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Domain Name Issues In Russia

How are domain names dealt with in Russia? This article discusses current issues related to the registration and assignment of domain names in ".ru" zone (Russian top level country code domain) and trademark protection on Internet. more

Another Attack, Another Reason for the Urgency of DNSSEC Adoption

News broke this week about an attack in Puerto Rico that caused the local websites of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, PayPal, Nike, Dell and Nokia to be redirected for a few hours to a phony website. The website was all black except for a taunting message from the computer hacker responsible for the attack... more

Respondent’s Long Use of JACUZZI in Australia Prevails in Domain Name Dispute

Jacuzzi, Inc., owner of rights in the mark JACUZZI, challenged the domain name jacuzzi.net.au in this first WIPO decision involving the .au domain. The Australian respondent had used the JACUZZI name for nearly 15 years. more

The Dark Side of Decentralized Domain Names

Decentralization is exciting. Headline-grabbing, even. After all, in a world where frustration levels are sky-high and rising, it should not come as a shock that many individuals are willing to embrace what we might call "anti-system solutions." Decentralized solutions, in our case, which come with the ambitious promise of providing everything their centralized counterpart can provide but without centralized points of failure and regulations. In our previous article, we enumerated several advantages associated with decentralized domain names. more

Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Found Where Complainant’s Rights Were of Narrow Geographic Scope

Complainant sells RV parts and accessories in the eastern part of Tennessee. Respondent, no stranger to UDRP proceedings, registers domain names and sets up pages with pay-per-click ads related to the subject of the words in the domain name. Though Complainant had been operating on the web since mid-2004, which is the same year it incorporated, it claimed that its predecessor in interest had been using the ADVENTURERV trademark since 1989. more

French Acquire the .Best New gTLD - Interview with the New Owner

This is an interview with Cyril Fremont, the first French entrepreneur to have acquired a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD). We long waited for innovation in the new gTLD industry and reading between the lines of this interview, one will understand that the reason behind this acquisition is "not" to sell domain names - the way registries do it in 2018. If ".Best" domains remain open to all here, this registry is planning to create innovative projects that will be launched in the near future with some possibly big surprises. more

Protection of Personal Names in Domain Names

David Pecker is the chairman of American Media, Inc., publisher of, among others, National Enquirer and Weekly World News. 'Mr. Ferris' registered the domain name DAVIDPECKER.COM, had a PPC company host it, where it was keyed to ads for porn, because, according to the registrant, the word PECKER was in the domain name. Mr. Pecker brought a UDRP. Although 'Mr. Ferris' (as he is identified in the decision) did not seem (to me) that he could establish a bona fide intent to use the name in conenction with an offering of goods or services, and altohugh there seemed to be plausible evidence of bad faith, the UDRP was denied... more

Search Engines and Registrars Getting Creative with Whois Database?

One of the best sources of information about sites on the web is the Whois database. A trio of patent applications from Go Daddy, published last week at the US Patent and Trademark Office, explores whether adding additional information to the Whois database might help reduce spam, phishing, and other fraudulent practices and improve search engine results. The patent filings from Go Daddy would add reputation information to the published Whois data to let others use it for a number of reasons, including enabling search engines incorporate it into their ranking mechanisms. ...The patent application from Google focuses upon fighting web spam using a wide range of data, including that associated with domain names. ...We can't really be certain that Google is presently using this information, but there are some indications that they may be... more

Do Domain Names Matter? - Part II

This is the second part of a 2-part series article arguing that the decentralization of the Internet will allow the DNS to recede to its earlier, uncontroversial role, before all the lawsuits and screaming matches at ICANN board meetings. To read the first part click here.

Another source of pressure on the DNS was the system's shifting role from one that was primarily mnemonic to one that was meaningful as well. The difference is subtle, but important. Consider the phrase "Every good boy deserves fudge", which music students sometimes learn to help them memorize what notes correspond to the lines of the treble clef. The phrase is helpful, but its content -- boys deserving fudge -- has nothing to do with music. It's mnemonic, but not meaningful.  more

What is WSIS Getting At?

Attacks on ICANN are coming from several different directions, and the list of concerns includes "cybercrime and protection of intellectual property rights."... First, it's not apparent to me that any government can "control" the internet -- and it's even less likely that that control can happen through the DNS. The most that governments will do will be to build walls between nations, requiring their ISPs to point only to approved sites. (China is well on its way to doing this already.) That's not controlling the Internet, that's creating different, national Internets. more

Amazon’s Letter to ICANN Board: It’s Time to Approve Our Applications for .AMAZON TLDs

When ICANN launched the new gTLD program five years ago, Amazon eagerly joined the process, applying for .AMAZON and its Chinese and Japanese translations, among many others. Our mission was -- and is -- simple and singular: We want to innovate on behalf of our customers through the DNS. ICANN evaluated our applications according to the community-developed Applicant Guidebook in 2012; they achieved perfect scores. more

Spam-Friendly Registrar ‘Dynamic Dolphin’ Shuttered by ICANN

Neil Schwartzman writes: Brian Krebs is reporting in KrebsOnSecurity that ICANN last week revoked the charter of Dynamic Dolphin, a registrar that has long been closely associated with spam and cybercrime. "The move came almost five years after this reporter asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to investigate whether the man at the helm of this registrar was none other than Scottie Richter, an avowed spammer who has settled multi-million-dollar spam lawsuits with Facebook, Microsoft and MySpace over the past decade..." more

Cycling Legend Greg LeMond Sues Cybersquatters Upward of $6.6 Million

A federal restraining order has been issued against a father and son accused of registering several domain names based on cycling legend Greg LeMond's name and his company. more

Will Uniform Rapid Suspension Be a Substitute for Defensive Domain Name Registrations?

Many law firms and Intellectual Property departments in charge of managing brands and domain names for their customers or businesses must have had that same question: "how do I protect a brand online under the ICANN new gTLD program?" The first potential answer that is usually offered up to an enquirer is: "the Trademark Clearinghouse does that". As time goes by, and the rules under which the Trademark Clearinghouse operates are better defined and understood this answer becomes clearly fallacious. more

On the Hunt for “Critical Internet Resources”

I'm writing this column in November, and that means that it is time for the traveling circus known as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to come down to earth, unpack its tents and sell tickets for its annual song and dance routine. The script for this year's show has been changed, and after being excluded from the main arena last year at the Athens gig, the headline act of "Critical Internet Resources" is taking a starring role this year in Rio. Some folk are even saying that it is the single most contentious issue to be scheduled at this year's IGF show. So what are "Critical Internet Resources" anyway? If folks are going to spend all this time, energy and carbon emissions traveling to Rio to talk on this topic, then wouldn't it be helpful to understand what it means in the first place? There are probably a number of ways to answer this question, so in this heavily opinionated column I'd like to look at the range of possible answers to this question. more