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July 22, 2011

Major Problems Associated with the ICANN Domain Name Move

Since the launch of .com’s in 1984, the Internet has not seen a shake-up at the same magnitude that could occur if ICANN frees up specific domain names. The floodgates of online fraud and cybersquatting could be disastrous. This began in May 2011 when Apple purchased the domain name iCloud.com and Amazon bought domain names A.Co, Z.co, K.co and Cloud.co from a registry firm based in Columbia.

Trademarking Issues

As a result, if corporate entities are required to contend with the millions of online variations of their names and trademarks, the confusion could be unparalleled. This could lead to previous issues of patent and trademarking with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing body behind domain name registration.

Protection of Business Domain Names

There are currently a total of 22 top-level domains which include the most popular .com and .net, in addition to 225 country domains such as .us, .uk, .fr and .it. This allows for an almost unlimited number of domain name options. Domain name experts state that midsized business will soon be unable to protect their domain names because other will be able to register a small piece of it using a different extension.

Variety of Name Combinations at High Cost

This could be because the large number of name combinations (in the thousands or more) comes with a high price tag that many medium sized organizations cannot afford. At the same time, experts expect large corporations to make aggressive moves to secure all domain names related to the company.

The First Wave of Litigation

When the .com-boom first emerged, many popular names such as Tata were scooped up by Internet enthusiasts. The group that purchased the name had to engage in a variety of legal steps to release 10 contested domain names from a squatter which include ratantata.com and tatapowerco.com. The potential freeing up of Internet domain names most certainly will result in a large amount of litigation, similar to what occurred during the .com surge over a decade ago.

Concerns of Phishing

Another major issue is phishing which could trigger cyber criminals to scoop up newly released domain names that look similar to a legitimate company website but could acquire a user’s information or launch a Trojan attack. There is nothing good about releasing these domain names so hopefully ICANN has considered all the factors before they take such actions.

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