Featured Blogs

UDRP Dilemma In Proving Bad-Faith Domain Registrations - Part III

In the final part of this 3-part series article, the issue of UDRP in proving bad-faith domain registrations that are held passively is examined with respect to the trademark's characteristics. The registrant's attitude could in some circumstances also be regarded as evidence of bad faith use of a domain name that is held passively. Panels often infer evidence of bad faith of the registrant from an unsatisfactory response or an absence of response to the complainant or if it is impossible to contact the respondent. more

Equifax Breach: 9 Fraud Prevention Steps Everyone Should Take

The U.S. Internet Revenue Service now says that criminals already had most of the information that credit bureau Equifax lost in a breach that revealed personal information about nearly 150 million people. The incident at Equifax and the IRS' mid-October admission of how much-stolen data was already in criminal hands may force changes in how the world handles personal information. more

Data Reveals Domain Name Registrations Have Hit All-Time Highs

In a report released today, VeriSign has stated that more than 4.7 million new domain names registered during the first quarter of 2004 -- highest ever recorded in a three-month period. "The profile reveals that more than 63 million domain names have now been registered, approximately one for every 100 people living in the world today. This number is greater than at any time in the Internet's history, surpassing even the heights that were seen during the Internet "bubble." Moreover, data reveal that the current base of domain names is being utilized more actively than ever before, as measured by renewal rates, look-up rates, and the percentage of domain names tied to live sites." more

Customer Service is Law: The Panix Story

The NANOG list yesterday was the virtual equivalent of a nearby nocturnal car alarm: "panix.com has been hijacked!" (whoo-WEE, whoo-WEE); "those jerks at VeriSign!" (duhhhhh-WHEEP, duhhhh-WHEEP); "no one's home at Melbourne IT!" (HANK, HANK, HANK, HANK). Finally, on Monday morning in Australia, the always-competent and helpful Bruce Tonkin calmly fixed the situation. So the rest of us can get some sleep now. But as we nod off in the quietness, let's consider just exactly what happened here. more

AOL Fires Across the Bow of Spam-Friendly ISPs

The North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) conference, a gathering of Internet Service Provider (ISP) engineers and vendors convenes three times a year for mostly technical conversation along with social networking. The recent NANOG conference in Reston Virginia saw some unusually direct talk about Spam and the ISPs that tolerate it from America Online's Postmaster, Charles Stiles. more

The Hack Back Bill in Congress is Better Than You’d Expect

Rep's Graves and Sinema recently introduced H.R. 4036, the catchily named Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act or ACDC act which creates some exceptions to criminal parts of computer crime laws. Lots of reports have decried "hack back" but if you read the bill, it's surprisingly well targeted. The first change is to what they call Attributional Technology, and says it's OK to put bait on your computer for an intruder intended to identify the intruder. more

TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation - Part II

Last month, I wrote to describe the state of registration restrictions in .BIZ, .US, and .NAME. I noted trends among nonconforming registrations in these TLDs, and I suggested that certain automated enforcement systems might serve to improve compliance. But an important larger question remained unanswered: Why care about registration restrictions in the first place? Much as registries might like to ignore the restrictions, I submit that the Internet community nonetheless ought to hold them to their contracts.
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WGIG Too Focused on Negative Side of the Internet?

The following is a report by Susan Crawford at the ICANN meeting in Cape Town where a workshop was held yesterday for increasing awareness and understanding of United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and issues that directly impact ICANN. "WSIS" is defined as a process in which governments intend to address a broad range of international legal, regulatory, economic, and policy issues related to the Internet. Some governments have proposed that an intergovernmental organization be responsible for "Internet governance," a phrase that remains undefined and some consider to include and/or mean the administration and coordination of the domain name system (DNS). more

Will Splogs Kill .INFO Domains?

An article in the September issue of Wired explores search spam and the role of .info domain names. The article, titled "Spam + Blogs = Trouble" is a good overview of the problems of search spam, blog spam, and other various forms of web activity designed to take advantage of search engines. (The article will be online September 5, but you can read it on page 104 of the print edition that is available to subscribers now). For those not versed in search spam, it's basically creating multiple websites, typically auto-generated by computers, to get good search rankings and then monetize the resulting search traffic through AdSense or affiliate programs. The article focuses much of its attention to splogs, or auto-generated blogs... more

Chinese IDN in the News

News.com published a well-research article on the Chinese Domain Names by Winston Chai: "This approach works fine in the English-savvy world. However, for non-English speakers, they could be faced with the unenviable task of rote-learning numerical IP addresses, which is highly improbable, or the English spellings of dozens of Web sites they want to access." Just a few points of interest... more

Google Sued in Domainer Lawsuit: Vulcan Golf v. Google

Domainer litigation is heating up, and this lawsuit may be the most ambitious anti-domainer lawsuit to date. First, it is a putative class action lawsuit. Second, in addition to naming four leading domainer firms, the plaintiffs provocatively go after Google for providing ads to domainer sites. I believe this is the first lawsuit against Google for its domainer relationships. The complaint itself is a 121 page, 638 paragraph (with one paragraph enumerating 47 defined terms), 4.3MB behemoth alleging trademark infringement and dilution, ACPA violations, RICO and other claims. more

When Will Google™ Become Generic?

Today, there are hundreds of once highly protected famous name brands, which were backed by multi-million dollar promotional budgets, now commonly used in daily lingo as generic names, as it was their huge popularity that made them lose their trademark protection. So why is the use of famous trademarked names as 'verbs' in our daily language feared by the attorneys representing that mark? Now this calls for a closer look... more

Canon Takes Its .brand to the World, Moves Its Global Site to .CANON

As the .brand movement continues to gain momentum across the globe, this week's announcement of yet another high-profile .brand launch was fantastic news for the industry. Japanese powerhouse Canon publicly announced the transition of its global homepage from www.canon.com to www.global.canon and even created a simple, yet powerful image to highlight the innovative move. more

ICANN’s Contract Not Enforceable on WHOIS Accuracy

This may or may not come as a shock to some of you, but ICANN's contract with the Domain Name Registrars, in terms of WHOIS inaccuracy is not enforceable. Bear with me. The ability of ICANN to enforce against a Registrar who fails to correct or delete a domain with false WHOIS does not exist. more

Branding with New gTLDs: The Next Marketing Frontier

New gTLDs can be an efficient way to immediately propel a registrant's online relevance and profitability. Registrants are the companies, organizations and individuals who seek to better utilize the Internet to reach their goals. Marketing Professionals acting on their behalf should understand that protection mechanisms for new gTLDs have been created by ICANN. New gTLDs are powerful and inexpensive marketing tools that have improved measures of online stability and security... more