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14 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 355 (2000)
A Domain by Any Other Name: Forging International Solutions for the Governance of Internet Domain Names

handle is hein.journals/emint14 and id is 371 raw text is: A DOMAIN BY ANY OTHER NAME: FORGING INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS FOR THE GOVERNANCE OF INTERNET DOMAIN NAMES INTRODUCTION Imagine that you are an entrepreneur that has just bought a lucrative small town mail order business by the name of 'Widgets from 123 Main Street. You move into the historic building and are ready to begin marketing, when you get an unexpected call from your postmaster. It seems your change of address form has been rejected. You're told you can't have the rights to the street address that's emblazoned on your own company's mailbox. This is the same address you printed on your new batch of product catalogs. You had also counted on the ongoing name recognition from mailings previously sent by your company's former owner. As you scratch your head in bewilderment, the voice on the phone tells you your address is now owned by a swine farmer in China; he's willing to part with it for the nominal sum of, say.., three million dollars. Sound far fetched? The above scenario is not so different from what happens on today's internet. In many ways, postal addresses are to the postal system what domain names are to the internet. And those very domain addresses are routinely hijacked and held for ransom, sometimes netting prices of as much as $3.35 million from internet-reliant companies.' Internet authorities are only beginning to address these kinds of problems. Few technological innovations have enjoyed the instant success that has been characteristic of the internet. In recent years, the number of global internet users has continued to grow at an exponential rate. Since 1 See Julia Angwin, San Jose Man Hits Gold-$3.3 Million Web Name: Compaq Pays Big for Internet Address, SAN FRANCISCO CHRON., July 28, 1998, at Al. 2 See Dan L. Burk, Trademarks along the Infobahn: a First Look at the Emerging Law of Cybermarks, 1 RICH. J.L. & TECH. 1, 1 (1995).

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