Hands up who knows what a cybersquatter is?  It is not some new Wii game where you experience toilets in China but the practice of someone wilfully registering a domain name infringing the image or trademark of another individual or company.  Sounds heavy but it is becoming more and more of an issue in football on a daily basis.

Fans want information about players and their first stop in the modern world is the internet.  Most major players (and some minor ones such as Ayden Duffy Lincoln Moorlands Railways FC goalkeeper) now have their own Wikipedia page but content on the open source encyclopedia is open to abuse to say the least.  To add that air of respectability and authenticity if you want to be a brand name you need your own glossy website.

What better example is Rio Ferdinand, with his official website, offering all sorts of content and promotions that are not exactly to do with his core business aka being a footballer.  But what would happen if someone decided to set up a “rival” site? What if someone set up a webpage with a page of links trying to make money off Rio’s name?  Well see for yourself here.  What can Rio do about this?  In a nutshell absolutely nothing.  As long as the website is not defamatory, libellous or misrepresenting Rio then it is perfectly legal.  Without going to the domain name owner and offering to buy the domain name (for a massively inflated amount of course) Rio is absolutely powerless to do anything unless the website breaches those three rules.  This is a result of domain speculation.

Domainers are people who register literally hundreds of names a day, looking for trends or opportunities before others.  Many companies have learnt the hard way by ignoring their “brands” and paying a price later as they try and recover domain names at huge costs that they should have registered themselves for a few pounds.  Think of the X-Factor (and not just Cheryl Cole).  Every year there are 12 finalists (unless you count this year’s where there was 14) and I guarantee that before the finalists are announced in August their domain names will have been registered.  Some will have been registered by Simon Cowell’s production and management company who essentially own the rights to all the artists but others by individuals who will have taken a punt on that person reaching the final at an earlier stage of the competition.  Is this illegal?

A grey area really, but if that person goes on to win the competition then that investment of £10 can make a domain name worth a fortune.  By simply registering a domain name and sitting on it there has been no problem but the rewards could be massive.

There are actually very few footballers who have their own websites.  This may be for a number of reasons.  Firstly it would require some interesting content to be shared with the public.  Players cannot “speak their mind” anymore and so what can they talk about on their website will hardly make them interesting.  There are dozens of sites that list statistical information about individual player records such as Soccerbase and Wikipedia so there is little point in listing this information.  Any marketeers worth their salt will tell you that it is irrelevant how big you are as a name, without good and relevant content you are a dead duck floating in the digital pond.  Perhaps that is why Waynerooney.com simply resolves to a blank page at the moment.

Football clubs in most cases do not want to manage this area for a player.  The whole concept of “Digital Image Rights” is often a stumbling block in transfer deals, as we saw in 2009 when Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Real Madrid and demanded that he received more than the standard 50/50 deal on his image rights after signing.  But the actual management of this online image is through his management company.  They are responsible for his online presence (including his official website) which is no more than a flash Twitter feed.  After all stars like Ronaldo cannot put up an exclusive on their website about the party they were at last night, or the fact they think Messi is a diver can they?

So what is the protocol with footballers and domain names?  Should the player themselves register their names?  A certain young rising star at West Ham for instance could still buy every major variation on his name (com, net, org, biz, info, co.uk, me) for less than they earn in an hour.  May be they will never reach the big time, but if they do and someone takes advantage of their online brand they will be the first to run to their agent shouting foul.  Amazingly a certain player who made their international debut for England in November 2010 has not registered his name at all.  What about managers?  Well a certain English manager who loves “doing a deal” should perhaps have a look at spending £25 on a couple of his own names as it appears that the .com version of his name is being squatted by a chap in the USA but amazingly only since 2008.

So what is the lesson here?  Footballers should put more of their own content up?  Do we really want to see how dull and regimented their lives are?  Twitter already gives us a brief insight into their lives although most of the bigger names (Wayne Rooney, Ronaldo and Frank Lampard) are as dull as you would expect.  However there are some gems out there.  Kevin Davies is one player who tweets with real honesty about not being able work the toaster properly, or famously on finding out he was not in Capello’s latest squad “Right, time for a beer”.  Or what about Jody Craddock?  Wolves’ centre back has grown his own painting business to an impressive size and has developed a fantastic website.

So final message to all you footballers out there.  Don’t ignore your fans around the world.  Buy a £10 domain name, get some cheap web hosting and post something profound….or on second thoughts just give the tenner to charity and save us the pain.