Squatting, Tasting, Kiting : Google? Yahoo?

The abhorrent practices of domain squatting, tasting and kiting are picking up now more than ever. Partly, thanks to the ease with which relevant software can be created to make it a viable business for bottom-feeder advertisers. Heck, some of this software (akin to pornography, I think) is available for purchase. Nobody seemse to care about the rise in these foul practices. Where are the good guys? The Wild Wild Web days of the early 90’s are gone. Everyone knows there’s gold in them thar hills. Much like the Wild West, it’s all starting to get fenced in.
Domains are taken up by pure speculators - a practice which should be banned outright. Other domains are simply used by click-ad barrons. Somethimes, it’s a combination click-ad/squatting. None of it is beneficial to the internet, to legitimate online businesses, to academia, to government, or to average netizens.
So it begs the question,“Who cares?” Or rather,“Who doesn’t care?”
ICANN, agency charged with managing this stuff, obviously doesn’t seem to care or if they do, they are clearly incapable of managing anything well. Problems have only gotten worse, solutions have become fewer, more rare and less effective.
The U.S. government? They’re not interested. They funded the creation of the internet decades ago, yet still barely understand what it is, was or can be. (just be glad they’re not taxing it) Don’t look to them for any answers, they have Iraq and an upcoming presidential election.
Other governments? Not any better.
Academia? They might hold a conference about it, maybe publish a paper, confer a degree to someone for their research. Whoo-hoo. The genie is out of the bottle, they can’t do anything to even transition us all to IPv6 still…
So who is left? Why it’s going to take a combination of internet giants (big members of W3C… ) and cooperation from governments to enact and enforce legislation.
But, Google and Yahoo! in particular, may not be that interested in ending these practices. To be sure, in these large companies, there are vocal individuals who abhore the Domain Pirates, but these companies are multi-headed beasts now with morally questionable heads that have MBA’s and sell click-ads! It remains to be seen whether they have a legitimate interest in routing out the Domain Pirates at all. As long as advertising clients ante up payments for clicks generated, the MBA’s probably won’t mind much.
What we need is real policies with teeth and industry involvement. We need an oversight organization that resolves domain conflicts and recieves reports of squatting, tasting, and kiting and shuts out those evil-doers. It needs to be made an offense which carries a fine. At the same time, domain registrars should also be held accountable and required to cooperate and enforce legitimate registrations. This should include a time limit on using a domain. Parking alone is not acceptable. Companies that specialize in cyber-squatting, like Sedo (they euphemistically call it “domain brokering”) should be banned after being punished financially. Seriously, if Kevin Mitnick was barred from accessing the internet and computers for his crimes, we can do the same to these people. They should be banned from purchasing domain namese or working in any job that does. Blacklist these people, ruin their credit and credibility.