Politicians Getting Savvy About Domain Names - Obama, Clinton use domain names in political battle. Politicans’ ineptness with domain names can be downright hilarious. But apparently presidential candidates are getting a bit more savvy this election season. ABC news and Wired have discovered a number of domain names registered by Obama and Clinton to attack each other. Here’s one example from Wired: Hillary Clinton’s campaign quietly registered VotingPresent.com and VotingPresent.org in early December. ... read more ...

Article: Domain Parking “Parasitic” - Article calls parked domains parasitic, but doesn’t explore the alternative. In a recent article at Times Online, Jonathan Weber says that parked pages, by their definition, are parasitic: If you type in “debts.com” for example, you get a site filled with nothing but paid links to other sites. Presumably, this is not what someone going to that page is looking for, but it’s a nice business for the domain owner. It seems peculiar and unjust that so much money ... read more ...

iREIT Leaves Internet Commerce Association - Company that helped found organization pulls out amid legal battles. iREIT, owner of hundreds of thousands of domain names, has left the Internet Commerce Association, according to DNJournal’s latest newsletter. iREIT effectively founded the organization, which strives to protect domain name owners’ interests. According to the newsletter: iREIT, which has undergone a change of leadership in the wake of a legal battle with Verizon, has left the ICA. Many felt ... read more ...

Any Wonder Why Domainers Get a Bad Name? - Look no further than a Rocky Mountain News article to understand why. What happens when a cybersquatter claims he’s a domainer, and then tries to differentiate himself from a cybersquatter? It gives domainers (i.e., domain investors) a bad name. An article in The Rocky Mountain News covers Leon Lee, a man who has cybersquatted on several professional baseball players’ names. Leon Lee jumped online and grabbed the domain name ClintHurdle.com the day the Rockies ... read more ...

CNN.com Covers .Asia Landrush - Article talks about upcoming domain launch, also refers to domainers as cybersquatters. It certainly wasn’t mean to be malicious, but a CNN.com article shows that the domain industry needs to keep spreading the word about what it really does. The article “Latest ‘Net gold may rest in Asia’s domain” says cybersquatters and domainers are the same thing: “The .Asia rollout shows in many ways how the Wild West days are dwindling for cyber-squatters — known ... read more ...

Whrrl or Whirrl? Both Need Naming Advice - Bad web 2.0 names abound, but this case is particularly bad. New companies get creative with naming, often times to save a thousand bucks on domain names. For example, Flickr.com dropped the ‘e’ from Flicker.com. Some would call Flickr.com a success story, but by choosing this domain they likely left money on the table. Flicker.com gets 150,000 type-in visitors a month from people looking for the popular photo sharing site. Perhaps it would have sold for more ... read more ...

Gowlings Domain Name Law Portal Updated - Gowling’s domain name law resource site gets an update. If you’re looking for information about domain name law, Eric Macramalla’s Gowlings on Domains should be on your web surfing list. The site was recently updated to include information about the .asia landrush. Macramalla is a Canadian trademark lawyer with Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. His domain name law site is one of (if not) the most comprehensive sites about Canadian domain name law. But it also ... read more ...

Enron and Domain Names - In her book, Brewer says that she was dissatisfied with her job on the legal briefing team and with her colleagues, so she moved to Azurix, an Enron spinoff. There, she says, she uncovered an example of what she calls corporate espionage carried out by the company’s CEO, Rebecca Mark, and her husband, Michael Jusbasche. According to Brewer, Mark wanted to come up with a catchy Internet domain name that Azurix could use as an online trading platform for water, much as Enron had done in the field ... read more ...

TechCrunch on Wow.com, Facebook.fr - Two domain name stories hit TechCrunch today. Tech blog TechCrunch has two interesting stories about domain names today. TechCrunch was founded by Pool.com founder Michael Arrington. The first is about Facebook.fr, a domain that used to forward to facebook.com. The domain now leads to “Facebook Paris”, a competitive social network: …Actually Facebook is starting to be quite popular in France already, even though the interface is just in English. Until today ... read more ...

