Thursday, February 7, 2008

Cybersquatting

After reading all three articles, I feel that all in all, cybersquatting should be illegal. To me, there does not seem to be any upside in allowing some kinds of cypersquatting to be tolerated. Websites like whitehouse.org are just trying to exploit a person's typing error in order to gain popularity. It seems to me that if a website wants to gain viewers, they should have to do it by the strength of their content, and not by riding on the coattails of another more frequented website. Other kinds of cybersquatters, such as the creator of SteveJobs.com, are doing the same thing; exploiting someone or something else in order to gain, not popularity in this case, but profit. 
It is outrageous that people can make a website where their only contact information listed is a sequence of random numbers or letters or a meaningless word such as "meow", in the case of mymorganstanleyplatnum.com. I realize that it is extremely hard for anyone to regulate the internet, because it is so widespread across the globe. However, when people and sites are being taken advantage of because of a famous name or popular website, it should definately be against the law in America. The internet has become a huge part of our society, largely because anyone can access it, and I think that is great. But, because it has grown so large, it is irresponsible to let something like cybersquatting get out of hand and for the squatters themselves to go unpunished.