The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today called for a concerted global effort to ban the bad faith registration and use of domain names, a practice commonly known as 'cybersquatting'. The call was made in a submission to the World Intellectual Property Organisation that is reviewing domain name issues.
"Cybersquatting can be a significant impediment to consumer confidence in the online world", ACCC Commissioner responsible for e-commerce issues, Dr David Cousins, said today. "Unless users know who they are dealing with, they can never be certain that their dealings will be what they anticipate. This is a problem that has been around for a number of years now, and it is time that it was solved once and for all.
"The Internet is no longer a fledgling medium that shows potential; it is now an established part of business and everyday life. Users have a reasonable expectation to participate in online commerce and other activities knowing that a particular domain name identifying the site they are visiting will take them where they expect to go, and present them with the content they expect to see".
Victims of cybersquatting can include businesses, well known people as well as ordinary users of the Internet.
Cybersquatters register a domain name in the hope that someone with a more legitimate claim to the name will pay large amounts to have it transferred for their use. Sometimes people register a name just so the owner of name in the offline 'bricks and mortar' world cannot have an online presence.
The WIPO consultation process is looking at ways of countering bad faith, misleading and abusive domain name registrations in the generic Top Level Domains such as .com, .net, and .org. An earlier WIPO consultation process led to the adoption of a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and numbers (ICANN), the world body responsible for the management of the domain name system. This has helped resolve cybersquatting disputes that involve trademarks more easily.
"The ACCC is concerned to ensure that protection is not just provided to trademark holders or famous people. Apart from any social equity issues, there is also a danger that favouring one type of domain name holder can raise competition concerns, or lead to other users being unable to register or retain their domain name of choice.
"The ACCC's approach is to prevent cybersquatting from occurring in the first instance", Dr Cousins said. "Earlier WIPO efforts tried to fix the problem after the event by focussing on dispute resolution.
The ACCC considers that:
- people registering domain names should be required to show a legitimate interest in these names
- additional generic and second-level domains should be created to better serve the needs of different types of users
- domains should be restricted from 'open slather' arrangements that allow cybersquatters to operate
- registrars should be required to keep accurate contact information on domain name holders to assist people to know who is operating a domain name
- courts or amended UDRP arbitration processes should be relied on to resolve disputes between competing legitimate claims to a domain name
"There is too much disagreement at the international level on the various kinds of rights, and too much disparity in national laws for the UDRP in its current form to adequately address such claims".