Why does the Cabinet of Ministers need domains with the name "Euro 2012"?

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has initiated an increase in fines for violations of intellectual property rights by UEFA and partners of the 2012 European Football Championship.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has submitted a bill "On Intellectual Property Rights and the Reputation of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)" to parliament. This bill proposes establishing substantial fines for those who infringe copyright by illegally using Euro materials.

Thus, it is proposed to set the maximum fine for the illegal use of UEFA logos at 85,000 hryvnias. For illegally copying football match recordings and distributing them online, users and resource owners could face imprisonment for up to six years (currently, the statute is five years).

For illegally using the phrase "Euro 2012" in a domain name, placing advertising banners on websites with the championship's symbols, or broadcasting matches online, website owners, in addition to a fine, may also lose their domain and servers.

This means that owners of all domains whose names contain any combination of the words "euro" (in Russian or English) and the number "2012" are at serious risk of having their domains repossessed. Banner exchange networks or owners of online platforms that display banners featuring the "Euro 2012" logo are also at risk.

It's noteworthy that these types of domains are typically purchased immediately after the event is announced. As soon as word gets out about a major national event, domain names mentioning the event begin to register. These domains are then either used to create websites related to the event (the Olympics, Eurovision, or the World Cup) or sold for quite a lot of money. An example of such a domain deal issale of the 2014.ru domain, related to the upcoming Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi.

Surely, when names containing the words "Euro 2012" were registered, the registrants were not even aware of the existence of a possible penalty, since this contradicts not only international practice, but also common sense.

It's possible that the idea of ​​introducing fines on domains with "Euro 2012" was announced relatively late (two months before the tournament), so that the owners of such domains simply didn't have time to obtain all the necessary permits. On the other hand, such permits may require payment of a certain royalty to the copyright holders (UEFA and the championship's partners). However, it's reasonable to assume that the size of such a royalty would be unprofitable for domain owners, especially considering that the value of these domains will drop significantly within a few months of the tournament's conclusion.

After analyzing all of this, a reasonable person would ask: why does the Cabinet of Ministers need domains with "Euro 2012" and what will it do with them if registrants don't want to pay royalties and don't get permission?