Harvard.xxx and the Race to Claim Potentially Damning Web Addresses

As the regulator of web property and domain names continues approving new web suffixes for mainstream Internet use, companies and institutions are realizing that if they want to keep their brands intact, they'd better start investing in some fresh digital real estate.

The deluge of new web address suffixes that ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is pouring onto the Internet is creating new avenues and addresses upon which web users can set up shop. So while a company like, say, Walmart owns walmart.com, walmart.net, and walmart.org, now it needs to strategically consider whether scooping up walmart.sale, walmart.store, or walmart.sucks is in its interests.

"The pressure to defensively register is tremendous," Daniel Jaffe, the executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, told Bloomberg. "Even the richest companies cannot afford to protect all of their prized brands."

Some major brands are already nipping in the bud the more potentially harmful effects of the web expansion. Harvard, for instance, invested $300 in the domain Harvard.xxx. Not because the Ivy League university is cutting the ribbon on a new pornography wing, but because it acknowledges the potential devastation of being wrapped into association with an amateur flesh site playing on the university's prestige. Such is the quandary in which established labels have been thrust in the midst of the largest domain expansion since 2004: To squat or not to squat?

If Harvard is indeed serious about protecting its image, it might bid to snatch up Harvard.sex or Harvard.porn as well. A Harvard spokesman indicated that the university might go to such lengths, "in order to protect Harvard's trademark rights." But with 1,917 suffixes already released--creating millions, if not billions, of unrealized web addresses--the entities with assets at stake face a tricky cost-benefit decision of how much of their time, money, and effort cybersquatting is worth. The practice is, after all, illegal. Pressure to devote resources to the domain race was actually a complaint raised by several companies, including Coca-Cola, Ford, Nestle, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson, in a 2011 petition to the Commerce Department.

"The expansion could create opportunities for scammers to defraud consumers online, shrink law enforcement’s ability to catch scam artists, and divert the resources of legitimate businesses into litigating and protecting their own good names," said Julie Brill, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, in addressing the Association of National Advertisers in March.

The bulk of the 93 suffixes ICANN permitted on April 5 consists of Chinese and Arabic words, which don't appear to concern major U.S. corporations. The suffixes under contention are more generic, everyday nouns like ".money," ".book," and ".weather"--all of which ICANN has been asked to take special care of in disseminating to corporate bidders.

It's not difficult to imagine conflicts or antitrust complaints arising from, say, Amazon laying claim to ".book" or ".amazon." (The online retailer has submitted bids for both.) Brazil and Peru have filed official claims with ICANN to block Amazon from winning the title to ".amazon," saying the company would "hinder the possibility of use of this domain to congregate web pages related to the population inhabiting the geographic region."

That's the sentiment driving companies, like Amazon, and institutions, like Harvard: The way the race for suffixes and domains shakes out now will affect our associations with the physical world for decades to come.