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

[Karl Auerbach]

I was one of the few members of the intellectual property bar during the 
pre-web life of the net who was aware of the developing world of 
networking.  (When I was offered a position in the chief counsel's 
office of NTIA in 1978 I was one of the two people there who had a clue 
about packet switching based networking [but my focus back then was on 
privacy and data linking.])

If my memory is to be trusted, I did not hear much at gatherings of IP 
lawyers about the evolving internet or domain names until the world wide 
web came along.  After that the floodgates of client cash to "do 
something to protect us" began to open.)

         --karl--


On 12/19/25 11:23 AM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> 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.