The New York Senate is moving to pass a bill that would disallow users to register the name of a living person as a internet domain with the purpose of selling it to that person. The bill is called “domain names cyber piracy protections act” and is championed by State Senator Betty Little.

Registering a person’s name only to sell the domain to that person is a losing cause in UDRP arbitrations. According to the web site CircleID the New York State bill is scary for a few reasons:

The first one is that the law can be twisted to violate free speech. The second one is that the law “flies in the face of established internet governance”, says the web site. The author says that if the State of New York can adopt its own law over domain names, all other states can do the same!

You can read more on this issue on Circle’s ID website