Re: [idn] Alpha Online

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

The question remains: Will an Alpha Online organization be allowed to
register qol.com, with q changed to a lowercase alpha?

Or will ICANN take the domain name away and give it to AOL, because the
uppercase version of the name is visually identical to AOL.COM? Is it
okay if Alpha Online never uses the uppercase version of the name, and
client software doesn't automatically convert names to uppercase?

The question is whether case insensitivity will---beyond imposing huge
software costs and creating huge new opportunities for fraud---prevent
legitimate users from registering perfectly reasonable domain names.

Dave Crocker writes:
> predictions about trademark disputes are best left to experienced
> trademark attorneys.

I will readily agree that the exact definition of ``likelihood of
confusion'' in trademark law is beyond your legal experience. However,
I'm sure you can grasp the fact that the picture

   AOL.COM

has a conflict with the identical picture

   AOL.COM

even though one of the A's is represented inside a computer as the Latin
A while the other one is represented as the Greek Alpha.

---Dan