Domain Name Games.

Who owns a Web address? A business with that name? Or the first person there?

To the brokers at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., the plan seemed simple enough: Set up a Web site where clients could buy and sell stocks online, which would boost Morgan Stanley's profits and give them an edge on their Wall Street competitors. Trouble was, the brokers hadn't banked on Ivan Wong, a 17-year-old California high school senior.

The Morgan Stanley Dean Witter executives had planned to use a Web site address based on their company's initials and that clients could easily remember: msdwonline.com. Wong, however, had already registered that address, or domain name, for a site of his own, apparently dedicated to mountain biking. (Its single page shows the photo of a helmeted bicyclist and the title "Mud Sweat's Downhill World.") Wong, who lives in Hillsborough, California, just a short drive north of Silicon Valley, says he named the site for Mud Sweat and Gears, the company that sold him his mountain bike. "Me and my friends saw other sites on the Net," he says, and "wanted to start our own, with a bunch of pictures and videos and stuff."

When Morgan Stanley offered to buy the domain name for "a reasonable fee," they got a quick email reply: "Give us an offer we cannot refuse." The brokerage firm then offered $10,000 ("a nice bag of money for a guy your age," noted one of the firm's representatives). Wong, who seemed to be working closely with his father, Sau, a computer-chip engineer, declined, demanding $75,000 instead.

"As you may not be aware, some `useful' domain names can fetch as much as six figures or more," the elder Wong e-mailed Morgan Stanley. In fact, he had "registered many relevant domain names," said Wong, including some that Morgan Stanley's competitors might also like to buy.

COINCIDENCE OR NOT?

Eventually, Wong lowered his asking price to $50,000 and, to sweeten the deal, offered to throw in a second Web address that he had also registered: morganstanley-direct.com. The brokers weren't buying. Last month, their lawyers went to court in Manhattan to denounce the Wongs' "fraudulent ransom scheme." Their registration of msdwonline.com wasn't coincidence, the lawyers said, but "cybersquatting," the practice of registering Internet addresses--at $70 for two years--in hopes of selling them later at a profit.

With some companies paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for such already-registered domain names, complaints about cybersquatting have gone way beyond the courthouse. Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have passed bills to prevent the practice and to fine those who engage in it. "This legislation will make cybersquatters think twice," Representative J.C. Watts Jr. (R-Okla.) says of the House bill, which calls for a $100,000 fine on offenders. (Before either bill becomes law, both versions must go to a Senate-House conference committee so their differences can be reconciled.)

SQUATTERS FIGHT BACK

Some groups, meanwhile, fearing government intrusion in the Internet, or the bullying of small-time Internet users by big corporations, have proposed arbitration as a way to resolve cybersquatting squabbles before they get to court.

But one thing is clear: Those squabbles are occurring more often. In one recent case, a 16-year-old Canadian student angered Apple Computer Inc. when he registered the name www.appleimac.com shortly after Apple had introduced its iMac personal computer. (After hearing from Apple's lawyers, he quickly surrendered the address.) In another case, a young boy nicknamed Pokey managed to hang on to his personal Web site's domain name despite complaints from makers of Gumby and Pokey dolls. Ivan Wong and his father are hanging tough as well. "We've hired three teams of attorneys to fight this," Sau Wong says. Although their battle may be a tough one (the courts and Congress have generally shown sympathy to the plight of corporations like Morgan Stanley), they may have some allies. Not everyone sees the sale of domain names as harmful, according to law professor Pam Samuelson of the University of California at Berkeley. "One could say that cybersquatting is just another example of American ingenuity," she says. "In a sense, they're entrepreneurs."

RELATED ARTICLE: YOUR NAHE.COM HERE

Pssst! Hey kid. Wanna buy a domain name?

You don't need to be a big business to have your own dot-com or dot-org.

Anybody with $70 can register a domain name, as long as it hasn't already been taken.

Registering is easy. Type in "domain names" on your favorite search engine to find one of the hundreds of Web sites that act as brokers. Follow the on-screen directions. Choose a name with up to 26 letters, including the three-letter suffix (.com, .org, or .net). If your name is available, then you have to pay the first two years of the $35 annual registration fee.

The fee goes to Network Solutions, a private company that holds the government contract to manage the list of over 2 million domain names. Some brokers charge their own fee on top of that.

Congratulations. So now you own a domain name.

The thrill might be fleeting. To actually start a Web site, you'll need to pay a Web hosting site for disk space (minimum $35 a month), or convert your home computer into a host (about $500 start-up, then $35 a month). So unless you have a million-dollar idea, or a knack for blackmail, registering a domain name ranks as a Stupid Pet Trick, and an expensive one at that.