Aero Club, the aviation community and social network

"James Sleeman" wrote in message
...

If "Aero Club" isn't a common generic term, I don't know what is.

I can't quite agree. "Aero Club" and the even more general term of "Aviation Club" are
used by several existing organizations. However, I wasn't trying to shut him down, just
make him aware of the situation. He seems to have taken it in the right spirit and
hopefully will post a disclaimer, which closes the matter for me.

The thread starter's site is an (online) Aero Club and it has just as much
right to the domain name aeroclub.net as anybody else doing something
similar,

I never said he didn't.

If anything it's your examples which have silly choices for domain
names, as they are country specific entities and should by rights be
using an appropriate domain under thier ccTLD.

But they don't, so there is the possiblity of confusion. Many users don't even know the
difference between aeroclub.org, aeroclub.com and aeroclub.net ,or what the country
designators mean.

Besides, poster #1 is in Italy by his email address, he an quite
cheerfully throw any possble C&D from your examples in the bin, US
legal jurisdiction doesn't extend to Italy.

I wasn't threatening legal action or even reporting him to an abuse mailbox.

If aeroclub.org had wanted aeroclub.net as well then they should have
registered it, I'm sure they could have found the $10 somewhere.

Commercial corporations know from experience to do that to protect their brand. The
potential for confusion (deliberate or otherwise) probably never even crossed the minds at
the Aero Club of Washington or the French one, and they probably don't even care. (If
they did, there'd have been lawsuits between those two and the loser would have had to use
a different URL.) I was addressing the confusion that might be created in the minds of
viewers. A simple disclaimer takes care of that.