Defendant, the private company that has handled domain name registrations since 1993, is entitled to antitrust immunity under the federal instrumentality doctrine. The court held that under the Cooperative Agreement between NSI and the National Science Foundation, NSI was acting in compliance with clearly articulated government policies or programs and was therefore immunized from antitrust liability to the same extent as the government entity. The court also held that top-level domain names are not expressive speech, and therefore not entitled to first amendment protection. Plaintiff sought to be the registrar of approximately 530 additional top-level domain names, such as ".forpresident, .formayor, and .computers".
Keywords: antitrust, domain names, free speech, media
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