It’s not enough to be simply watching your network for viruses. A
more sinister threat may already be lurking on the Internet,
waiting to steal your reputation - the cybersquatter
Cybersquatting is the misappropriation of a business name or
image through the use of domain names or IP addresses. It literally
means stealing your business identity for profit or personal gain.
It's a growing problem too. Businesses that are new to the Net are
often confronted by yet another bill for legal expenses if it has
to pursue those who are intent on capitalising on your customer's
hard-earned, good image.
There are around 90 million people on the Web all of whom,
potentially, could be looking for your site. You can either have a
domain name that relates to your business name, or you can rely on
search engines to bring your site to your customer's attention. If
you abandon the concept of domain names and go purely down this
route, then beware! Unethical businesses can hide text within a web
page which will draw in search engine "worms" that will then place
that companies website at the top of the users search results. What
this means is that if you searched for, for example, "Sony" in a
search engine and a site and the search engines metatag software
recognised the word Sony in the code of a site, even if it is
completely unrelated to Sony. For example, a site that is owned by
a competitor, it will appear in the search results. If you are
lucky, your potential customer will realise that the site is not
what it appears, if you are even luckier, they will continue their
search. If you aren't, they may well look at the first site (if its
services are what they are looking for). Of course, you may choose
to use this method on your site to bring potential customers in
when they search for your competitors, so this may be seen as just
a rather sneaky marketing method for your site.Cybersquatters have
the potential to damage your business. The reason is simple: your
customers remember and associate you with those things they see or
hear about your company. If they visit what they presume to be your
site and see unrelated, possibly obscene, content, they may realise
it's not from your company, but might be deterred from looking for
your real site URL and visiting it. Not to mention the effect of
very similar domain names that your customers can get to by
misspelling your company name. Imagine your dismay when you have
spent thousands on your site, only to find that your main
competitor is just a few letters - or a mistyped URL - away. The
problem arose with the informal nature of Internet growth. From a
few academic and military institutions and research groups, the
culture of the Net has not been one of control. The laissez faire
attitude of users - that the Net should be a forum for freedom of
speech - has led to the Net becoming hopelessly schewed towards the
use of guidelines and a sense of fair play, rather than
legislature. The US Government sought to protect businesses from
misuse of their name or image, by law, but the intermix of
volunteer groups, governments and contractor has left a rather
woolly set of controls over the ownership of domain names, root
server systems and the allocation of IP address space.Let's take
some very obvious examples: champagne producers fiercely protect
the word champagne and will only allow it to be used in relation to
those sparkling wines that are produced using the champenoise
method. Therefore if a wine merchant or maker registered a domain
name using the word "champagne" but it wasn't entitled to use the
term, this would be considered to be using a domain name in bad
faith, or cybersquatting. Take another example, and this one is
particularly obnoxious. Imagine you want to purchase a car, you
have enough money to buy a Porsche. Consider the things you
associate with the Porsche name, slick, fast, quality and glamour.
However, let's assume you don't know the URL, so you guess it, and
instead of going for
www.porsche.com, you decide to visit
www.porschecars.com you will discover that the only
slickness is in the sales patter for the lurid adult services the
site offers. Through one domain name, the proprietor has
potentially ruined all the marketing effort that Porsche has made.
