Thank you for your letter dated 9 October requesting final submissions within seven days. This is the hard copy of the fax sent to you on 13 October 2000

There are several points we would like to make regarding Leicester City Council’s complaint regarding the use of our domain name.

Point 1.

a: Leicester City Council claim "that the use of this domain name in this way is likely to lead to confusion among users of the Internet".

I have directed you to at least 6 domain names of a similar type that really have nothing to do with the theme of their sites. They are:

Domain Name: BELFASTCITYCOUNCIL.CO.UK Registered For: R & A Developments Ltd

Domain Name: BRISTOLCITYCOUNCIL.CO.UK      Registered For: Michael Pavloff

Domain Name: LEEDSCITYCOUNCIL.CO.UK Registered For: Give Way Ltd

Domain Name: PLYMOUTHCITYCOUNCIL.CO.UK Registered For: awigmore

Domain Name: SHEFFIELDCITYCOUNCIL.CO.UK       
Registered For: Give Way Ltd

Domain Name: WESTMINSTERCITYCOUNCIL.CO.UK  
Registered For: Sherlock Holmes Ltd

b: I would further like to draw your attention to

WWW.NEWLABOUR.CO.UK

Who would one imagine owns that domain and what would one think the theme of the site might be? I’ll bet that guess would be wrong.

Point 2.

a: Leicester City Council is the theme of our site and the URL.

b: If the Conservative Party can use the domain name WWW.NEWLABOUR.CO.UK which leads to a site that has nothing to do with the URL then I hope that you can see that we are being very open, reasonable and honest about the theme and content of our site.

c: We do not believe that the domain name is being used in a manner likely to cause confusion to internet users.

d: We have given examples of sites that really do cause confusion and mislead users as a benchmark to measure us against.

Point 3.

a: Surfers may well expect to find information about LCC because of our clear domain name... and they can.

b: If users then decide they want the government site we offer "extensive hyperlinks" out to it.

c: Also, all official council sites end with gov.uk which means leicestercitycouncil.co.uk cannot possibly be an official site.

Point 4.

On the 1 June 2000 LCC wrote "the Council notes the extensive disclaimers and hyperlinks included on the website". Do they still feel it is confusing? Where does their concern about the use of our domain name really lie?

Point 5.

We feel this issue is a matter of free speech and the democratic process. We also feel that LCC is trying to restrict these processes as they are unhappy about us drawing attention to areas they would rather not deal with.

Point 6.

We do not really feel that much of an attempt has been made to resolve this issue through mediation. We are very concerned by the process so far. We are particularly concerned that not all communications between LCC and Nominet have been made available to us and therefore we have been unable to comment in full to their submissions. We would appreciate copies of any such correspondence so that we may respond more completely before any further decisions are made.

Point 7.

We have made submissions to you and are fully available to discuss them with you and LCC. No discussion or answers to our points have been forthcoming so we’re not quite sure what sort of mediation that actually constitutes. Surely mediation involves some amount of discussion around issues raised - which is what we have been attempting to do. It takes two, or sometimes three, to Tango.