The internet manages to deal with more than 100 trillion hits per month on websites using 300 million domain names. For most, this process runs smoothly, with ingenious search engines, catalogues, structures, notices, gateways and myriad other methods developed to fashion a semblance of order and structure. This endogenous order reflects and parallels the emergence of principles of custom, trade and usage. With limited government input, and a willingness by altruistic individuals and organisations, a global web, in a literal sense, has materialised, impacting commerce and our social lives, entertaining us and informing us. One such participant in the process, Tim Berners-Lee, comments: ‘Happily, the Web is so huge that there’s no was any one company can dominate.’ It is a product of its users in a time of global communications technology. The development and implementation of domain names is a living testament to the way in which order emerges from a chaos of disconnected and unchoreographed minds and data.

This chapter is in three parts. The first part examines the mapping of cyberspace and the nature of domain names. Parts two and three deal with domain name disputes, with the former dealing with remedies using the courts, and the latter dealing with the compulsory Uniform Dispute Resolution policies and procedures of the domain name administrators.