I was very pleased to read that a Maltese court has decided the first domain name case in line with the view taken by other courts in foreign jurisdictions. However, I am somewhat sceptic on the view of Mr Justice Geoffrey Valenzia that there is a need of a law specifically regulating the issue of domain names.

Such a law, precisely the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, was introduced in the United States in 1999 and it was quite a success. However, one should also note that in other countries such as Italy, attempts were made to introduce such a law but they failed miserably.

In regulating the internet, the legislator should always avoid falling into the trap of over-regulation. Unnecessary legislation could cause more problems.

After the introduction of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) by the governing body of internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), domain name disputes in courts have become rarer as it is usually preferred by the complainants to resort to the UDRP in that it is cheaper and faster.

Moreover, the issue of cybersquatting is not that current any more when it comes to Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as ".com", ".net" and ".org". On the other hand, I would point out the need of some sort of regulation in the field of our country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), the ".mt", which is under the responsibility of the Network Information Centre (Malta). The policies regulating the ".mt" ccTLD are, in my opinion, very raw and inadequate. In this case, an Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy, similar to the UDRP, would be highly recommended.