[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 04:44:51AM -0500, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:

>My impression was that, since the issue is with domain names' ability 
>to have real-world semantic, the trademark concern surfaces with /any/ 
>use of domain names.  The web certainly exacerbated concerns, but it 
>didn't create them.

I don't think I said it created them; just that it encouraged those concerns.  The point is that, with the exception of the dim recesses of the trademark enforcement divisions of Disney's firm and perhaps a few others, nobody would have noticed domain names except for their centrality in an important bit of user interface.  It's true, of course, that they were also in email addresses, but since the point of an email address was to get the mail to the recipient rather than to protest some other mail site, it was unlikely that anyone would register wal-mart-sucks-sucks-sucks-sucks.com for a mail domain.  (I suppose one might construct a case where someone would register clueless-oldcorp.com in an effort to capture all of their mail, to be fair.)

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at crankycanuck.ca