Even that may no longer be necessary. Last year, Congress passed a law to protect businesses from those who register company trademarks as Web addresses and then try to sell them for profit. The courts have gone a step further. And pop star Madonna is embroiled in countersuits over the use of her name on a site that for a time was linked to a pornographic site. The primary market is just as messy.
Problem is, the upstarts are killing each other.
More than 60 companies from around the world are vying for a chunk of this next big build-out of the Net. VeriSign Inc. But that doesn't begin to cover domain-name overhead. NSI's 13 supercomputers handle 1.8 billion address requests a day. I don't think people realize how expensive it is,'' says VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos. For an upstart, it's a pipe dream.