Lance Armstrong wins domain names - 7 time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and his non-profit foundation have won a WIPO decision involving a couple domain names: livestrongbracelets.net and talk-livestrong.com. Apparently the previous owners sold the ubiquitous yellow LiveStrong bracelets on the sites (at above the $1 donation price). Personally, someone who tries to rip off the goodwill of a charity should be thrown in jail. ... read more ...

Nailing an eBay domain name scammer - Earlier this month I wrote about buying domains on eBay. Although you can find some good deals, I listed a number of drawbacks to eBay versus other domain sales sites like Sedo and Afternic. It was just a couple days later that I got an e-mail through eBay’s system from a user called “TopNotchDomains”. He contacted me because he saw that I had bid on domain names and he wanted me to look at his auctions for domains. (Using eBay’s member contact system for ... read more ...

Why China shouldn’t have a contend in internet governance - If you’re a freqent reader of DomainNameWire you know that I think the US should retain control of the internet and its naming system. I particularly fear China having a say in how the internet is governed given its position on free speech. Here’s a case in point. China keeps managing to close down a blog by a critic of the current communist regime. Wang Yi’s Microphone has changed domain names many times in an attempt to avoid blockage but the Chinese governement ... read more ...

Sex.com hijacker arrested - Stephen Michael Cohen, who famously tricked Network Solutions into handing over the Sex.com domain name to him, was arrested by Mexican authorities and handed over the U.S. authorities Thursday. Cohen currently owes $82M to the rightful owner of Sex.com. Read more here. ... read more ...

Emmitt Smith wins his domain name - Football great Emmitt Smith was awarded the domain name EmmittSmith.com in a UDRP decision. The domain expired during the proceedings, as noted in the National Arbitration Forum press release: “During the course of the proceedings, the Respondent’s registration of the domain name emmittsmith.com was either deleted or expired, prompting Smith to redeem the domain name under the new Expired Domain Deletion Policy (EDDP) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned ... read more ...

ICANN Whois verifications removing out of hand - Tired of getting notices from your registrars that you need to verify your Whois data per ICANN requirements? I know I am. What I don’t understand is why registrars send out an individual e-mail notice for each and every domain you hold with them. Can’t they send out one message for all domains that have the same Whois information? One of my worries about these Whois update notices is that they’ll be used for phishing attacks in the future. These messages ... read more ...

Losing a cybersquatting box could outcome in a large fine - Here’s an interesting case from across the pond in the United Kingdom. A story on Out-Law.com describes the struggle over the citigroup.co.uk domain name and Jim Davies, who registered the domain in 1998 the same day the merger between Travelers Group and Citicorp was announced. Citigroup showed its incompetence by not registering citigroup.co.uk (or citigroup.com for that matter) before announcing the merger. But they swiftly filed arbitration disputes to get ... read more ...

US lawmakers titillate boss to keep US control of internet - A number of United States lawmakers are urging President Bush to help the US retain control of the internet. One quote from resolution sponsor Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, in a Reuters story: “Is it going to become a vehicle for global taxation of domain names? Are you going to allow folks who have demonstrated a pattern of suppression of content, are they going to be put in charge of running this thing?” For more on this issue, see:Plans for global ... read more ...

Gmail.com to turn GoogleMail.com in UK - Due to a trademark battle, Google is changing the domain name for its Gmail service in the UK to GoogleMail.com, according to this story on News.com. UK-based Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) uses the name G-mail to refer to a part of its financial analytics software. Current UK residents with @gmail.com email addresses will not be affected. The GoogleMail.com domain is not resolving on the internet right now and might only be used as part of ... read more ...

Plans for tellurian government of a internet are a hazard to the future - I didn’t come up with the title for this post. It is the title of a recent piece in the world’s best news analysis publication, The Economist. The October 8-14 issue discusses the challenge to the United State’s management of the internet on page 16 and again on page 74. If you are a regular reader of Domain Name Wire you know that I think the US should retain control of the internet. The system is working now, and putting it in the hands of another ruling ... read more ...

UK domain name fraud artist in court - Peter Francis-Macrae is currently on trial for alleged death threats he made as police closed in on his domain name scams. Francis-Macrae ran two domain name scams: 1. .EU registrations. He sent spam to thousands of people offering to register forthcoming .eu domains for them. One client got bilked for £5,780. 2. Domain renewal scam. He sent letters to people offering to renew their domains for them. He grabbed the information about the expiring domains from ... read more ...

