The Arbitration and Mediation
Centre of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is calling
for an international set of rules to govern the ccTLDs, the two letter
domain names for different countries, such as .ES for Spain, .UK for United
Kingdom or .DE for Germany, to help counter "cybersquatting," the unauthorized
use of Net addresses. WIPO is concerned that the lack of international
rules promotes cybersquatting, which the UN organization has fought through
its dispute resolution policy.
WIPO hopes that more individual registrars will conform to using its
Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP is currently used to
resolve intellectual property right conflicts involving .COM, .NET, and
.ORG top-level domains, which are controlled by the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Additionally, 18 countries have
committed to the WIPO arbitration system.
Some observers observers are concerned that WIPO may be seeking to protect
large companies at the expense of small nations, and consider that the
rules each individual country has addresses their own needs and concerns.
Of the 244 countries connected to the Internet, 89 are considered unrestricted,
meaning that anyone can register domain names in those country code top
level domains.
More information:
www.wipo.int