Domain Name Registrars Can ‘Do a Lot’ to Reduce Infringement in New gTLDs, Says Espinel
The NTIA will review the applicants for the new generic top-level domains (gTLD) once ICANN closes the application process, and there then will be “an opportunity … to raise objections to certain names if they exist,” said Victoria Espinel, U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator. She was responding to questions by lawmakers at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday about what the U.S. is doing to ensure that the new TLDs don’t become breeding grounds for rogue sites.
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Espinel said her office is aware of the concerns about the new gTLDs and is talking to rights holders about them. But “this is an area where domain name registrars can do a lot,” she said. “It is very important to have the domain name registrar community actively engaged in and thinking cooperatively with us on what they can do on a voluntary basis to try to reduce infringement.” It’s “critical” for domain name registrars not just in the U.S. but “around the world” to act to combat infringement, she said.
The Statement of Best Practices put out by the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, to combat online piracy and counterfeiting (WID May 4 p7), was a welcome development, she said. “We would like to continue working with the ad brokers, the technology companies that actually place the ads, to develop a set of voluntary best practices,” she said. “Those companies know how the system works [and] if they are committed to working with us I think we can make some real headway there,” Espinel said. Domain name registrars and “cyberlockers” -- services such as Megaupload, whose principals have been indicted in the U.S. -- also can take “voluntary steps to address infringements,” she said.
Lawmakers were quick to emphasize that protecting IP need not harm broader goals of Internet freedom. “We are all committed to an open Internet, but that doesn’t mean giving a free pass to rogue foreign websites,” many of which have ties to organized crime and “serve no purpose but to steal the hard work of American writers and musicians and creators,” said Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Microprocessor counterfeiting in particular has become “extremely sophisticated,” he said.
Senate IP efforts must be careful not to “limit freedom of expression, inhibit innovation, impair privacy and security and undermine the Internet,” said Ranking Member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa: But some people think “nothing should be done” to better protect IP because it might interfere with communication rights, and “we can’t tolerate theft.” Grassley said IP infringement is not only a “serious consumer protection issue” but also one of national security: The U.S. military has been “duped into buying” harmful and “subpar” counterfeit goods, the subject of a bill approved by the committee.
The U.S. scored a coup against a counterfeit drug website last year, with the Justice Department securing a conviction of a Chinese national who ran the site -- but that was only because the site was registered in the U.S., Leahy said. He asked Espinel to work with the committee to close that “loophole” and better target foreign-registered sites.
Espinel conceded, however, that “clearly for sites that are based overseas our law enforcement jurisdiction is limited.” The U.S. is pressing foreign law enforcement to “do more,” she said, by “trying to ensure that we have more U.S. personnel on the ground to build relationship with law enforcement overseas.” It is also using “very high level diplomatic pressure to encourage countries to do more,” she said. “But we know realistically that there are certain countries where it is going to be very difficult to have robust law enforcement cooperation for many, many years."
As for intellectual property theft by China, Espinel said that during the Strategic and Economic Dialog in Beijing last week China committed for the first time to increase enforcement of trade secret theft. China also committed to “create an environment” to help increase the “sales of legitimate IP-intensive products,” she said.