.NYC on a Horizon? - Group in New York wants a .nyc domain. A non-profit organization in New York City — connecting.nyc — wants to secure a new top level domain (TLD) for the city. The TLD, .nyc, would allow the city, its businesses, and residents to brand themselves as part of the city. The idea of a TLD for a city is not new. A group in Germany is well-known for trying to get a .berlin domain. .nyc’s goal is to get the domain during 2008. Connecting.nyc cites a number of benefits ... read more ...

Internet Commerce Association Publishes Member Code of Conduct - Internet Commerce Association releases eight guidelines for members. Internet Commerce Association (ICA), a non-profit group created to represent the rights of domain name owners, has released a code of conduct its members must abide by. By addressing issues such as domain kiting and cybersquatting head on, ICA can diffuse some of the heat trademark lawyers and big companies are applying to the industry. The eight rules are tightly crafted and some of them leave ... read more ...

EURid Suspends 10,000 .eu Domain Names - EURid claims domains owned by Chinese woman. EURid, the registry that manages .eu domain names, has suspended 10,000 registrations because it believes the registrant does not meet residency requirements. According to various news reports, a Chinese woman Zheng Qingyin registered 10,000 domain names and is trying to resell many of them. Reselling domain names is, of course, not illegal. However, registrants of .eu domain names must meet domicile requirements including ... read more ...

Apple Doesn’t Own iPodTouch.com - Once again, Apple fails to secure domain name prior to product announcement. The world is buzzing about Apple’s (NASDAQ: APPL) latest product, the iPodTouch. But you won’t find information about the new gadget at iPodTouch.com. That domain was registered by a man in Canada in 2005. This isn’t the first time Apple has failed to secure important domain names prior to product launches. For example, they didn’t own any version of iPodVideo.com when that product ... read more ...

Is Hulu.com Confusingly Similar to LuLu.com? - LuLu.com owner goes after Hulu.com for trademark infringement. LuLu.com is a self-publishing site. Hulu.com is a soon-to-be-released video site backed by News Corporation and NBC Universal. Is that confusing? According to the owner of LuLu.com, it is. LuLu.com has initiated legal action against HuLu.com, noting that both sites contain “digital content” and have similar domain names, according to a story in the Guardian. It seems that LuLu.com believes that ... read more ...

Three Questions for CADNA - Three questions for The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA). A little over a month ago CADNA issued its first press release and disclosed its members. CADNA’s members are Fortune 500 companies who want to fight against the unsavory practices of typosquatting and cybersquatting. One of their goals is to stop domain tasting (registering domains only to return them within 5 days for a full refund). Fair enough. I’m a levelheaded guy who doesn’t believe ... read more ...

VeriSign: 138M Domains Registered, New Registration Hits Record - Latest Domain Name Industry Brief from VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) shows continue growth in domain names. VeriSign has released its quarterly report on domain names and says there are now 138M registered domains across all top level domains (TLDs) — that’s 31% more than this time last year. The number of registrations in Q2 2007 hit an all time high with 14.5M new domain name registrations. Much of the growth is attributed to .cn, the country code domain (ccTLD) ... read more ...

FloridaWeekly.com Stands Up to CyberBully - Domain name owner sues media company after receiving cease desist letter. Semoran LLC, which owns the web site and domain name FloridaWeekly.com, has filed a lawsuit against a Florida media company in response to that company’s request for the FloridaWeekly.com domain name. Semoran received a cease desist letter from MacFarlane Ferguson McMullen, which represents Florida Media Group, LLC. It appears that Florida Media Group recently launched a newspaper that ... read more ...

ICANN Corrects False Media Reports About .KP - Reports about imminent approval of North Korea country code domain name are misleading, says ICANN. A new country code domain for North Korea? Not really. Last week, media reports starting surfacing that ICANN would approve .KP as the country code domain for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) at the upcoming upcoming ICANN meeting in Los Angeles, California. In reality, .KP has always been assigned as the country code for North Korea. The ... read more ...

BusinessWeek Corrects “Cybersquatter” Reference - Here’s proof that reporters just need a little education. When BusinessWeek published an article titled “Does Success Hinge on a Domain Name?” on August 13, it referred to the man who owned the generic domain fave.com as a cybersquatter. The reporter Kerry Miller was probably told this term by someone she interviewed, or recalled the term from yesteryear. But as the domain industry is quick to point out, “cybersquatter” is a derogatory term that refers ... read more ...