Monthly Archives: September 2010

Mon 27th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This is a Problem with a U.S. Congress Trying to Regulate Domain Names - U.S. control of internet can be misused, leading to countermeasures by other countries. What’s wrong with the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act being proposed in the U.S. Congress? The problem is that the U.S. government is trying to use the fact that VeriSign is located in the U.S. as a way to shut down internet traffic it doesn’t agree with. Other governments look at this and worry that the U.S. is trying to control the internet. They start ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pay for TRAFFIC Conference with Your Domains - Trade-in your domains for a ticket to TRAFFIC South Beach. This month’s Epik conference had a unique twist — you could pay for conference admission by trading in domain names. I was a bit surprised, yet excited, to learn this morning that you’ll be able to do the same thing for October’s TRAFFIC conference. Rob Monster has worked out a deal with TRAFFIC organizers to let you pay for admission with Epik bucks. To take advantage of the offer you need to send ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Your Guide to Prague for DOMAINfest - by Jan Barta [Jan Barta is Chairman of Elephant Orchestra, a fast-growing media company focused on direct navigation and lead generation based in Prague. One the company’s domain products is Elephant Traffic, a direct navigation monetization solution.] Andrew asked me if I could write a short guide to Prague with some tips what you can do here during DOMAINFest or if you decide to prolong your stay afterwards. Since Prague is my hometown, I obviously had to accept ... read more ...
Sun 26th September 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Coming To America With $2M To Spend in Mar 2011 - ICANN Just announced today that it will be holding its next meeting after Colombia in December 2010, in San Francisco in March 2011. According to the announcement ICANN will have a budget of just short of $2 Million to spend on the March meeting: “”Resolved the Board approves San Francisco, California as the location of the ICANN 2011 North America Meeting to be held from 13-18 March 2011, with a budget not to exceed US$1.941M” Sounds like it should be a party, I mean very expensive meeting. Google+Michael ... read more ...
Sat 25th September 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Moniker & SnapNames.com Redesigned Sites To Launch Monday: Here is Your Sneak Preview - Both Moniker.com and SnapNames.com are going to launch redesigned sites on Monday afternoon and we got a sneak peak. Generally the sites both look a lot cleaner and more user friendly. Gone from the front pages of both sites are the banner ads for other products including domain auctions, domain shows which I thought garbaged up the sites quite a bit. Replacing those ads both sites feature a simple auction calendar which lists all of the upcoming special live and online auctions as well as those ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Another Generic Taken In A WIPO: AfricaTours.Fr - A One person WIPO Panel awarded the domain AfricaTours.FR to the trademark holder of this very generic term. In July 2010, it attempted to acquire the disputed domain name africatours.fr. and following an exchange of emails, the Respondent offered to sell the Complainant the domain for $ 5000 Euros.  The complainant appearently then offered 2,000 euros for the domain name which the domain holder rejected and the complainant then filed this action. “The Complainant says that it has intellectual ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
David Castello is Psychic - David Castello saved me a lot of embarrassment this weekend. Earlier this year at TRAFFIC in Vancouver I asked David Castello which of two dates I should hold a domain name event in Austin: September 24-25 in conjunction with the Texas v. UCLA football game or November 12-13 with the Texas v. Oklahoma State football game. David said “Don’t do it in September. It will still be too hot.” He was right, and he influenced me to host the event in November. What ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moniker and SnapNames Get New Web Sites - Sites get consistent look and UI upgrades. Moniker and SnapNames will receive a facelift with improved user interfaces and clean designs on Monday evening. I took the new designs for a test spin yesterday, and it certainly appears to be a big improvement over the old designs. Oversee.net acquired the two companies in separate transactions over the past few years. The companies have done some work to integrate the two, but this is the first bottom-up redesign to ... read more ...
