Corporate Cybersquatting

Cybersquatting is traditionally the practice of registering domain names in the hopes of one day selling the name to a corporation for large sums of money. This practice spawned a round of lawsuits by Microsoft against American and foreign networks that registered Microsoft's trademarks. The United Nations copyright agency indicates 1,823 cybersquatting complaints were reported in 2006.

But digital entrepreneurs are not the only people engaging in the cybersquatting. Splenda has been identified for registered a number of domain names against themselves - sites like splendasucks.* and splendakills.* - in order to prevent negative campaigning. If Microsoft were successful in their campaign to restrict domain registration, should corporations be permitted to register domain names to block negative publicity?

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