Sunday, February 10, 2008
Cybersquatting
Cybersquating is a complex issue in today's world; it can be argued that because of net neutrality and freedom of speech that it is legal to use someone's name for profit or make a website similar to another company to get hits. However, I believe that cybersquatting is only respectable when it is used as a form of political protest. For example, whitehouse.org would be, to me, legal because they are protesting the current administration. They are protected under the First Amendment. Cybersquatters who register domain names like stevejobs.com for the sole purpose of cashing in on a trademark or name are breaking the law. Unlike political protesters they are being manipulative and are breaking intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, as in the case for Nissan Motors, if two people share the same name whoever registers first gets the domain. The third form of cybersquating, registering a domain that is a typo of a popular website to host advertisements for money, may be unfair but I don't think it is illegal or can be protected by law. For example, the design website Gamil.com was around years before gmail.com but are often confused. If congress were to pass a law against typo cybersquaters, would they gave to go after gmail.com as well? A law against that would be too confusing to separate the profiteering websites from the legitimate ones.