Despite .co’s best efforts, cybersquatters pile on.
Washington Business Journal published a story today about companies that didn’t register their .co domain name equivalent, and how cybersquatters snapped up a lot of these domain names.
The story is somewhat amusing:
Local businesses beaten to the punch by online speculators include sports teams, media companies and even tech-savvy federal contractors.
“They didn’t do their homework,†said William Schippert, a Michigan accountant who snatched up washingtonnationals.co and domain names for several other baseball and football teams “for potential e-commerce purposes.†He’s now auctioning them on Godaddy.com.
Actually, it’s Schippert that didn’t do his homework. He’s cybersquatting, and these teams can get their domain names back in a number of ways. Especially now that he’s on the record saying why he registered the domain names.
Whenever a new TLD is launched, or a ccTLD is relaunched, you see a lot of small time cybersquatters jump in. The same thing happened with .me. I think it’s mostly an education thing; people recall back in the 90s when some people made money selling trademark domains back to their owners, and these people think this is an opportunity to relive that. But the world has changed since then.
Antony Van Couvering says
The .co team is made up of professionals whom I admire and who have done a great job in positioning .co and in reaching out to businesses and to the domaining community. I think it will be a great boon to Colombia too.
But it is inescapable that .co has two very big appeals. One is that “co” means “company” almost worldwide, and especially in those areas where the local ccTLD uses the “co” subdomain, e.g., .co.uk. The other is as a misspelling of .com.
If .co is serious about not becoming an “offshore” haven for cybersquatters, it’s going to have to come down hard on these and similar obvious infringers — even without a formal protest from the rights holders. If .co can get the word out that you’re just wasting your money registering infringing names, because they’ll be taken away with from you quickly and without recourse, then it will be seen to be responsible and will still do a thriving business in selling misspellings of generic words, which penalize only the unfortunate illiterate. Caveat typor.
Jim Fleming says
It looks like many “market forces”[**] will drive everyone into .COM-ONLY and then from there the “Fringe” will emerge.
This could end the ICANN “gTLD roll-out”.
U,S. legislation could also help to end the game, at least in the U.S.
———–
[**] Market Forces
-Microsoft’s new DNS – PNRP – is Flat – Just names – no TLDs
-New DNS software can give ,COM owners first rihts on the fly, as names are resolved
-Large DNS platforms have announced they block .CM and .CO
-Groups like 4-Letter .COM owners can do their own thing and not register everywhere.
ValueDrops.com says
right, but I think companies don’t pay too much attention to .co domains yet. They don’t think it’s even worth to spend reg fee or file a complaint to get it back.
Jim Fleming says
There is also another long-shot scenario.
Watching this week’s Vegas Love,Fest between ICANN & Verisign at the BlackHat Convention…
…one could imagine a ThreeSome emerging of ICANN Verisign AND NeuSomething
They could team up and concoct an elaborate Secure DNS scheme with .COM and .CO melded or welded into some sort of active-standby pair.
A .COM owner would get a .CO name for their “backup” or “secondary” or whatever myth is made up…
The bottom line would be a Gold-Plated .COM/.CO pair for ?$100? per year.
Split 3 ways all the players would WIN!!
High-fives and lots of videos and CEO face-time and resume building for all…
Zak Muscovitch says
I have been contacted by numerous parties this week, on both sides of the .co registration process.
I got a bunch of calls from people who thought they struck it rich by registering the .co of a famous company’s trademark and wanted ‘help in selling the domains’. Of course I turned these entreaties down, outright. It sure is amazing how naive some people are, but as Andrew points out, it is these small time new entrants to the marketplace who are misled as to how the system works…
I also received a bunch of calls from companies wanting to ‘get back’ their .co. When they found out the price of commencing a UDRP they said, ‘forget it…’. This shows that although they did not like the fact that some wise-ass reg’d their name, they were not about to spend any money going after it as they already had their .com etc. At least for now….
Andrew Allemann says
I personally registered dnw.co during the launch. But I didn’t register domainnamewire.co, and it appears someone has now registered it. I don’t think it’s a big deal; there’s not much I could have done with domainnamewire.co other than forward a small amount of typo traffic to the main site. And anyone who types in this URL knows how to find it.
Zak Muscovitch says
While I was typing up the above comment, I just got the UMPTEENTH call from someone who thought they were holding a lottery ticket because ‘a Fortune 500 company failed to pick up their .CO’….Please stop the madness!! 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
Zak or John, does ACPA apply to any domain name, now just gTLDs? Curious, because I think one of these .co cybersquatters will get hit with more than just a UDRP eventually (read: lawsuit).
