The Interactive Advertising Bureau warned on Monday that a plan to assign new domain names would "cause incalculable financial damage to brand owners." The IAB says it is concerned that outside
companies will be able to obtain domain names that end in trademarked terms, like .coke, .verizon or .facebook.
Such a naming system "would come at an extremely high cost to publishers and
advertisers, and would also offer 'cyber squatters' an opportunity to harm a brand's integrity and/or profit greatly from their bad-faith domain registrations," the IAB says. The Association of
National Advertisers also opposes the plan.
--Wendy Davis