2007年3月15日 虚拟空间的域名圈地行动

Cybersquatting is an old problem that has come back to haunt business in a new form.

最初，一些有商业眼光的个人借用一些商标名，注册了诸如burgerking.com和virgin.com等网站，再将它们转售给商标所有者，以期从中牟取暴利。1999年，一些国家通过了相关法律，意在打击这种行为。

Laws passed in 1999 were meant to stamp out the practice, whereby enterprising individuals would register trademarked names such as burgerking.com and virgin.com and sell them back to the trademark owners for extortionate sums.

然而，域名抢注行为并没有消失。安永实律师事务所(Eversheds)知识产权律师安东尼?戈尔德(Anthony Gold)表示，域名抢注者变得更加聪明，他们在寻找一些新的途径，以绕过法律规定。

Cybersquatting did not go away, however. Cybersquatters have just become smarter, says Anthony Gold, intellectual property lawyer at Eversheds, and are finding new ways to get around the laws.

例如，域名抢注者使用隐私服务，隐藏网站所有者的详细资料，以此掩饰他们的行踪。 For example, cybersquatters can cover their tracks by using privacy services that hide the details of who owns a website.

因此，要对他们提起诉讼变得更为复杂。在去年8月的一起诉讼中，微软(Microsoft)不得不申请法庭传票，找出它声称侵犯其商标权的217个网站的所有者。

This makes suing them more complicated. In a lawsuit launched last August, Microsoft had to get court subpoenas to discover the owners of 217 websites it claimed were infringing its trademark.

在.com和.net等传统热门域名以外，人们又创造了.mobi、.eu和.asia等新的“顶级域名”，使得新的域名大量出现，为一些人带来了牟利机会。

Some are taking advantage of the sheer volume of new domain names on offer, as new “top-level domains” such as .mobi, .eu and .asia, come into existence alongside the old favourites .com and .net.

Addleshaw Goddard律师事务所知识产权律师大卫?恩格尔(David Engel)表示 “除.com和.net等普通顶级域名以外，还有240多个国家域名可供注册。即使只想注册自己的基本商标，一家大公司也很可能需要在全球注册3000至4000个域名。”

“There are more than 240 national registries in addition to the generic top-level domains such as .com and .net. Even if you want to register only your basic brands, a big company would easily have to register 3,000 to 4,000 domain names across the world,”said David Engel, intellectual property lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard.

各个公司越来越难监控所有可注册的域名种类。许多公司正求助英国NetNames等专业公司。NetNames向联合利华(Unilever)、英国航空(British Airways)和希尔顿集团(Hilton Group)等公司提供域名组合管理服务。

Companies are increasingly struggling to police all the domain name variants available. Many are turning to specialists such as UK-based NetNames, which offers domain portfolio management services to companies such as Unilever, British Airways and Hilton Group.

提起诉讼的成本可能很昂贵，甚至申请仲裁也会代价不菲。仲裁的费用约为1000至2000英镑（合1900至3800美元），而打官司的费用则可能高达1万英镑。尽管索尼(Sony)、维珍(Virgin)和希尔顿集团等一些公司已明确表示，自己决不会付钱买回域名，但对其它公司来说，如果域名抢注者的要价不太离谱，买回自己的域名可能是更简单的选择，费用也更低。

Going through the courts and even arbitration can be costly. Arbitration costs about ￡1,000-￡2,000, ($1,900-$3,800), with a court case likely to cost as much as ￡10,000. Although some companies such as Sony, Virgin and Hilton Group have made a point of never paying to get back domain names, for others it is simpler and cheaper to pay up when cybersquatters are not asking for exorbitant sums.

域名抢注者还开始使用“蓄意错误拼写”(typosquatting)等新战术，即他们注册的域名是某个知名品牌的错误拼写，例如hotmai.com或myspac.com。这些网页吸引了大量的访问者，而他们主要是一些打字不太熟练的人。

Cybersquatters are turning to new tactics such as “typosquatting”, where they register a domain name that is a misspelling of a popular brand – such as hotmai.com or myspac.com. These pages get a lot of traffic from less than perfect typists.

打字错误是一个很大的灰色地带，很难通过法庭来起诉抢注者。

Some typos present enough of a grey area to make them difficult to pursue the perpetrators through the courts.

例如，微软曾被迫与加拿大一个名叫迈克?罗(Mike Rowe)的学生达成庭外和解，这位学生注册了MikeRoweSoft.com作为自己的域名。

Microsoft was, for example, forced to settle a case with Canadian student Mike Rowe, who registered MikeRoweSoft.com as his domain name.

但最近，域名抢注卷土重来之势如此凶猛，关键原因在于“域名圈地”（买卖域名赚钱）已成为一个非常庞大的业务。

But the key reason the cybersquatting has made such as strong comeback recently is that “domaining” – buying, selling and making money from domain names – has become a very big business.

这种交易大多是完全合法的。买卖的那些域名并不从属某个商标，而是像diamonds.com或sex.com那样的普通域名。

Most of this trade is perfectly legal. The names bought and sold are not subject to trademark, but generic names such as diamonds.com or sex.com.

但在这种热潮中，大量注册商标也难免遭殃。

But a lot of trademarked names are also getting caught in the frenzy.

由于谷歌(Google)的Adsense和Yahoo Publisher Network等广告程序的问世，任何互联网网页现在都能赚钱。网页所有者可以在他们的网页上放置广告，每当访问者点击一次广告，他们就可以得到一小笔收入。

Thanks to advertising programmes such as Google’s Adsense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, any internet page can now make money. Owners of web pages can place adverts on them and get paid small sums each time a visitor clicks on one of the ads.

对那些不愿自己建立广告的公司来说，Sedo.com和NameDrive.com等专业的“域名停放”(domain parking)公司可以帮它们做到这点，条件是从其收入中提取一定比例的费用。

For those unwilling to set up the advertisements themselves, specialist “domain parking” companies such as Sedo.com and NameDrive.com, can organise this for a share of revenues.

而当初仅花几美元注册的域名，有的能以数百万美元的价格转售出去。据报道，去年Sex.com以1200万美元售出，diamond.com的易手价格是750万美元，而vodka.com是300万美元。

Names that cost just a few dollars to register can be resold for millions. Sex.com is reported to have been sold for $12m last year, with diamond.com going for $7.5m and vodka.com selling for $3m.

Sedo.com等公司提供类似于Ebay的拍卖网站，来从事这些域名的买卖，而围绕“域名捡漏(dropcatching)”，现已形成了一个完整的行业。所谓域名捡漏，就是抢占一个已经失效的流行域名。

Companies such as Sedo.com offer Ebay-like auction sites for buying and selling these names, and a whole industry has developed around “dropcatching”, or getting hold of a popular name that has been allowed to lapse.

不过，域名所有者觉得，一些公司不公平地欺压他们，迫使他们放弃与这些公司的商标无关的域名。许多人觉得，仲裁程序偏向大公司，而不是个人。

Domainers in turn feel that some companies unfairly bully them to relinquish names that should not be subject to trademark. Many feel arbitration proceedings favour large companies over individuals.

微软针对域名抢注问题发起的新一轮诉讼，可能会进一步加剧这种争议。

Microsof’s new rush of lawsuits may inflame this controversy further still