In a fashion reminiscent of investment pump and dump scams, domain sellers list domain names for sale and pump cheap traffic to the names to make them look appealing and then dump the names on unsuspecting buyers.  These scammers list domains for sale on domain aftermarkets that advertise the inflated traffic information and dump the domains off on a buyer who is likely unaware that the traffic is temporary. This is not a new scam, but it appears that we have some damning evidence of scammers in action on TDNAM.com. Continue reading

John Motson, the domainer behind DnXpert.com and the ebook Domaining Manifesto has concocted a new domain auction site with a twist that should get people talking. The recipe?  Take 1 high value domain, mix in a little Bido.com-type buzz, a dash of Million Dollar Home Page ingenuity and a dash of  entrepreneurial spirit and you get MysteryDomainAuction.com (updated note: this is now NOT an affiliate link).

Motson’s Mystery Domain Auction is auctioning off one mystery domain name valued at $10,000 over the course of 100 days.  The mystery domain will be revealed on day 50.  Bidding starts at .01 and Motson has a goal to reach a total take of $1,000,000.

$1 million for a $10,000 domain ?  You heard me right.  The trick here is that the domain will sell to 1 person for $10,000 whatever the final price is on the last day, but everyone else having paid in their bids prior in an all-pay auction format means that the total sum will be $1 million before Motson even reaches a bid of $150.  Pretty smart.

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Chris Dannen of FastCompany blogged his thoughts on the pending release of new TLDs . Dannen feels that the release of the new domain extension will spur a rebirth of cybersquatting.  Too bad Dannen, like many others, has bought in to the idea that cybersquatting equals buying and selling domain names or merely owning more than one domain.  He cites an example of an Iraq War veteran and friend of his who bought up and sold domain names to supplement his income. I’m not sure what this friend of his owns but the act of buying domain names and selling them is not really cybersquatting.  Cybersquatting is illegal. Speculating on domains is not. Owning thousands of domains is not. Selling domains is not.

Dannen also buys in to the message that seems to be one propelling the introduction of new TLDs forward “the Web is running out of memorable domain names.”  Highly unlikely given the number of TLDs we currently have, language variations and made up words and names that are created every day.  Even the name ipod, a name he uses in his piece, meant nothing a mere 7 years prior.

Cyber squatters will suddenly have billions of new domain names to purchase for only a few dollars — no longer will they have to rely on buying domains more expensively secondhand. Trademark infringement suits will balloon from tens or hundreds of domains to thousands and tens of thousands.

Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch follows up to the FastCompany piece, essentially stating that nobody really cares about all these new extensions.  Sure there will be squatters and speculators grabbing up a bunch of domains and it may keep the lawyers busy. We can however look at the history of the latest and greatest new TLD and see that this game is pretty much played out.  A new TLD needs an audience and type-ins and a reason for people to gravitate to it.

As Kincaid points out, people generally don’t navigate to these new TLDs through typeins contrary to what Dannen seems to be saying. The new TLDs are not recession proof in our opinion either.  How well are those .mobi aftermarket sales going right about now?  The Fortune article by Paul Sloan talking about domains as recession proof is clearly dated, given the downward trend that all in the domain space have been feeling.

According to the Miami Herald, bodybuilder Steven Thiele, has been found liable of cyber-piracy and trademark dilution.  He was ordered to pay $3000 plus legal fees.  Thiele had previously demanded the Indian tribe pay $500,000 each for the domain names miccosukeetribeofindiansofflorida.com, miccosukeetribeofindians.com and billycypress.com. The tribe recently had won a default judgment when Thiele did not respond.

Thiele may wish to count his blessings in this case, considering Verizon was just recently awarded $50,000 each for the OnlineNic domain name squatting violations that were also default judgments.

Government watchdog JudicialWatch posted an article today declaring the domain name Change.gov, the location of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s newest website may have been illegally granted.  According to the site, Obama’s team initially requested and was denied use of the domain name Change.gov, but the domain was later granted after pressure from his staff. 

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Days after our post that social media user names are becoming more like domain names, an issue over a Twitter user name has piqued the interest of an internet heavy-weight.  According to a seesmic post from Kevin Rose, creator of Digg.com,  Social media company Room214 has requested that the user, a school teacher, who is using @room214 give them the user name.   The company Room 214 uses the Twitter user name @room_214 and wants the better name now.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, reverse domain name hijacking is defined on wikipedia as “the practice of inequitably unseating domain name registrants by accusing them of violating weak or non-existent trademarks related to the domain name.”  In essence what we seem to be seeing here is a similar case of someone trying to unseat a Twitter user, or a case of reverse user name hijacking on Twitter.  According to Stepan Mazurov of Room 214 “once it goes through . . . we have to protect it”, which seems to imply that they plan to move forward with requesting Twitter give them the user name.

Rose weighed in on this issue and posted a Seesmic video opening up the discussion. As of this writing, there were 12 video replies posted back with varying opinions on the matter, none seem to be from a legal expert, yet.  We suspect more to come as this issue rises to the surface.  Chris Hadley points out the similarities user names have with domain names and how users losing Twitter accounts can become a real nightmare. “What protection do we have over our Twitter accounts . . .  if this guy loses his Twitter account to this company, how do you protect yourself”.

Twitter’s policy states in barebones terms that they reserve the right to take user names and give them to another entity :

We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

Under this policy what happens when you have a generic user name and someone has a trademark on that term, or if your company name or even intials are the same or as another company name ?  There are multiple trademarks for the word United, so which user has the “rights” to that user name under this vague policy?  It seems to be whomever Twitter feels like giving it to.  Will the Twitter account @bmw be given to the auto maker when they come knocking ?

DNN issued our view on the matter in our previous post and it reflects a sentiment similar to what Hadley said

“Just like domain name owners, social media users don’t want the hassle and uncertainty of having to wonder whether their name will be taken away.  Surely, the social media companies don’t want to be in the middle of the disputes either.  Refering to the history of domain names as an example, it would be a safe wager that lawsuits and arbitration over user names is right around the corner.  It would be best for these social media companies to get ahead of the issue as soon as possible and make the user names even more like domain names by providing some level of security and stability to their users.”