The recent NY Times Magazine artice on namespaces by James Gleick has been getting a lot of discussion around the web (Get Out of My Namespace). Including this blog (Scoping out Trademark Abuse Online). Gleick calls for more relaxed laws: "Namespaces will collide. Let them." Interestingly, the article doesn't mention that Gleick's personal website isn't www.jamesgleick.com (which isn't even registered), but the generic Around.com. Now, LawMeme's James Grimmelmann has an excellent follow-up piece on Gleick's article (Three Heretical Thoughts on Name Conflicts):

It's only a certain desire for euphony in the suggestiveness of our otherwise arbitrary marks that makes us think we need certain names for our services. I look at language and I see something adaptable and fluid. I'd rather ask our natural talent for creative wordplay to carry a little more water and cause a little less disruption by evicting incumbent registrants from their domains.