Mike says
.co is a typo play and that’s it. Who would ever build a business around a .co? 99% of the public has never heard of .co. If you launched a site like NYRealty.co or something like that, it ends up looking like a typo, when you brand it, on your business cards, letterhead, etc. And in an ironic twist, the .com would end up getting the typo traffic. People can try gimmick sites like bahamas.com, but it is not brandable and unless it ranks high in organic search results, it is not going to do well. This whole companies protecting their brand nonsense is getting old. We hear it every launch. Hopefully this will be it, as I don’t see any other way to milk .com with another goofy extension. I guess maybe .ocm or .comm are still possible, but of course they would not be launched as typo plays.
John Berryhill says
“While I was typing up the above comment, I just got the UMPTEENTH call from someone who thought they were holding a lottery ticket because ‘a Fortune 500 company failed to pick up their .CO’”
Same here, Zak. Contacts all week long by zombies who have been in some sort of deep freeze for the last ten years.
John Berryhill says
Yes, Andrew, the ACPA is not specific to any TLD.
If someone is subject to personal jurisdiction (which may arise from their contact with a PPC company, hosting provider, etc.), then they can surely be sued in the US under the ACPA.
Additionally, the domain name itself may be sued in any US federal district where the registrar is located.
Jim Fleming says
@Zak
Northern Virginia (Reston) is full of spooks who do nothing but model economic systems like these.
You are seeing one of their many scenarios. They likely have simulations of who is called to buy what and what “Free Market” resistance emerges from UDRP Pricing…and that is balanced with the cost of letters to one’s U.S. Senator and Obama…
Now that .CO is providing “live data” it can be fed into the simulations…
Take a look at the recent ICANN videos and the Military-Industrial-Complex Posture that the new CEO is taking…people are leaving the company…will Dick Cheney be arriving soon ?
…will people find out that the water-boarding is not worth being a “domainer” ?
Ruger says
Let me educate all of you as to HOW .co will be a money maker for a select few:
There are many .COM companies out there that do alot of business and get alot of unique hits (I’m talking millions of $ per year and 100,000+ hits per month) that use domain names with, wait for it…GENERIC KEYWORD TERMS. U.S. trademark law clearly states that you cannot trademark generic words exclusively for yourself unless you are a widely recognized name (i.e., global – think Apple or American Airlines). I personally know of three .CO’s that were registered and now the .COM’s are trying to buy them, and they (.COM’s) know they can’ win a UDRP or a federal lawsuit as long as the .CO doesn’t try to confuse consumers into believing they are the same company. When .CO really takes off (because of all things MOBILE), these .COM’s are screwed if they don’t pony-up the cash right now…the price will keep going up, year after year. Examples of generics:
BeachHouse
WineStore
PetStore
ClothingStore
ShirtShop
The list goes ON AND ON! Generics, guys…and knowing how to position your parking page; that’s the key. Stop your whining and start using your brains!
Jim Fleming says
@Ruger
The new DNS software delegates “Parked Domains” to the LOCAL Set-Top-Provider (vISP).
BOTH .COM and .CO traffic will go down as Parked Domains are “eclipsed” in the CPE.
The so-called Cayman-Islands Strategy of ten thousand generics generating PPC $$$ is short-lived. That strategy is also harder with .CO at $35 per domain with no assurance that will not become $350 next year.
.COM is king because of the $6 U.S. DOC price capping…
SL says
@Jim: Yes, I finally see what you’re saying because one of my credible sources confirms that you’re on the right track. I can’t reveal my source but note how the information in the following debriefing statement parallels your previous posts:
“The CIA intercepted Mr. Dick Cheney’s attempt at registering cia.co during the landmark period. Via his internal sources and moles deep within the Godaddy registrar, Mr. Glenn Beck was made aware of Mr. Cheney’s cybersquatting ambitions. As someone with strong sympathies and allegiance toward Mr. Cheney, during Mr. Beck’s 07/06/10 show, he endeavored to make Mr. Cheney aware of the ongoing operation against him. He subsequently transmitted the interception warning to Mr. Cheney via blinking his eyes in Morse code throughout the show.
Mr. Cheney deciphered the message and enacted offensive countermeasures to defuse his attackers and continue his goal of .co worldwide cybersquatting domination.
