Cybersquatting: A Case of First Come/First Served or Piracy on the Cyber-Seas?

Abstract

In the realm of domain name services, close doesn't count. As electronic commerce grows in importance, an increasing number of established companies scramble to create an Internet presence. However, although most companies have carefully registered their company names, name brands, and trademarks, many have been surprised to find a “cybersquatter” already owns the URL (uniform resource locator) that customers would naturally associate with the firm. Probably the most outrageous example of the problem is demonstrated by the now-famous www.whitehouse.com incident. While savvy Web users know that “.gov” is the domain for government Web sites, hundreds of thousands of users have been surprised to find a pornographic Web site where they expected information on the presidency, especially those using the reference from a very popular introductory information systems textbook. Oddly enough, the owners of whitehouse.com are not cybersquatters in the absolute sense, but are only pranksters with an odd sense of humor. True cybersquatters are individuals or groups that have sought to register domain names of, or similar to, the names and trademarks of large corporations, with the purpose of selling the domain names to the corporations at considerable profit.