In November, after years of infighting, ICANN finally ordained seven companies as registrars for its seven newly approved top-level domains. These new global domains, known as gTLDs—.aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro—should be functional in the second quarter of this year.

Unfortunately, the new domains won't make for much merriment. Kevin Meek, a partner at Dallas-based law firm Baker Botts, says, "The big issue that my clients are worried about is another round of cybersquatting. They already own companyname.com, .net, and .org. Now they're going to have to pay someone for .biz, and dot-whatever."

But such worries seem largely unfounded because laws like the Anti cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Process (UDRP) have left corporate trademark holders well armed to defend their names across any domain. Perhaps too much so: In a recent paper, professor Milton Mueller of Syracuse University analyzed three of the four organizations empowered to arbitrate domain name disputes under the UDRP—the National Arbitration Forum, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and eResolutions. He found that "both NAF and WIPO tend to interpret the UDRP in ways that favor trademark holders over other Internet users, whereas eResolutions decisions tend to adhere more closely to the strict language of the policy." The new gTLDs represent a continuation of this sort of favoritism in that six of the seven are restricted. "The only one 'open' is .info," says Ellen Rony, coauthor of The Domain Name Handbook (R&D Books, 1998).

Just like other restricted gTLDs—.edu, .gov, .int, and .mil—the registration of most of these new domains will require documentation. The .pro domain, for example, an exclusive domain for the likes of doctors, lawyers, and accountants, will require proof of professional accreditation. The .biz domain will probably require a business license.

Further raising the bar for domain claimants, the right to register some of the new domains will be limited by a so-called sunrise provision. "A sunrise provision means that before the name is made available, trademark owners get first crack," says Rony.

An Alternate Universe

Altogether, legal and procedural limitations on the new gTLDs may mean that the thirst for new domain names will go unquenched. But they won't put an end to disputes. "Because there's an inherent collision between the way trademark law has worked and the domain name system has worked, there's no ideal solution in the short term," says Roberts. He adds that despite isolated cases of abuse, "the UDRP has been a great benefit" in resolving conflicts, as most of last summer's congressional testimony on the policy suggested.

In cases where two parties have legitimate claims to a domain name, buying out the competition has become a cost of doing business. "Companies are thinking of domain names as a commodity to be traded," says Meek. "And that's working out behind the scenes in spite of all the organizations that try to regulate this. We do domain name deals all the time."

Ironically, that sort of entrepreneurial spirit may end up causing more problems than it solves. As it turns out, the .biz domain has been available since 1996, when MCSNet founded it as an alternative to .com. The Atlantic Root Network (www.biztld.net), a Virginia-based Internet registry, took over the domain last May. The company has filed a petition for a hearing with the Department of Commerce to prevent ICANN's designated registrar, Neu Level (formerly JVTeam), from overseeing .biz addresses. "The 'Commerce Department' and ICANN are about to cause a collision in the name space, and we're trying to prevent it," says Atlantic Root Network's president Leah Gallegos, who warns that .name and .info also may be disputed.

At issue is the control of the Internet. The government would prefer a single, authoritative "root"—the Commerce Department, ICANN, or a legacy root—to identify the name servers that map domain names like SmartBusinessmag.com onto numerical IP addresses. But it's possible to operate a root of one's own that resolves the old gTLDs like .com, plus any of the more than 50 gTLDs operating that have not been blessed by ICANN, including .biz, .news, and .web. Only when these competing roots have conflicting definitions of the same domains, as might happen with .biz, is there a "collision" in the name space. In that case, Web users at different ISPs could type the same domain name and go to different sites.

But for about 95 percent of Internet users, these additional domains in the inclusive name space aren't accessible. "I refer to this as a parallel universe," says Rony. To reach this universe, you (or your ISP) have to reconfigure your computer so that it gets its domain name service from somewhere other than the default legacy root, such as the Pacific Root (see www .pacificroot.com for instructions).

But the walls between these alternate realities are breaking down. According to Bradley Thornton, chief technology officer of Joint Technologies, which runs the Pacific Root, some 5 percent of Internet traffic now uses his company's root server, including one of the largest ISPs in the United Kingdom. And he predicts more will follow because top-level domains not affiliated with ICANN aren't vulnerable to seizure under the UDRP, and because ISPs see value in offering additional domains to their clients.

Others seem to agree. "I think 'the inclusive name space' will grow. And the reason it will grow is that pressure for names is accelerating," says Rony. "If everybody is just going to get the same name that they have in .com, then we have not expanded the name space."

Rony says the international administrators of country code domains—like Germany's .de—have already threatened to abandon the ICANN root unless ICANN's fees are reduced.

Steve Dougherty, director of system vendor management at EarthLink, the second largest ISP in the country, takes a more cautious approach. "If this proves to be valuable," he says, "it's something we'd consider."