All Video iPod domains registered - Apple officially launched its new iPod today with video, dubbed by fans as the Video iPod. But Apple doesn’t own the VideoiPod.com domain. It was registered over 2 years ago. Here are VideoiPod.com and iPodVideo.com domains and when they were registered: VideoiPod.com 9-19-03 VideoiPod.net 5-23-05 VideoiPod.org 7-18-05 VideoiPod.org 7-19-05 VideoiPod.biz 9-19-05 VideoiPod.us 8-31-05 iPodVideo.com 3-2-04 iPodVideo.net 8-24-05 iPodVideo.org 7-18-05 iPodVideo.info ... read more ...

Domain Name King means well, gets duped - Self-proclaimed “Domain Name King” Rick Schwartz, the man behind the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain name conferences, meant well by setting up the AirKatrina.com web site to ask for donations for a pilot claiming to assist Katrina search and recovery efforts. There was only one problem: the pilot lied. He was not involved in the recovery efforts, and made up stories about flying a kid to Florida for a transplant (among other things). Schwartz himself donated $1,000 ... read more ...

Amazon.com wins domain names - Amazon.com has won domain disputes involving 14 domain names it deemed were trademark violations. The domains included amazzone.com, amzaon.com, and amazln.com, among others. Unlike a recent Yahoo case, the registrant tried to defend some of his registrations. I have a concern about the National Arbitration Forum issuing press releases about both the Yahoo and Amazon decisions. Would NAF have issued the press released if it had found in favor of the original registrants? ... read more ...

Yahoo wins doubtful domains - Yahoo recently won rights to 54 disputed domain names that were similar to the Yahoo! trademark. Included are domains like YahooSports.com, launchYah00.com, matchYahoo.com, YahooCalendar.com, YahooSpots.com, and BaseballYahoo.com. The prior registrant of the domains did not respond to the complaint. This person obviously knew they wouldn’t win, but probably made some money from paid parking before Yahoo took over the domains. You can read the complete case here. ... read more ...

How to beget bad broadside for your company - Corporate attorneys aren’t always the best PR people. Take the folks at telecom provider BT Ireland. BT Ireland found out about the web site BTIrelandSucks.com. Clearly the domain was set up as a gripe site. Very few people visited the site. But then BT Ireland sent a cease desist letter to the owner. The owner laughed it off and the press picked up the story. Now thousands of people are hitting the BTIrelandSucks.com site and reading the owner’s gripes ... read more ...

Domain name WhoIs leads to robbery arrest - The October issue of Wired Magazine has a story about Randy Guthrie, a US citizen arrested in China for DVD piracy. What makes this story unique is how Guthrie was busted. A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent heard about Guthrie’s web site, ThreeDollarDVD.com, where Guthrie was selling pirated DVDs for $3. All the agent did was go to WhoIs and search the domain name. Guthrie’s e-mail address popped up: randyguthrie@yahoo.com. Bingo, there’s your ... read more ...

EU tries to combat for control of internet - According to an article in TheRegister, a consortium of EU countries are trying to grab control of the internet from the US. There goal is to modify ICANN and make the internet overseen by an international community rather than the US. I am opposed to this power change. See US should retain control of internet. ... read more ...

Misspelled Google domains still a problem - Earlier this year users mistyping the Google.com domain name were diverted to web sites that installed malware on their computers. It appears the problem still exists, this time with a twist. There’s a worm that will automatically forward your browser to a Google-look-alike site no matter what you type in. When you search on the spoofed Google site you get normal search results but the sponsored links on the page are substituted with the worm author’s own paid ... read more ...

Bill Cosby wins Fat Albert domain name - In a recent WIPO decision, comedian Bill Cosby won the rights to the FatAlbert.org domain. Cosby complained that the domain was registered in bad faith and linking to adult web sites. The registrant of the domain, Sterling Davenport, didn’t even bother responding to the WIPO complaint. It’s not like Sterling Davenport had any defense. A quick check of WhoIs records shows that Bill Cosby’s law firm holds ownership of FatAlbert.com. However, FatAlbert.net ... read more ...