulties using .museum or .aero were ICANN's problem when
those to whom those domains were delegated discovered that a lot
of applications software thought that the one TLD label of more
than three characters was "ARPA".
Is generic "buyer beware" disclaimer really sufficient here?
The problem isn't just "inability to use" -- it's that other parties exist
who may claim the usage right, and provide citations to RFCs to back up their
claim.
For example, typing http://brooklynbridgepark/ into a browser utilizing
a resolver compliant with RFC 1536 will bring you to the web site of
Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, assuming that .org is in your searchlist.
If ICANN sells the brooklynbridgepark TLD delegation to another party who
populates
the zone with service records, should that party expect that
http://brooklynbridgepark/
will now resolve to their site? RFC 1536 says "no".
Similar problems will occur when the party purchasing the brooklynbridgepark
TLD
attempts to use the single-label name "brooklynbridgepark" for other uses, such
as
network access.
And _that_ situation has a lot more to do about "buyer beware"
and understanding of conflicting expectations about use than it
does about ownership.
Today there is a distinction between types of property rights - surface,
subsurface,
or rights to the air above a property. As noted at
http://geology.com/articles/mineral-rights.shtml
this was not always the case:
If we go back in time to the days before drilling and mining, real
estate transactions
were fee simple transfers. However,
once subsurface mineral production became
possible, the ways in which people own property became much more complex.
If the analogy holds (and I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea if it does), then
we could be talking about a "fee simple" transfer in a situation where
sub-rights may
be claimed to belong to someone else.
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