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Anchor: What’s your domain name? More than 8 million American individuals and businesses already have one. Actor Kelsey Grammar bought one to help polish his image last year, and presidential hopeful George W. Bush owns over 50 of them. Well, what is a domain name and should you buy one? Bonita Carol logs into the Domain Name Game.
   Bonita Carol, correspondent: Newsman Dan Rather does not own danrather, com. David Letterman has nothing to do with davidletterman. com. And log on to barby’s playpen, corn, and you’ll find anything but a child’s doll. As celebrities and businesses have found out, if you don’t buy and control your own domain name on the Internet, chances are someone else will. Mikki Barry, Domain Name Rights Coalition: Protecting one’s name is an interesting concept on the Internet because it’s completely different from any kind of physical medium.
Bonita Carol: It’s a concept that what Federal government felt was so important that it sanctioned a few businesses to officially start selling names. Getting your own domain name is easy. It can take as little as five minutes. Just log on to one of the many registration sites like industrial leader networksolution.com, and put your desired Web name, and if it’s not taken, punch in your credit card number and it’s yours. The cost is $ 70 for the first-two-year commitment, and $ 35 for each additional year. Network Solutions’ CFO Robert Korzeniewsky says the number of domain names it sells is exploding.
Robert Korzeniewsky, Network Solutions: In the second quarter alone we had 1.2 million new registrations, so new registration growth we’ve seen you know, grows by more than triple digits.
Bonita Carol: The fast growth is making it difficult for late comers to buy into the name game. Chances are if you want a common name like books, corn or Johnsmith.com, it’s already taken. This means you’re gonna have to get more creative and maybe even change the name of your business to match the available domain name. Since names are selling out so fast, the resell market is skyrocketing. Hundreds of names are up for auction on sites like Ebay and Amazon. And some companies are making a lot of money by buying and selling names just like real estate.
Jeff Tinsley, GreatDomains.com: Licensed real estate brokers overlook every transaction and the transfer procedures are very similar to a typical property transaction including the contracts that are used and the opening of escrow.
Bonita Carol: GreatDomains.com, the leading reseller of domain names, recently managed to sell a drugs, com. The domain name bought five years ago for $ 70 sold in August for over $800, 000 to a technology company Link Exchange. Since no one regulates who can own what name, many people are running into problems. For example, the 12-year owner of pokey, org was recently accused of trademark infringement by the manufacturer of Gumby and Pokey action figures, even though the site never mentioned the clay animation characters. And the owner of Veronica. org, who used the site to display pictures of his new baby named Veronica, was told to stop by the maker of Archie Comics.
Mikki Barry: In both of those cases the owner of the domain name went to the Internet, and the outroar from everyone was just incredible. Both large companies backed down.
Bonita Carol: But not everyone is so lucky. A nursery school teacher who owned Rugrats.com as a tribute to her students’ pet rats was court-ordered to turn the Web site over to Via. com, owner of a highly popular Rug Rats cartoon series. Most of the time the domain name holder, especially if it is a small business, doesn’t have access to legal counsel, and doesn’t have the funds that are necessary to fight this type of thing. So they will cave in and give the domain name to the trademark holder. As competition grows, it may be that the person or business with the quickest mouse-click wins the domain name game.