In a report from Reuters today, however, ICANN President Rod Beckstrom sought to re-assure the organizations that they’re “very sensitive to those concerns” and that they’d be “responding to that letter.” He adds, “If (those who registered the domain) have no rights to that term, then you’re in a very good position. So you don’t need to apply for the term for a top-level domain because you’re concerned that someone who has no rights might apply.”

Beckstrom might as well have just come out and told the U.N. to keep their shirt on.

His mildly insouciant rebuttal of the concerns isn’t completely invalid. In the same Reuters article, Beckstrom points out that on top of the likely preventive price tag of $185,000 to register a top-level domain, additional annual fees due to ICANN will inflate the cost of owning the domain name upwards of $400,000 over the first 10 years. Cybersquatting a web domain in order to get paid out a nice ransom from governments or businesses hardly seems like even a little bit of fun when you’ll be bleeding tons of money just to hold on to the top-level domain. Cybersquatters are opportunists that like to register these domain names in order to make profits, not simply cover the astronomical cost of registering the domain in the first place.

The U.N, IMF, other international organizations and all the businesses freaking out about the possibility of someone registering a site with their likeness really need to get to know they’re neighborhood scam artists a little better. Think more Wile E. Coyote and less Lex Luthor.

Videos of the speech have been uploaded to YouTube:

This was the first time the President has addressed the UN as the 44th President of the United states. His entire speech is available at WhiteHouse.gov here.

The topic is currently in the top ten on Google’s Hot Trends list, but number 2, second to only John Phillips, is "qaddafi". You can also find footage of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s speech at the UN General Assembly popping up online.

The U.N. agency based in Geneva, received 2,156 complaints alleging abusive registration trademarks on the Internet representing an 18 percent increase over 2006 and a 48 percent increase over 2005.

"These increases confirm that ‘cybersquatting’ remains a significant issue for rights holders," said Mr. Francis Gurry, WIPO Deputy Director General, who oversees WIPO’s dispute resolution work, noting that a number of developments in the DNS are also cause for concern from the perspective of intellectual property holders, as well as Internet users generally.

The majority of complaints came from pharmaceuticals, banking, and Internet, retail and entertainment industries.  Pharmaceutical makers remained the top filers due to "numerous permutations of protected names registered for web sites offering or linking to online sales of medications and drugs," WIPO said.

WIPO parties settled a quarter of all cases without a panel decision. Of the remainder, 85 percent of the panel decisions ordered the transfer of the domain names in question to the complainant and 15 percent of the complaints were denied, leaving the names in the possession of the registration holder.

Most of the complaints came from the U.S., France and Britain, while respondents were mainly in China, Britain and the U.S.