MUMBAI: Website owners have only a week left to make sure that copycat sites mimicking them are not set up on a piece of cyberspace created exclusively as the home of online pornography.
The internet domain '.xxx', a suffix created to encourage a responsible approach to adult material, is set to go live next year, when it will join top-level domains like '.com' , '.net' , '.org' , and '.edu' . The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which oversees internet addresses, has set October 28 as the deadline for brands and celebrities to register their names and block their misuse in the '.xxx' domain.
Registration will ensure that a company or brand's domain is blocked in the '.xxx' domain for 10 years. Legal practitioners say several top brands, including most of Nifty 50 companies, have blocked their registered brand names or trademarks anticipating misuse, and many more are following suit. "The mechanism ensures that registered trademarks don't get associated with the adult entertainment industry. If one does not register, there is a possibility of losing trademark or trade name to a cyber squatter," said Shailesh Dalvi, a legal practitioner.
Protection of names can be done under several categories through ICANN-accredited registrars, such as Net4India, Public Domain Registry, Sign Domains, Go Daddy and Network Solutions. Category 'Sunrise B' deals with brands and trademarks.
Although open to all, most of the applications in this category are expected from celebrities and sportspersons, besides big corporates. First proposed in 2000, the domain '.xxx' faced opposition from politicians and conservative groups.
The ICANN board approved it in March this year. "Many unscrupulous elements have opened similar or similar-sounding websites with the intent of parody or spoof, or even worse, to disparage well-known brands or personalities," said Safir Anand, senior partner and head (trademarks, contractual & commercial IP) at Delhi-based law firm Anand and Anand.
Anand said the awareness level in India is low as compared to that abroad. "If clients don't register, it has the potential to harm their brand," he said referring to cyber squatting. Cyber squatting is the act of registering names of individuals or brands without their consent and benefiting from their popularity.
In August, a cyber squatter prevented singer Amy Winehouse's father from setting up a charity in his late daughter's name. Companies, too, have not been spared. A New Jerseybased firm registered the name 'bodacious-tatas .com' and used it to display what subsequent legal proceedings referred to as "sexually explicit material". The Tatas won a court injunction in 1999.
The Delhi High Court, too, ruled in favour of the Tatas but it had little effect on the porn site registered outside India. The Tatas then had to approach the World Intellectual Property Organization for redressal. The fear of being linked to questionable websites has prompted a rush of applications.
"So far, we have received over 200 applications for registration from celebrities, sports personalities and large corporate houses. The one-time payment blocks the trademark or domain's use on .xxx for 10 years," said Jasjit Sawhney, MD of Net4India, an accredited registrar of domain namess. Sawhney said a user need not provide a website or its content, since it is not a domain registration. "All one needs is a trademarked name, trademark registration number, nation code, registration date and trademark ownership."
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