Greetings Senator Snowe,
As a fellow Black Bear, Iâm sure you can understand the importance of small businesses in the US. They are the backbone of our economy and areas like the one you represent (Orono, Bangor, Old Town, etc...) heavily rely on small businesses. Iâm sure during your time as an active Black Bear you enjoyed eating at such businesses such as Govenorâs and youâve smelled the paper mills when it rained on campus (much like I did during my time at UMaine). I used to love visiting the small shops in Orono and downtown Bangor.
Your recent bill called the âAnti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008â unfortunately will hurt many small businesses by allowing their web presence to be swallowed up by larger corporations.
Yes, the bill in itself and itâs intentions are great for consumers in the US but the major points in the bill are redundant by their respective governing bodies.
Phishing (the act of using deceptive practices to get personal information for the purpose of gain (monetary or otherwise, similar to phishing emails claiming to be from banks etcâ¦) are already against US law (fraud / theft) and the vast majority of these phishing emails and attempts are generated from people outside the US (whom are outside of US jurisdiction). Your stats show most are hosted within the USA, which might be true, but the USA is also home to the majority of consumer level web hosting companies. The law is redundant and most of the people conducting this are immune to US laws unless their country of residence allows extradition to the US for these crimes.
Cyber squatting and typo-squatting (the act of having a domain name / website confusingly similar to a trademark for the sole purpose of gain, usually monetary) is also already against ICANN and WIPO policies, each enforceable and has been many times in the past (Dell, Microsoft, and many other companies have successfully gotten domains like these in the past). A search for âWIPO casesâ will show many cases that were filed, and the company whoâs trademarks were copied or infringed upon, were able to acquire these domains. This part is also redundant.
Unfortunately, and to the point of this letter, this law allows companies to trademark terms they wish to use and then file a suit against a legitimate webmaster or domain owner. For example, say I owned a website at laptops.com (I do not, this is just an example). I spent years and a lot of money developing it into a community for laptops (support, sales, chat, reviews, etc...) and built up a very large client base and it is my primary business. A large corporation could easily trademark âlaptopsâ and then file a claim against me, even if I had the site for years before the trademark and by your law, allow them to take it (thus creating what has been termed as âreverse cyber-squattingâ or âreverse domain hijackingâ). Now, I have to close my laptops.com business while the larger company is now profiting off of the hard work I put into the site and the client base I created. As you can now see, one small business is out of business because of the bill.
This can also happen to small businesses that wish to have a web presence. They are luck enough to find a good domain but now have the potential to have it taken away from a larger corporation who decides that they would like it and only need to file a trademark to get it.
Most small businesses cannot afford the trademark fee but can afford a registration fee for a domain name while larger businesses can easily write off the trademark fee.
Iâm not proposing that you scrap the entire bill, in itâs own it is a very good idea for this but the wording needs to change and the loopholes need to be closed so legitimate domain owners and webmasters do not have to fear that their domains and websites may be taken away by a larger corporation.
What is needed is better education. The general public doesnât know what a phishing email looks like nor would they know how to report it. Iâve shown people how to look for little differences, even going as far as not clicking on links in emails but to go directly to the site (a bank, for example).
Cyber squatting is already monitored and policed by corporations and backed by ICANN and WIPO.
As-is, this bill has the potential to be devastating to the domaining and web development industry since both of those are dominated by small businesses, most of which have fewer than 15 employees but can help an economy, even a poor one, by supplying steady jobs with good incomes.
It is understandable that many in the senate do not have a full knowledge how these industries work or how much of an effect they have on the economy. Feel free to contact me and I can give you some contact information of some ethical experts in the industry who would be more than willing to share with you (or anyone else) their expertise in this field.
I am emailing this to you to ensure a quick delivery of my concerns but I will also send a hard copy of this letter to your office so you can have a physical copy of this letter.
Thank you for your time,
