Commercial Use of Domain Names and First-come-first served Policy
Because of the use of the DNS to translate the English spelling into digits, domain names have become the identifiers to persons and businesses.
The use of the Internet as a commercial platform (through the concept of E-Commerce) has increased the demand of corporations on domain name. Companies invariably prefer to adopt their company names, product or servie trademark to be their domain names. Some people foresee that could happen and proceed to 'pirate' the domain names spelt in the names of the corporations or trade marks. This is known as 'cybersquatting'.
Domain name registration companies like Network Solutions (US) and Nominet (UK) do not take into account the nexus between the registrant and the domain names, namely whether the registrant has a lawful right over the domain name. The allocation of domain names is done on a "first-come-first-served" basis.