Jaguar has taken the precaution of registering both the Jaguar.com
and Jaguarcars.com names, perhaps to prevent this happening to
them. Even very obviously adult sites do not escape the trend,
Playboy had to take court action over domain names
www.playboyxxx.com and similar. Either way, the businesses
concerned have a choice of either to pay to take over the domain
name or pay out for court costs. In most cases it's cheaper to
throw £10,000 away than spend £50,000 and two years fighting for
your image, which will undoubtedly be tarnished by the court case's
ensuing publicity. Taking this to the next level, there are domain
names which actually pass comment on your company. You can find
satirical sites passing comment on the software giants, you can
even buy a domain name (subject to availability) in the name of
your favourite software guru or whatever else you fancy (within the
confines of the libel laws). The frightening thing is that this can
happen to any company, big or small, and while large companies may
have enough money to take legal action, there is little they can do
to stem the damage that comes with the cybersquatters.There are
several groups who are trying to prevent cybersquatting. WIPO
(World Intellectual Property Organisation) is concerned that the
confusion over who can claim rights to domain names, has led to
confusion amongst consumers and the belief that the Internet is not
a place to be trusted. In their April '99 report, WIPO proposed
that standard practices be enacted for all jurisdictions covering
domain name registration; that a more streamlined procedure be
brought in to tackle disputes, and that mechanisms are put in place
to prohibit the "bad faith" registration of famous marks. The WIPO
have the support of 171 member states and details of their work can
be found on their website
www.wipo.org.In the past it has
been difficult to track down illegitimate proprietors of domain
names, leaving high costs for businesses who attempt to track down
offenders in order to pursue them in the courts. Civil rights
organisations argue that this is an invasion of privacy, however,
the requirement to register contact details of certain domain names
will protect the legitimate owners of trademarks and prevent future
cybersquatting. The regulation of domain names may also protect
consumers from fraud as well as supporting the interests of
intellectual property owners. WIPO has conceded that it will create
a new TLD for non commercial, use-restricted domain names that will
not require contact details for registration to protect the freedom
of those who wish to use the Web for commercially non-damaging free
expression.The WIPO registration procedure is limited to trademark
abuse and is subject to three cumulative conditions:a domain name
which is identical or misleadingly similar to mark in which
complainant has rightsa domain name to which the holder has no
rights or legitimate interestsA domain name which has been
registered and is used in bad faith.The uniform dispute resolution
procedure will be limited to abusive registrants (cybersquatters),
and submission is mandatory by domain name applicants. This will
cut the time and money wasted waiting for court decisions and
trying a very complex set of laws, which may be subject to a mix of
regulations in the different parties' countries.Companies who chose
domain names ending in
.uk are not limited to seeking
redress in the courts if their name or image is misappropriated by
a cybersquatter. They may also appeal via Nominet, which is the
national registration and mediation service for all Internet Domain
Names ending in
.uk and their associated numeric addresses.
Nominet UK is a non-profit company, limited by guarantee, which
investigates alleged misappropriation of
.uk domain names,
and tries to find mutually acceptable resolutions to disagreements.
This is a reasonably quick process (usually concluding within 6
weeks) although the resolutions are not compulsory and do not
prevent either party from seeking legal redress.The Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was established in 1980 and is
another non-profit organisation. It has recently undergone a
rebirth after the loss of funding from the US Government. It
oversees the operations of the necessary central co-ordinating
functions of the Internet. It works on the principle of industry
self-regulation and relies on funding from Internet user
organisations. The new independent IANA organisation will have
responsibilities in three interrelated areas: Internet Protocol
(IP) addresses, domain names, and protocol parameters. This will
include the root server system and the work carried out currently
by the existing IANA. IANA aims to "preserve the central
co-ordinating functions of the global Internet for the public
good." This includes the address registries (APNIC, ARIN, RIPE),
domain name registry organisations, the Internet Architecture Board
acting for the Internet standards community, and organisations
representing users and industry. Currently, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is trying to
regulate the Internet's core technical management functions. During
the first phase of their plans, they will be trying to enact a
shared Registry system for the
.com,
.net, and
.org domains. This will mean that there will be a
registration process for companies who wish to use these suffixes.
This is to protect famous trademarks and intellectual property
holders. The problem with all of the regulatory bodies is that due
to the fact that regulation of the Net is a relatively new concept,
it's difficult to predict how effective their work will be. In
conclusion, there are many different types of protection available
to defend your business against cybersquatters, which is positive,
since many SMEs may not be able to afford to seek redress in the
courts. However, since most of the work of the governing bodies is
not statutory (and even if it were, the variance in the laws of
different countries would make it costly and time consuming to
enforce) the biggest single defence a company can have is
vigilance. Only time will tell if any of the organisations created
to protect businesses from cybersquatters will be effective. It's
likely that the technically literate cybersquatter will have other
tools (such as hidden metatags) in their pages. This will mean even
if you own the domain, you may not be able to prevent your
competitors, or those who wish to trade off the back of your
company reputation, from shouting their presence at your customers.
Whether a business chooses to fight, or pay for the rights to a
previously registered name, will depend on the amount of damage
that it is likely to receive from any consequential court case,
rather than the rights and wrongs of the matter.
Rachel
Hodgkins