By Shane Thacker

Elizabeth B. Echols has been named executive director of the Electronic Commerce Working Group, an interagency task force that coordinates electronic commerce issues for the Clinton administration, the New York Times reports.

"Obviously, the different agencies will bring their expertise and mandates to the table," Echols told the Times. "We want to make sure we have one coordinated, cohesive policy."

Upcoming issues for the task force include developing and refining policies on broadband access to the Internet, consumer protection in e-commerce transactions, Internet taxes and online pornography, the Times reports.

The president's 1997 framework for electronic commerce -- which favors allowing the industry to take the lead in regulating important issues concerning the Internet -- still holds true, Echols told the Times.

However, while she does not favor passing new laws to regulate the Internet, it is a good idea for the task force to examine how current laws apply to business conducted on the Internet, Echols told the Times.

The Internet's domain naming system produced some related news this week, as the courts rule that companies do not always have a right to their domain names and the nonprofit put in charge of the system goes looking for money to survive.

(Domain names are registered Internet addresses. For instance, www.pj.org is the domain name for PNN Online. An organization's domain name is most often found in its Web address and/or e-mail addresses.)

"Cybersquatting" and trademarked names are at the center of a ruling by a federal appeals court, the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reports.

Cybersquatting is the practice of registering companies' trademarked names as Internet domain names in the hopes of selling the name back to the company for a profit. If someone had registered microsoft.com before Microsoft Corp. did, then tried to sell the name to the corporation, they would have been cybersquatting. As a general rule, registering someone else's trademarked name has not been looked upon favorably by the courts, the Mercury News reports. Following this precedent, a court order took the domain names avery.net and dennison.net away from a Canadian businessman -- who had registered them to sell an e-mail service -- and turned them over to Avery Dennison, the company.

However, on Monday the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the original ruling, arguing that individuals registering domain names for "innocent" purposes were not cybersquatters and could not be deprived of the addresses.

The appeals court ruling means that companies may not automatically be able to get their names from someone who has registered them, the Mercury News reports. The burden of proof will now be on the company to show that the name was registered with the intent of selling it.

However, the court left open the possibility that certain names might be "famous" enough to be assumed to belong to a company. It said that avery.net and dennison.net did not make that cut, since Avery and Dennison are common names, the Mercury News reports.

In another Internet-related story, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit managed by the U.S. government and charged with overseeing domain name registration, is looking for $2 million in loans, Reuters News Service reports.

The organization -- which was intended to be financially self-sufficient -- has already received loans of $500,000 from Internet service provider MCI Worldcom and $150,000 from networking equipment maker Cisco Systems.

ICANN is looking for loans to meet expenses until permanent funding can be arranged, Reuters reports. It is now in talks with other corporations, ICANN told Reuters.

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Shane Thacker can be reached at
shanethack@mindspring.com