The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) released its first news release today, which also identifies members.
CADNA, a non-profit whose web site sparked interest a few months ago with its vague language, mission, and lack of disclosure about its backers, has released its first press release and identified its founding members.
According to the release:
The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) is announcing the launch of its national campaign against Internet fraud. A non-profit organization based in Washington D.C., CADNA is leading the way in confronting cybersquatting — the fraudulent abuse of domain name registration that threatens the future viability of Internet commerce.
The group’s membership includes multinationals like AIG, Dell, Verizon (which has sued iREIT over cybersquatting), Wyndham, Eli Lilly, Marriot, and Yahoo!.
CADNA makes a number of assertions in its release. First, it says there are over 1 million kited domains re-registered daily, bringing in $100M-$125M annually to “criminals and profiteers”. Second, it says cybersquatting is costing brand owners $1B every year as a result of diverted sales, loss of “hard earned trust”, and increased enforcement expenses.
In the release, CADNA uses the terms “profiteers”, “cybersquatters”, “assualt”, “counterfeit”, “phising”, “fraud”, and “spyware”. Clearly, very few domain name owners participate in the negative side of the business. The danger is having all domainers shoved into one bucket.
Although few disagree that domain kiting and typosquatting/cybersquatting are problems, many of these large brands would like the pendulum to swing completely to their side, which would unfairly target legitimate domain name owners. With the resources these companies have to throw at this issue, the domain name community needs to rally together to combat unfair actions that large brand holders frequently bring upon domain name owners (such as reverse domain name hijacking.) If CADNA gets Congress’ ear (and shoves money in its pocket), you never know what types of laws they’ll pass.
One way for the domain community to come together and combat any overreaching by CADNA is to support its proposition to end kiting. Very few domain owners participate in this activity, and cracking down will help legitimize the industry and give organizations like CADNA one less issue to bring to the press’ attention.
AnyKinda says
I definitely see the potential problem that this group could cause to honest domainers.