U.N. Agency Pushes for New Net Domain Rules

G E N E V A -- The world’s intellectualproperty watchdog is pushing for a global agreement on countrycodes on the Internet to help counter “cybersquatting,” theunauthorized use of Net addresses, a top official saidWednesday.

Francis Gurry, the World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO) assistant director-general, told a news conference theeffort was aimed at preventing people using different countrycodes, or ccTLDs, to corner sites, often of prominent figuresor businesses.

Once they have achieved registration, the so-calledcybersquatters often attempt to sell their sites at high costto people or firms with a more obvious right to them.

“We are trying to show registration bodies for the ccTLDsthat it is in their interests to agree to a uniform disputeresolution procedure,” Gurry said. “So far, only 18 have comeon board out of a total of 244.”

Gurry was speaking after a one-day conference on the issueat WIPO’s Geneva headquarters which was attended by firmsinvolved in electronic commerce, government representatives,lawyers and Internet enthusiasts from around the world.

The agency already handles most dispute resolution for theWeb’s other major address system — the generic top-leveldomain names, or gTLD’s, like .com, .org, .net and .int —under which it has settled over 200 cybersquat cases.

Among these resolved in online hearings and adjudicationsby experts appointed by the U.N. agency are cases brought byfilm stars, including actress Julia Roberts, against sitesregistered using their name. (See related stories in right column.)

But this does not extend to the ccTLDs — like .fr forFrance, .jp for Japan, .cn for China and .ch for Switzerland —which specialists say are already beginning to catch up innumber with the long-dominant generic addresses.

Abuses Likely to Increase

Gurry said this process — and the potential for abuse —will speed up when registering addresses in alphabets otherthan Roman, like Russian and Arabic, or in other writingsystems like Chinese, Japanese and Korean.