The owners of domain names who have not paid their registration fee could find their corner of the internet sold off to the highest bidder.

Network Solutions, a domain name registrar, has told the owners of names yet to pay renewal or registration fees that they have only a few days left to hand over the cash. If the money is not forthcoming it says it will auction the names, with thousands expected to come under the hammer. Domain names are lucrative pieces of virtual real estate and Network Solutions looks likely to make far more from the auction than the $35 per year it usually charges. If companies do not settle their debts before 5 July, they would be forced into an open auction for their own name. If they have been using the name for a long time, they could have to pay huge sums just to stay in business. Consumers who have bought domain names have to pay with credit cards, but many businesses take ownership of a name on credit rather than hand over any cash. As a result many have yet to pay to register their domain. In December last year the web address business.com was sold for $7.5m. The auction has been condemned by Network Solutions' competitors.They say NSI is trying to cash in on its domain name dominance. The actions of Network Solutions have been reported to the the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that has taken over management of the domain name system. Until last year Network Solutions was the only company that could register domain names. Now there are hundreds of companies willing to register domain names on the internet ending .com, .org and .net. Network Solutions remains the biggest and has handled more than 10 million registrations since 1993. The scrap over domain names looks set to intensify in the next few weeks as ICANN unveils new top level domains. At the moment the only top level domains are .com, .net, .org, .edu, .int, .mil, and .gov. Below these are country domains such as .uk and .fr.