‘WWW: World Wide Web or Wild Wild West?* fixing the fenceposts on the final frontier: Domain names,intellectual property paradigms and current disputes over the governance of the internet

This paper considers the current dispute over the appropriate legal relationship between domain names and trademarks in relation to present technical, political and economic agendas underlying various parties’ claims to Internet governance in this context. The mutual constitution of the Internet by its history and architecture has given rise to a huge range of interest groups with widely varying cultures, values and priorities. This paper contends that both the legal issues surrounding intellectual property rights in domain names and the arguments over the appropriateness of the proposed structures which have been recommended to govern domain name allocation by groups such as CORE and the US Dept of Commerce must be evaluated in this context.