Internet body says name expansion won't hurt United Nations

Internet domain name regulators played down fears by the United Nations and other international bodies that a planned expansion of possible Website addresses could cause them problems, saying safeguards were in place.

The world body, the International Monetary Fund and 26 other organizations last month wrote to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, asking it to stop addresses like ".un" or ".imf" from being seized by "cybersquatters." Cybersquatters register addresses that appear to belong to others, sometimes in the hope of selling them to those who have a more logical claim to them. "We're very sensitive to those concerns," ICANN president Rod Beckstrom told reporters, referring to the objections by international bodies. "We'll be responding to that letter." Beckstrom said that if anyone applied for a top-level domain using a trademark or service mark owned by someone else, the owner could file a complaint to a panel of intellectual property experts, who would decide who had rights to the term.