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.
Although there are 189 countries in the United Nations,many partly-independent and dependent territories, like theBritish-administered Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey,have registered separately.
WIPO has posted a 12-page proposal for “Best Practices” inresolving ccTLD disputes on a special Web site andis seeking comment on it by April 30.
Although there are currently some 20 million Internetaddresses registered under all systems, some estimates say thatthis will soar to some 250 million within two to three years.
Gurry said dispute resolution — in which WIPO currentlyhas some 65 percent of the market for gTLDs — could turn intoa lucrative business with 7,000 new addresses currently beingregistered every week.
Apart from WIPO, which charges $1,500 per case and does notcover its costs, according to Gurry, three companies — two inthe United States and one in Canada — offer dispute resolutionservices in generic domain squabbles.
Gurry said the concern over similar activity on thecountry-code domains was first raised by an Australiangovernment minister who found his name was registered under the.au address by a squatter.
Australia — backed among others by the European Union, theUnited States, Japan, Argentina and Brazil — asked WIPO tolaunch the new initiative, he added.
Most countries have registration under their codes — setby the U.N.’s International Standards Organization — handledby independent bodies, or firms, but some have sold this rightto companies who have extended the codes’ cover.
Examples are the Pacific coral atoll state of Tuvalu, whose.tv is used to register sites involved in television, and theformer Soviet republic of Moldova, whose .md is widely used bydoctors in the United States, where its registrar is located.