Cybersquatting cases on the rise with .xxx domains

Updated 09:12 PM Mar 06, 2012GENEVA - Within three months of the launch of the Internet "pornography" domain ".xxx", 10 cases have been launched against Web pirates registering sites on it using the names of reputable companies and people, insiders said yesterday.



Sources at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) reported that among complainants to its dispute resolution system over .xxx - usually called dot-triple x - were banks, a jewellery business and an online shopping operation.



One individual complaint, against a site called femjoy.xxx, was brought by someone named George Streit, according to WIPO's dispute website. But the sources could not say if this was George Strait, the United States country music singer. WIPO officials could also not confirm whether the slightly different spelling was a typographical error.



WIPO director general Francis Gurry reported that cases of Web piracy, commonly called cybersquatting, rose 2.5 per cent last year involving a record 4,781 sites with nearly 90 per cent resolved in favour of complainants.



Many world-famous personalities, such as film star Tom Cruise and soccer player Wayne Rooney, and major corporations and brand names like Barclays Bank and Nestle, have in the past won cybersquatting cases in WIPO.



But these have all been brought against owners of sites registered under well-known and long-established domains such as dot-com, dot-int and dot-org, or the national suffixes identifying countries, including France's dot-fr.



Cyberquatters often register at a nominal fee using commonly known names or brands with the aim of selling them at a profit to the real name-owners. But they also use misleading sites to attract Web surfers to their own products or services.



Dot-triple x came into operation on Dec 6, 2011, after years of debate within the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), on how to control the spread of pornography on the Web and make it manageable. REUTERS