Another announcement looms from domain name regulators at ICANN, and the cybersquatters are salivating. Let’s hope this time there’s some sense behind the approach and stronger self-regulation for what will follow. The prospect of potentially thousands more top-level domain names is far from something to celebrate given the way the process is managed.
For most brands, policing their web presence is hard enough, but every time a new group of top level domain names get announced, it unleashes a frenzy of land grabbing that seems only to benefit cyber-squatters, lawyers and the domain name sellers (the latter being a group whose interests are not exactly under-represented within ICANN).
How many permutations of your brand name can you defend, and in how many markets? Trade mark protection or not, every brand eventually has to draw the line.
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