Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
including trademarked terms, celebrity names, and generic terms such
as “love,” “sex,” and “money”. Name squatters then offer to transfer the
desired name registration in return for substantial sums of money. Legal
tests of these squatting cases have led to requirements that the domain
be used in a manner related to the term in order for the registration to
be considered valid, while other cases involving trademarked terms have
been prosecuted by copyright owners to every site that makes use of the
term or any derivatives across the globe, as in the case of the Disney fran-
chise and all of its related imagery, themes, names, and other content.
Recently, the expansion of root domains (such as the added .net root)
has created new pressure for trademark holders and well-recognized enti-
ties to pay for name service registration in each new domain. With the
potential for non-English-language sites now emerging, this problem
becomes much larger for international corporations that may find their
trademarked terms translate into something more common and already
registered to other entities by the time translations are completed.
Holding all sites with a particular name across all possible domains
will become increasingly difficult. This allows companies without a Web
presence to extend into previously controlled generic naming opportu-
nities, but offers a substantial cost that should be included in line-of-
business operations within a business entity interested in protecting its
name recognition.
Typos and One-Offs
A common practice for unscrupulous websites involves the registration of
commonly mistyped versions of popular website names. As one example,
the pornographic website whitehouse.com made use of the common .com
registration of the highly trafficked U.S. government website designation,
whitehouse.gov. Others have made use of transposed digits, dropped char-
acters, alternate spellings, alternate domain entries like the example pro-
vided, and many other minor variations intended to draw unwar y browsers
to sites offering services, malware, or other content to inadvertent visitors.
Organizations with lengthy, difficult-to-type, or commonly mis-
spelled domain names should examine opportunities to register these sites
as well, configuring automatic redirection to the organization's main site
so that any bookmarks will return users to the proper Web location. This
process can be costly or difficult to perform for small businesses, and is
