As a consequence of Britain's 300,000 .eu registrations at the
time of writing, how many .co.uk or .com names will be ditched in
favour of an EU re-brand? Perhaps one or two. How many .eu names
will front new, Europe-themed websites? Some. But I bet the vast
majority will redirect traffic to another name or do nothing at
all. Like empty towels on a beach in cyberspace, most .eu names
have been reserved only to send tourists elsewhere.
This is largely because the nuisance of cybersquatting has never
gone away. Poachers can use the names to give criminal operations a
sheen of legitimacy; but more often they are used simply to attract
web traffic and profit from advertising. A site that carries
nothing but ads can make a few hundred dollars a day, provided it
draws the traffic, until such time as the brand owner recovers it.
Examples are seen in the batch of dispute rulings issued daily by
the World Intellectual Property Organisation. A typical example:
francetelekom.com has been transferred to France Telecom from
someone in Panama. The website was just a collage of ads for
telecoms services. The owner did not fight.
A brand owner can take a squatter to court, demand the return of
a name and request damages. With luck, it will also recover some of
its costs. The costs are high – five figures is common if the case
is contested – and higher still if the target is overseas. But
location is irrelevant when the target can't afford to pay.
Arbitration is a less expensive, more popular forum. The service
run by WIPO is an example, where you can evict a squatter for
$1,500 plus your lawyer's fee. (All such .eu disputes will be
handled by the Czech arbitration court, where fees start at
€1,190.) In each case, the name is transferred – but no damages are
awarded. And there's the problem. A squatter can ignore a claim,
lose the name and still make a profit. Consequently, brand owners
feel compelled to buy all variants of their own name because it is
cheaper than legal action.
New domains are swelling these portfolios of defensive
registrations. Some moderation is prudent, as Verizon learned a few
years ago. The US telco registered more than 700 Verizon-themed
names, many of them derogatory. It lost this word game when someone
registered VerizonEatsPoop.com and launched a gripe site. Germany
should have learned from Verizon. The EU allowed member states to
submit a list of banned .eu names – so Germany blacklisted
3-reich.eu, fuehrer-deutschland.eu and more. This is surely
pointless.
Perhaps it's time to change the rules, to introduce a deterrent.
Give the arbitrator discretion to make the losing party pay his
fee. It might be difficult to enforce, but it is surely better than
the status quo. Only when cybersquatting becomes unprofitable can
brand owners relax. They certainly can't afford to relax just yet:
ICANN, the domain oversight body, is currently mulling the
introduction of .tel, apparently intended to help people manage
their contact information online. No doubt a stampede for .tel
names will be misinterpreted as success.
By Struan
Robertson, Editor of OUT-LAW. This opinion piece has been
reproduced from Issue 14 of OUT-LAW
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