By Robert Evans
GENEVA, March 5 (Reuters) – 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
on Monday.
Sources at the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) reported that among complainants to its dispute
resolution system over .xxx — usually called dot-triple x —
were banks, a jewelry 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 U.S. country music singer. WIPO officials
could also not confirm whether the slightly different spelling
was a typographical error.
WIPO, whose Director General Francis Gurry reported on
Monday that cases of Web piracy, commonly called cybersquatting,
rose 2.5 percent last year involving a record 4,781 sites with
nearly 90 percent resolved in favor 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.
Continued…
