I watched the video of the roundtable and for the most part it was fairly predictable but pretty good, the panellists seemed mostly fair and logical in their analyses of various cases. I also noticed that
@FM and
@Zak watched the roundtable and made some comments in the chat feature, glad to see I wasn't the only one interested in this.
I wish I had watched it live because I would have called a presenter out on it immediately, but there was a disturbing thing I noticed while watching the replay:
The presenter named Georgina Danzig tried to kick things off by generically describing how the complainant must pass the 3-prong test required to win a dispute in CDRP or UDRP. You can find this at 06:15 mark in the video. At 06:29, instead of just saying "the domain" she says "the offending domain", and at 09:40 she again references "the offending domain". Remember, she's not even talking about a real case here, just an overview of the rules, and she's repeatedly said "offending domain" as if she's already decided in her mind that the respondent is always guilty!! I can't be the only one to have caught that, right?? While it may have been a slip of the tongue, it clearly shows where her mindset is. Lets hope she's never allowed to be a panellist!
And there was another moment where Georgina shows her colours. At the 51:30 mark, Georgina brings up a point about the fact that in egregious cases where a complainant uses CDRP as a plan B, that the panel can award costs of up to $5000.
@FM even commented about it at the time, but I think you completely misunderstood her Frank. Georgina was
not saying that a complainant should get penalized for reverse hijacking attempts, she was wanting complainants to be
awarded_costs in addition to getting the domain transferred when they
win a CDRP - so completely the opposite of what you thought she said. You'll have to rewatch it. Thankfully the presenter and dispute panelist James Plotkin astutely pointed out to her that panellists are typically trademark lawyers who also represent these complainants, and that it might just be going too far to give panellists that much power, and that the ability to transfer or cancel the domain was enough.
I also noted that Mr Plotikin mentioned that he didn't know of any costs ever being awarded in CDRP. Zak must have momentarily tuned out or bit his tongue, I know Zak
has successfully argued for costs at least once.
Overall I thought the session was good and I'll continue to try and watch them in the future. I'd highly suggest any serious domainer to also listen in. As long as you register, it seems you can get the video link afterwards. That's nice because you can save a little time by listening to the playback at 1.25x or 1.5x speeds, not to mention the convenience of listening whenever you have time. But you do miss out on the ability to chat live with participants and the panellists.
