Another factor in the wave of litigation: new laws and international procedures recently put in place to crack down on domain-name cybersquatting. That's why, instead of bellowing threats, the WWF is relying on legal mediation to body-slam any URL contenders. "We're an intellectual-property company, so we have to have a vigorous antipiracy and anticounterfeiting program," explains WWF general counsel Edward L. Kaufman. "And as the law is finally catching up with the growth of the Internet, it's becoming easier to do this."
Some of the famous, though, are still reluctant to bring the legal system into their Internet disputes. "We only sued because we couldn't find the people who had registered the johntesh.com URL," says Tesh. "I sell around a million albums a year directly--many through my website--so it's important for people to be able to find me in cyberspace and not be diverted onto someone else's site. It's as if you paid your mortgage for 30 years, then were told that the house you bought wasn't yours."
Of course, the ongoing crackdown against cybersquatting and digital-copyright violation raises an interesting question: Given the Internet's global reach, what's to stop would-be pirates from setting up shop in some country with lax intellectual-property laws? Some predict the emergence of cyber-Cayman Islands as a problem in the near future, though Rheingold suggests that companies could adopt a completely different strategy, one similar to the "open source" model of software development. "Give away your intellectual property," he says. "Allow others to improve on it, and make your profit selling support and other useful add-on services."
Digital-entertainment content? For free? The new business models emerging in cyberspace actually make that deeply uncapitalist prospect a possibility--but it's doubtful the lawyers of the New Frontier would approve.
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