INDUSTRY REPORT
XXX: A New Frontier for Cybersquatting?
By Keith Regan
E-Commerce Times
07/05/05 5:00 AM PT
"Let the unseemly cybersquatting begin," said Karen Whitehouse, an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)-watcher and author of the Weekend Geek blog. Though intended to make it easier to filter porn sites and keep people, especially children, from stumbling across them by accident, the upshot might be to force people and companies to register domains as a defensive move.
At first glance, the proposal to create a new cyberspace red light district with the .xxx domain seems a clear win for legitimate businesses.
The domain, which has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), could essentially segregate adult-content and pornography, moving it out of the .com realm where the vast majority of legitimate commerce takes place.
However, the arrival of .xxx could also create a new set of headaches for companies with high-profiles and carefully guarded brands and trademarks if so-called cyber-squatters revive the practice of grabbing domain names and essentially holding them hostage -- and with this domain, the threat of real embarrassment from an .xxx Web site using the company's name.
