The internet has transformed over the years from a military project to an information highway used by the world. In the olden days, any internet geek could register Coke.com and sell it for thousands, many millions to Coke. Than in 1999, good old ICANN passed their new UDRP rule, or Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy. This policy allowed companies to repossess domains that had their trademark or copyright word(s) in them for free. However, cybersquatters who made money off this whole procedure became angry, and has been somewhat of a controversial piece for all types of consumers and businesses.

Businesses who suffered from this practice, on the flip side, enjoyed this new policy and benifited from it greatly on many cases.

Is cybersquatting ethical? Let’s look at it from both sides. Cybersquatters:

* I registered it first.
* If the company was going to be innovative, they would’ve registered it first.

Businesses:

* It’s our trademark and business.
* It’s stealing.

These points may be broad, better for disucssion, but do provide insight to both sides of the spectrum. My opinon on this legal issue, sides with the cybersquatters.

It is true, they registered it first, they own it. When Pizza Hut announced that they would be switchign to Pasta Hut in the UK, they bothered to register many variations of Pasta Hut, domains wise. That is completely their fault. Companies need to, if they are not already, realized the importance of the internet these days.

The internet is steadily increasing in popularity, ease of use, and advertising. Businesses have evolved completely out of direct advertising through newsletters, publishing and many other things just because of the internet, like website like PrimeCP.com

Newspapers and magazines have switched to online uses because they realize the potential of the internet. Less production costs, eco-friendly in a way, and other reasons such as this.

If businesses such as Pizza Hut aren’t going to recognize domains and internet as a whole, it is their loss and their fault. They have no right to steal that domain at any point in time due to their lack of concern. They can legally buy it off these cybersquatters, but nothing else. We can not allow lazy companies this gap of interest to allow them to steal domains.

Companies like Pizza Hut need to jump in the game and hire web developers to not allow these things to happen. Pizza Hut, Pasta Hut, will likely lose thousands of dollars to these others domains because of their lack of concern.