False advertisement in misspelled domain names

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17762760/

Companies are fighting back people who register domains that are misspellings of popular sites. Neiman Marcus is starting to target the companies themselves, rather than the individuals. The article states that individuals in the companies, rather than the company itself, were the ones who used the domain registering system illegally. Targeting the companies who register the domains and offer the services is a way to skip out on the individuals and get all the offenders. Already Microsoft is following and suing another company for the same reason. More cases are likely to follow for other popular websites.

Anyone who has browsed the web is likely to have come across one of these fake sites designed to advertise. I believe that all these sites are in violation of copyright law. They all are designed to trick people looking for a specific company or product into a site that makes money solely on this deception. There is no substance on any of these websites that could be considered to be a different type of business, thus making it a legal use, i.e. old navy clothing store and old navy model airplane store.

People who are looking for Neiman Marcus's site want to be directed to that site and should be able to be directed without false advertisement. If a site such as "NeimuMarcus.com " was the personal web page or a person of that name, then there would be an argument for the legitimacy of the website. However since the premise of the site is purely to advertise via deception, this is nothing more than glorified spam.