Cybersquatting Moves Abroad

(March 25, 2000) Douglas Wolford of NSI said that, after Congress passed legislation last fall, the problem of cybersquatting moved outside of the United States. He spoke on a panel on the future of the Internet at the National Press Club on March 23.

He stated that when a government attempts to regulate an activity on the Internet, that activity may simply move to another country. This has already happened with cybersquatting -- registration of domain names that are the registered trademarks of others in order to obtain payment from the trademark holder. "That problem has now moved outside of the United States to other countries," said Douglas Wolford of Network Solutions Inc. "There are 243 other domain endings."

Ed Frankenberg, of PSI Net, made a similar argument: "There is no government that can regulate the Internet."

Frankenberg stated that capacity and bandwidth will always be growing, that server capacity will continue to grow, and servers will become increasingly globally dispersed. "There is no way to keep track of all that traffic for regulatory purposes."

Wolford and Frankenberg both participated in a panel discussion titled "The Future of the Internet" at the National Press Club in Washington DC on Thursday evening, March 23. The panel was comprised of the following persons:

"Domain names are a projector of things to come," said Wolford. "You can learn a lot from our domain name database."

He stated that registration has accelerated recently. Over 25% percent of all domain names ever registered were registered in the last quarter. He concluded from this that "there is a tidal wave of e-commerce coming."

"We see more and more small businesses signing up for domain names," said Wolford. Also, "individuals are registering a domain name because they see it as their social security number on the Internet."

He added that the trend is increasingly international. "33% of all of our customers now come from outside of the United States ... It was 10% a year and a half ago."

Japan, China, and Korea "are getting on the Internet very quickly." When he was asked about the most Internet active countries, he added Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and India to the list. He also joked about France and its 35 hour work week. "There is no Internet industry possible" in France.

He concluded with a discussion of wireless Internet access. Wolford stated that while the United States leads the world in home PC penetration, it lags behind other countries in wireless. "Wireless changes the equation completely."

Theresa Swinehart, an attorney at MCI WorldCom, offered a couple of reasons why the U.S. leads in Internet use. "If you have a procompetitive policy for the telecommunications industry, it does not cost as much to get online." Also, it is much easier to get a business license in the United States.

Martin Irvine, of Georgetown University Law Center, spoke about the effect of the Internet on education. "Education is teacher centric," said Irvine. "We are starting to see the importance of the learner experience."

"The Internet does put the learner ... at the center," said Irvine. "That is a paradigm shift."

The panel was also asked about advertising on the Internet. "I think there will always be free content," said Frankenberg. And, "you will always have proprietary content that will cost some money." He concluded that "whoever has the best content will win."

Wolford added that "advertising on the web has a very healthy future in B to C."

Kimberly Jenkins of the Internet Policy Institute talked about women. She said that "girls and women are becoming users of technology, not creators of technology." She says that "in the high schools girls are not taking the math and science courses."

Janet Thompson talked about what her agency has done for "underrepresented children."

Shannon Henry of the Washington Post moderated the program.