The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan said Tuesday that it has handed over a report to the Japan Network Information Center requesting a relaxation of rules for registering domain names -- the addresses for accessing pages on the Internet.
The rules "form a powerful impediment to e-commerce, adversely affecting foreign and Japanese businesses alike," the ACCJ said in the report.
The JNIC is a private nonprofit organization which receives and processes applications for "dot-jp" domain names.
The ACCJ requested a relaxation of JNIC rules that prohibit a transfer of domain names, require those registering domain names to have a Japanese address, and restrict names to one per company.
While these rules are aimed at curbing a practice known as "cybersquatting" -- where a company or individual registers a certain domain name with a view to selling it -- the ACCJ pointed out that cybersquatting is less widespread in Japan than in the United States.
Relaxed rules will benefit new and small Japanese companies as well as overseas companies currently having difficulty getting their message through to Japanese consumers, the ACCJ said.