First, he directed a select number of former cronies at the FBI to bug and wiretap certain members of the CIA to gather actionable intelligence. He further commissioned a clandestine Fort Bragg commando force to infiltrate Godaddy and waterboard any employee who might be at risk of revealing details of his operation.
Luckily the CIA spooks were able to bring the mission to a successful conclusion by apprehending Mr. Cheney. Upon “interviewing” the captive, Mr. Cheney confessed that he had much larger ambitions than cybersquatting .co domain names. He also revealed he had a previously unknown partner in this plot, Mr. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.
At the time of this writing Mr. Ballmer remains at large and is a significant threat to the Internet, largely through his extended plot to usurp DNS via his vast army of PNRP-enabled robot llamas. If Mr. Ballmer were able to carry out this mission successfully, he will be able to control all internet lookups and achieve world domination.
It has been reported that the llamas are being disguised as Microsoft salesmen. When all llamas (salesmen) have been positioned, they will be given the global DNS attack command.
The danger posed by these llamas/salesmen should not be underestimated as Homeland Security recently adjusted their internal threat meter to position 11.
More details as they become available.”
Jim Fleming says
@SL see also…
http://TheBigLieSociety.com
Please do not type “Google” into Google.co
Ruger says
Jim Flemming,
You missed my point entirely. Let me try to be clearer:
1. Buy a “generic word term” .CO that just happens to have a .COM counterpart that gets significant traffic and is a revenue-generating business.
2. Set up a “Business Coming Soon!” page with a short paragraph as to what your future business will be – MAKE SURE it’s not a line of business that the counter party .COM is in.
3. At this point, you have a few options, a couple of which are: Actually start the business you’ve highlighted in your “company” mission statement, or wait for an acceptable offer from the .COM counter-party WHILE the .CO page has your “COMING SOON” page up.
This is not about monetizing the traffic from ads; it’s about using your brain and realizing that .CO and .COM WILL someday be at parity in value (relatively speaking). The push to mobile devices assures the success of .CO.
And prices going to $350 on .CO? Are you insane? That would be a quick way for them to make .CO completely irrelevant overnight. Come on, man; you can do better than that!
Trust me; I’m a millionaire.
Jim Fleming says
@Ruger
When you make your first billion, you may take a longer term view.
Your short-term strategy is well understood by thousands of “domainers”.
They may get to repeat that process with the Single-Letter .C TLD or .INC
BTW, there are over 30,000 *-CO,com owners to also consider. It will be interesting to see how many *-COM.co owners emerge.
Ruger says
@Jim Flemming,
My point being, for a valuable, generic-term .CO WITH an operating .COM counter-party, my strategy is bullet-proof.
An opportunity like this hasn’t come along since .COM launch many, many years ago.
Jim Fleming says
@Ruger
“An opportunity like this hasn’t come along since..”
Some people *wait* for opportunities to “come along” – Others invent those opportunities…
Ruger says
@Jim Fleming
I concur, my friend, I concur.
This is a good one though:)
Jim Fleming says
@Ruger
It is a shame that .CO did not happen early in the .COM domination. Some wing-nuts tried to convince people that 2-letter ASCII TLDs were “countries”. They called them ccTLDs. Their cult of zombies repeated that. The world paid a very large price.
Now you see people going to .WAR
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100728_taking_back_the_dns/
Ruger says
@Jim Fleming,
That article clearly states that domain “speculators” are malicious, along with scammers, spammers, etc.
Read the post I just wrote under the article here about the “woman with the smallest waist”. What I said is coming; you can bank on it. I’m trying to sell my entire inventory ASAP at whatever price I can get and I’m going to develop TWO of my domains…they’re both category killers and I’ve got every extension on both of them from .com to .ws (took awhile to amass ALL of them).
F’ck domaining…it’ll be a dead industry within ten years…completely gone due to ignorance and corruption.
James says
As soon as .co starts to stink it will become another domain ghetto.
If the end users dont actually force their way into these domains, develop them, and put billions of dollars behind branding them, then it will be a surfer’s nightmare to keep typing in a .co and be disappoited.
Enough of these “disappointments” and surfers will go back to .com, where is is at lleast significantly better than any other alternative.
If you like Google do you keep going to Bing, and Yahoo….probably not. A surfer goes where they like….and that will be the most developed area of the Net…..in the .com .
ST says
Come on people it is just a ccTLD.
and with every launch being hyped being ccTLD or gTLD the circus arrives in town .
