ABSTRACT
Throughout history territorial disputes have led to countless altercations ranging from arguments between neighbors to global wars. Today the same sorts of problems proliferate in cyberspace. As the number of Internet addresses has mushroomed over the years, so have conflicts over the use of domain names and Web addresses. Problems have escalated to the extent that the federal government stepped in with the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999, or ACPA, which seeks to protect trademark owners. Inventive cybersquatters carry out their nefarious deeds in several ways. If an entity registers a domain, achieves recognition for that legitimate site, and then fails to renew the registration, squatters often jump in and register the name for themselves. That is usually the reason why a computer user may correctly key in a URL, or return to a previously marked site, only to find pornographic or otherwise unwanted pages displayed. Another trick is to deliberately misspell someone else’s address, using an approximation so close as to draw in unwitting Web searchers. Changing the suffix or domain name of a well-known location is yet another common practice. The most famous example of this ploy is the infamous Whitehouse address in which whitehouse. com leads to a porn site when keyed in rather than the official whitehouse.gov address. To complicate this particular instance even more, whitehouse.org yields a satirical site which, while not as offensive as the pornographic location, is still not the destination intended by anyone seeking accurate information.