Fri 24th September 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Kentucky Supreme Court Says Trade Groups Still Do Not Have Standing To Contest Domain Name Seizures - Back In March of this year, the owners of TruePoker.com allowed the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association and the Interactive Gaming Council to provide their to the court, in an attempt to satisfy the standing requirement “If a party that can properly establish standing comes forward, the writ petition giving rise to these proceedings could be re-filed with Court of Appeals,” the Supreme Court decreed in March.” “Both groups did as told, and on March 26, the Appeals Court ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Uk Company EasyGroup Seems To Think It Own The Word “Easy” As Its Claims EasyDate Is Infringing On Their Mark - According to several news sources, a UK company, EasyGroup has notified another public UK company, EasyDate that it is infringing on its intellectual property Easy Group which owns intellectual property rights for the family of trade marks used by a group of companies which includes easyJet, easyHotel, easyCar, easyBus, easyJobs, easyVan, easyOffice and easy.com. easyGroup says they also owns a community trade mark covering information relating to entertainment and personal and social services. “Easydate ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
eBook.com Hits The Auction Block With 4.5 Million Unique Visitors A Year - From Amazon’s Kindle to Apple’s ibooks there hasn’t been a much hotter topic than ebooks over the last year. The domain name eBook.com is now at auction. The company that owns the domain eBook.com, DNAML PTY LTD (DNAML) says they are “exiting the eBook retailing business” and engaged Viant Capital to sell the domain URL, the #1 organic search result for “ebook” across all major search engines.” The following is from the information I received from the owner of the domain and the company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GAC to ICANN: Limit Next Round of New Top Level Domain Names - GAC asks ICANN to hold a limited fast-track round for new top level domain names. Interim Chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Heather Dryden has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN urging it to limit the number of new top level domain names in the next round by holding a “fast track” process: The GAC concludes therefore that an initial fast track round for a limited number of non-controversial applications which should include a representative but diverse ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNW Certified Stats Adds SedoPro and DomainAdvertising - Two more parking companies added to parking stats verification service. Today DNW Certified Stats added support for SedoPro accounts and DomainAdvertising. Now you can easily share stats for your parked domain names at 8 different parking companies. SedoPro is the advanced parking program offered by Sedo. Users must have at least 1,000 domain names or $300 in monthly revenue to qualify. If you are interested in a SedoPro account and meet the qualifications, please ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two New Cases Show What’s Wrong with UDRP - Two cases show why we need UDRP reform. National Arbitration Forum has handed down two recent domain name decisions that show what’s wrong with UDRP. This isn’t an attack on National Arbitration Forum, as its panelists got both of these cases right. In both cases they found that the registrant had rights or legitimate interests in the domain names and that they weren’t registered in bad faith. What’s wrong about these cases is that the respondents even had ... read more ...
Thu 23rd September 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Adult Domain Auction Starts With Some Of The Best Adult Domains On The Planet - The Webmaster Access GFY/HuntingMoon Domain Auction Powered by Moniker/SnapNames has just started. The auction features over 400 domain names which are mostly adult in nature including some of the best possible adult domains on the planet but which also includes domains with double meanings (could be adult or not adult) and domains which are clearly not adult. WARNING:  THE LIST OF DOMAINS BELOW INCLUDE WORDS ARE VERY GRAPHIC IN NATURE, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU ARE NOT AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Bing.com Launches Rewards Program: Paying Users For Clicking Round 2 - “Become a member of the Bing Rewards Preview and experience the benefits of doing what you love to do online — learning, discovering, exploring — while getting opportunities to earn credits toward great rewards”. Participants have to download the Bing toolbar, to participate in the program. This is Microsoft’s 2nd attempt to gain market share by “paying” people to use their search engine. Back on 2008 Microsoft offered cash payment to people to use their Live.com search product. I ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Domain Auction Service BoxCar.com Launches - New domain name auction platform