Fact is that when you want to make good cash the TLD in question needs to run out of good names..
.COM being king ? yeah sure it is .. everyone in the world knows it and there is a shortage ..
.DE ccTLD you see good prices there . shortage
same goes goes .co.uk
.ES will soon follow
.BE sold anything good there ?? nah .. tho they closing in on 1 million registrations ..
Hell you can still pickup some 4 letter ones there ..
.CO hype it up all you want …. aslong there is not shortage .. no good price … 🙂
and 300k registrations is nothing in this day and age …
hell if there was a gTLD called .brittneyspears you would see the same circus …
btw this is completly offtopic
Juan says
Anthony,
Since day 1 we have made our position regarding cybersquatting extremely clear. It’s been communicated broadly to both the TM community, the domain community, and published in numerous publications & blogs.
Unfortunately a few bozos will still go out there, waste their money, and think they struck gold.
The solution is not simple as you know from the endless debates going on at ICANN about this problem. Fortunately, as a ccTLD we can take more decisive action. You may recall that apart from having implemented the UDRP, a protected-marks list, a public thick WHOIS, and Malicious Monitoring (anti-phishing), we will be implementing a “URS”-like mechanism in the next few months (cheaper & faster than UDRP).
Juan
Jim Fleming says
@Juan
For the record, here are some .CO comments:
1. Large-scale Registry costs beyond start-up are estimated to be under 50 cents per domain per year. The .CO wholesale pricing was surprising.
2. Having a small number of hand-selected Registrars with exclusive access vs. the original pre-1998 .COM model of Direct Registry Access by anyone with a clue, seemed out of date, and clique-ish. See .TK as an example of direct Registry Access and they are sort of FREE.
3. You say: “as a ccTLD you can take more decisive action”. Some people may think that means “arbitrary action”, because ccTLD to some means no U.S. DOC over-sight.
4. SCUBA DNS – Self-Contained Unix Broadband Appliance and other new DNS solutions coming may change the game. See also the recent http://CircleID.com discussions. With SCUBA DNS – The Network IS the Registry – the “cost” is likely below 10 cents per domain per year. MS PNRP may be less or zero.
People have done their “homework” and there are still many unknowns in the future. May everyone continue to live in interesting times.
Shawn says
Well it’s apparent that there’s a huge market out there marketing new TLD’s.
There’s so many cybersquatters and people who haven’t a clue, the TLD industry is going to grow like crazy just to keep up with them all.
I would love to see the .co take off, will it? Oh yes, for cointernet.co it has and it will.
You know, the TLD industry reminds me of the MLM arena (multi-level-marketing)in a big way.
For the individual joining mlm the odds are stacked against them, only like .5% ever make any money. Notice how I didn’t say a lot of money.
Now the one’s that make the real money are the guys selling “How To Make A Million Dollars In Your Basement Systems With MLM” to the ever growing market of 99.5% of I’m gonna make it in MLM’ers.
It’s comical actually… thanks for the laugh! Think I’ll go spend my extra cash on some pet rocks.
Mike says
@ Juan, “we will be implementing a URS-like mechanism in the next few months (cheaper and faster than UDRP)”
So in other words, you wait until all of the ‘bozos’ have emptied their wallets on TM domains into your coffers, pouring millions into .co, then you pull the rug out from under them. nice.
you know, this goes back to the Domainer Mardi Gras panel i attended this past February where they were talking about the rollout of possibly hundreds of new gTLDs in the coming years and the issue of the expense of companies having to defend against TM registrations across hundreds of new extensions. There were various arguments but one that seemed to make sense was along the lines of this “why do the registries make available domains like microsoft.whatever, and pepsi.whatever.?” You obviously have the means to hold back names from registration, so why not do it for the global TMs?
i think the answer comes back to the fact that you will cut your bottom line, probably in half, if you did so.
Jim Fleming says
[At-Large] .CO user confusion?
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2010q3/006793.html
Stephen Douglas says
Again, I say —
Sell/buildout all the generic descriptive .com domains, then look at the other extensions. Education first, unless everyone buying a .CO domain believes that all business marketing directors are “hot” on domains as “appreciable marketing assets”.
*sigh*
ST says
Typo squatting is a thing from the past…
CPC is so low you can’t feed your dog even if you own 10k plus typo squatted domains..
sedo , namedrive whoever they need to shift their focus real fast.
Sedo seems tobe doing fine on the escrow market selling good domain names .
parking domains is dead …