Opening Pandora's Box

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

In conjunction with the explosive growth of "domain
tasting" the incidence of cybersquatting has reached
epidemic proportions -- the Microsoft Research Team in
a recent paper has analyzed what they describe as
"large-scale, systematic typo-squatting".
  
[see
ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2006-40.doc]

They note that:  

1.  "Web traffic generated by typo domains is unwanted
for many reasons. From the users' perspective, such
typo traffic often startles them with unpleasant
"hijacking" experience, followed by an annoying
barrage of pop-up and pop-under advertisements.  There
is a documented incident where a typo domain of a
popular website was serving vulnerability-exploiting
scripts to install malware."

2.  "Most seriously, many typo domains of children's
websites have been observed to redirect to or link to
adult websites, endangering Internet safety by
potentially exposing minors to harmful material."

3.  "From the business perspective, many of the
typo-squatting cases involve trademark violations. 
Worse yet, it is not uncommon to see a typo domain
displaying ads from competitors of the target-domain
owner or even negative ads against the owner. For
example, we observed that on a typo domain of a
well-known brokerage site, the first ad linked to a
law firm that pointed out the brokerage firm had been
fined millions of dollars for account violations and
offered to recover investment losses for the users." 

4.  "In other cases, some advertisers are unwillingly
paying for their ads being served on typo domains of
their own websites, because such traffic is intended
to go directly to their sites in the first place."

The Afilias organization, like the registry operators
of .com, .biz and .org, has incorporated language into
their proposed registry agreement that would allow for
typosquatting to become manifest on an unprecedented
scale.

Specifically, the language is to be found in this
section of the contract:  "Traffic Data. Nothing in
this Agreement shall preclude Registry Operator from
making commercial use of, or collecting, traffic data
regarding domain names or non-existent domain names".

Imagine what would happen if Afilias analyzed traffic
data, determined how many hits each non-existent
domain name gets, and then proceeds to sell this data
to one or more domain name speculators...

"Domain tasting" as we know it would immediately come
to an end in the .info namespace.  All the guesswork
would be replaced by the certainty of knowing exactly
which typos generated the most traffic.  The instant 
registration of vast quantities of typosquatting
domains would invariably follow as we all know that
there is no shortage of bad actors in the namespace.  

I am arguing that the internet community is not
prepared for this kind of onslought.  

Recently Microsoft filed suit against one firm for
infringement...
[http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,645194997,00.html]
 

Their suit listed 324 domain names that Microsoft
charges infringe on its Age of Empires, Halo, Hotmail,
Microsoft, MSN, Windows, Windows XP, Xbox and Xbox
Live marks. The list included a number of .info
domains:

1microsoft67.info, 
1halo2home.info, 
1microsoftexcel37.info, 
1msn59.info, 
1windowsxp36.info, 
1xbox52.info, 
ageofempiressite.info, 
halo2online.info and windowshome.info.

While a large firm like Microsoft is positioned to
protect its marks, the same cannot be said of small
businesses that are struggling to establish their own
marks.  These smaller firms oftentimes haven't the
resources (manpower or financial) to mount a defense
against the multiple instances of typosquatting that
will emerge.  

At this point in time the UDRP is not sufficiently
streamlined or cost-effective to be of real value to
this community, and this reality means that those that
will be impacted the most by the above contract
language will have no adequate means of defense.

Now imagine what will happen if the dominant
monopolist VeriSign chooses to sell a similar set of
data pertaining to the .com domain.  At the moment,
they have the right to engage in such activity.  The
ICANN Board has already blessed this initiative by
approving their contract.  But does this mean that we
have to approve the same mistake in the .info, .biz
and .org contracts?

The non-discriminatory treatment clause in the ICANN
bylaws would argue that if a right was codified for
the .com registry operator, it should also be codified
for the operators of these other three registries.

Sadly, these "rights" will still make a "wrong".  

This is an instance where the additional profits of a
monopoly should be weighed against the potential
damage that will be inflicted upon a broad community.

ICANN has Articles of Incorporation that require it to
"pursue the charitable and public purposes of
lessening the burdens of government".  Adopting
contract language that will have the effect of sending
thousands upon thousands of registrants into the
courts and into arbitration to deal with typosquatting
issues does not serve to lessen the burdens of
government -- contrariwise it increases the
governmental burden.

Afilias is advised to redraft this clause in their
contract (as are the other registries that incorporate
identical language), and the ICANN Board should
similarly review their decision with respect to the
comparable language in the .com agreement.

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