Courtesy of ICANN
The chief executive of ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, has said he believes cybersquatting will fall under the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) programme.
Chehadé was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about the new gTLD programme and the potential dangers of people rushing to register domains matching companies’ names, which could result in cybersquatting disputes.
Talking about the introduction of more than 1,000 new gTLDs, and prompted by a question about the risk of “landgrabs”, Chehadé said that the more domains there are, the less likely it is people will be “hogging” addresses in order to charge companies for them.
"If somebody took your name on ‘dot-x’, you can go get another name on ‘dot-y’ now,” he told the forum on Saturday (January 24).
"We went from 20-something top-level domains to hundreds now … We think it will actually reduce cybersquatting eventually.
"These are powerful things we did. To globalise the domain name system, to open it up, to allow for a lot of new innovation," Chehadé said.
"Innovation will flourish in a broader domain name system," he added.
The World Economic Forum ran from January 21 to 24.
ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, cybersquatting, gTLDs