launches. DomainConsultant.com has launched BoxCar.com, a new domain name auction site. The service is very different from typical marketplaces such as Afternic and Sedo. It focuses on auctions only and you can list lots instead of just single domains. It’s also highly flexible, allowing you to set your own bid increments, buy-it-now option, reserve prices, etc. BoxCar.com also shuns the typical commission-based fee structure ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hotel Sold Out (and Other Things to Know About DOMAINfest Prague) - DOMAINfest heads to Prague. Here’s what you need to know. Heading to Prague for DOMAINfest in two weeks? I hope you’ve booked your hotel since the Intercontinental is sold out. But if not, we’re here to help. Read on for alternative hotels and more information about your trip to Prague. I caught up with Oversee.net to get answers to some common questions: Is the hotel sold out or are just the discounted rooms sold out? Where should people look for alternative ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Searches for Typo Traffic to .Com Alternatives - Google buys typos of ccTLDs and top level domain names other than .com Over the past few days Google has ramped up its efforts to get country code and top level domain name typos in the .com version. For example, it has registered dozens of domains in the format: google-(cctld).com including google-in.com (India), google-lu.com (Luxembourg), and google-ws.com (Western Somoa). The company has also registered or acquired a number of google-TLD.com names including google-net.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Astroturfing? At Least Do It Right. - Remember that the web is not anonymous. The online world seems anonymous. Except it’s not. That’s why I’d like to remind you to be careful when you think you’re anonymous. Or at least don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. Two days ago I posted a story about Bridgepoint Education losing a UDRP case. It wasn’t a friendly post to the company. Lots of people from Bridgepoint viewed the post. One of them decided to defend the company in a comment using ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tomorrow is a Big Day for New Top Level Domain Names - Big issue on the table at ICANN retreat. In about 24 hours the ICANN Board of Directors will kick off a retreat. It’s not an official board meeting, but it’s anticipated that the two day retreat will finalize an important issue: registry/registrar separation. A lot is at stake in this decision. Millions of dollars for the stakeholders. Until now a registry hasn’t been able to own a registrar and (technically) vice-versa. Afilias is owned by a number of registrars, ... read more ...
 
Written by The MediaWizard's Blog in EN
Ethics 101 for Domain Investors - Came across a few excellent posts related to the ethical side of domaining on NamePros, some interesting questions were raised and some interesting viewpoints offered. http://www.namepros.com/358387-the-llll-com-sales-discussion-thread-789.html I’ll quote some interesting bits here, though I would recommend you read the original posts, they’re totally worth reading: Of course, in my opinion at least, approaching/offering to secure and sell any domain that you have not already bought/won ... read more ...
Wed 22nd September 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sedo.com Brokers The Sale Of IPO.com For $500K - Talk about a killer domain at a great price, Sedo.com has just completed brokering the domain name IPO.com for $500K. Jeff  Gabriel and Matt Rosebrook co-brokered the domain on behalf of Sedo.com Personally I think its one of the better buys of the year. I know the IPO market has been soft through the recession but we all know at some point in the next year or two this sector of the market is going to come back strong and its a category killer. Congratulations to the buyer and the seller. In case ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
What The Anti Privacy Bill Means To Domainers - Yesterday several blogs reported on the bill proposed yesterday entitled the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act”. (pdf) I spent a while today reviewing the bill to see what if any effect it could have on domainers. I also chatted with Phil Corwin general counsel that represents the Internet Commerce Association about the proposed law. Here are my thoughts: As I read it, the law, although intended to only effect websites that seek to distribute pirated material such as music ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX Comment Period Brings Out a Form Letters - This time both sides of debate make use of “form” comments. The comment period for “Revised Proposed Registry Agreement for .XXX sTLD and Due Diligence Documentation” at ICANN ends Thursday. Much like last time, there are hundreds of comments submitted through online forms that basically says the same thing. But this time .xxx backer ICM Registry has decided two can play at that game. The company has added a form to its web site at icmregistry.com/forms. This ... read more ...