CADNA Forum Draws Over 100 Participants and Challenges ICANN Governance

Coalition Hosts Brand Abuse and Internet Governance Forum in New York

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Representatives from major global brands gathered for the Online Brand Abuse and Internet Governance Forum, co-hosted by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) and its member companies American International Group, Inc. (AIG) and New York Life Insurance Company. The event took place on October 6 in lower Manhattan and focused on the major policy issues facing businesses and the online community today.

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"It's important that these conversations between brand owners take place so that policy makers, both in the United States and abroad, have a clear message from businesses about what they and their customers deal with every day," said Nao Matsukata, Senior Policy Advisor at Alston and Bird. Matsukata serves as CADNA's policy advisor and acted as a moderator for the panels of the day. "CADNA will continue to educate people on these issues and provide forums that will allow brand owners to share knowledge and collectively drive positive changes in policy."

Attendees heard from experts in digital marketing, intellectual property law and cybersecurity who discussed the gamut of issues surrounding the promotion and protection of brands online. Panelists agreed that current U.S. laws, namely the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), do not provide strong enough deterrents to prevent cybersquatting, a major issue for consumers and those that are trying to protect them – namely companies and law enforcement.

"The only way to really stop cybersquatters is to make the cybersquatting business model unprofitable," said Josh Bourne, the president of CADNA who spoke on the first panel. "And one of the best ways to do that is to make the damages under ACPA high enough that the risk of a lawsuit outweighs the monetary gain of cybersquatting."

Panelists and attendees also discussed ICANN policies that are having a significant impact on the current domain name space and commented on other policies in development. The biggest issue is the planned rollout of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), and panelists shared insight into the policy and what brand owners need to do to make an impact on such important Internet governance decisions. CADNA remains firm in its belief that the U.S. Congress must take a close look at ICANN's process and policies before the organization moves forward with this initiative, which will create significant new challenges for global consumers, businesses, and law enforcement without justification or substantial expected benefit.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the systemic domain name abuses that plague the Internet today. For more information, please visit www.cadna.org.

SOURCE Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse