 - According to the U.S. federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, cybersquatting is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. Commercial domain names (technically, you reserve a second-level domain name) are obtained from one of several registries, companies authorized to ensure that a domain name you want is unique (no one else already has it) and issue it to you if it is. However, these registries make no attempt to determine whether the domain name is one that rightfully ought to go to someone else. The principle is "First come, first served." For this reason, a number of enterprising individuals and companies have applied for and reserved domain names, either new or expired, that they think someone else will want, either now or in the future. Well-known companies or their products, sports figures and other celebrities, political candidates, and others often discover that someone else has already reserved the domain name (for example, "sammysosa.com") they would most likely want to use. Although trademark laws may offer some protection, it is often cheaper to buy the domain name from the cybersquatter than it is to sue for its use.
Many cybersquatters reserve common English words, reasoning that sooner or later someone will want to use one for their Web site. Examples of words sold by cybersquatters to companies developing significant Web sites include drugstore.com, furniture.com, gardening.com, and Internet.com. Cybersquatters may also regularly comb lists of recently expired domain names, hoping to sell back the name to a registrant who inadvertently let their domain name expire. eBay, the auction site, sometimes lists domain names for sale. Several cybersquatter companies offer their wares at their own Web sites.
Since there is an initial and yearly fee for owning a domain name, some cybersquatters reserve a long list of names and defer paying for them until forced to - preempting their use by others at no cost to themselves. The registry companies are working on this problem. Meanwhile, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which licenses the domain name registrars, is working on a process for resolving domain name disagreements outside of the regular court system.
The term derives from squatting, the practice of building some kind of home or dwelling or in some way using someone else's landed property without their permission.
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15 Mar 2002
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