The Domain Industry News » April 19, 2010

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April 20, 2010
1:21
Shipping Company Loses Challenge for NOL.com Domain Name
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Domain name with Fortune 500 history involved in domain dispute.

Shipping company Neptune Orient Lines Limited has lost a UDRP challenge against the owner of the domain name NOL.com.

The domain’s owner, cnwonder.com or Wu Guiqiang, said he didn’t register the domain name with the shipping company’s NOL trademark in mind. He also used the domain name for a service called “Names Online”, or NOL for short.

The panelist accepted that the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith, and that the owner had rights or legitimate interests in the name.

What makes this case more interesting is the history of the domain name. It was previously owned by Sprint Nextel and registered at Mark Monitor. In the dispute, the respondent claimed he registered the domain name on March 14, 2009. Indeed, the domain name transferred to his control and to a different domain name registrar (Answerable) around that date. ~~But the domain name didn’t expire. It’s possible that Sprint sold the domain name to the respondent,~~ (turns out it did expire. The expiration date I saw was the registry date in whois. It was sold in an expired domain name auction for $26,000 in 2009). but I find it strange that he wouldn’t have brought this up in his response. If Sprint owned it for some legitimate purpose (Nextel OnLine?), and he acquired it from Sprint, that would seem to be a good defense.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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1:01
Public Comment: Proposed Bylaws Amendment to Article III, Section 5, in Furtherance of the BGC Recommendation, Adopted by the Board on 12 March 2010, in Response to Reconsideration Request 10-1
» ‎ ICANN Announcements

19 April 2010

April 19, 2010
22:38
Not All “Generic” Domain Names are Generic
» ‎ Elliot's Blog
When I first started buying domain names in around 2003, I didn’t understand the legalities of registering domain names that contained trademarks. In fact, I registered a few domain names that were infringing on the marks of other companies. After getting a cease and desist letter from one company and giving the registration fee domain name to them, I decided I didn’t want to take a chance with this type of name.

In going through my portfolio to try and sell some names to end users, I realized that I have a few names that aren’t as generic as I once thought.

I own a number of city-keyword domain names, and I started looking through them to sell a few to end user buyers. I own quite a few cityMortgage.com and cityMortgages.com domain names. One is a city in Texas with somewhere around 100,000 people, and I am sure many of the city’s homeowners have mortgages, and there are a number of companies offering mortgages in this city.

In doing some research, I found that there is a bank in Maryland that uses the Texas city name + Bank (I don’t want to draw attention to the name I own, so I am leaving the bank name out). Without getting into legalities since I am not a legal expert, it would probably be okay to sell this City Mortgages.com name to a mortgage company in Texas, but if I pitched it to the Bank in Maryland, they could very well claim trademark infringement. I suppose they could do that anyway, but having an email from me offering to sell the name would make their case stronger.

Point of this post is that when you do reach out to end users to sell generic domain names, you need to be sure that the domain name is actually generic. I almost sent this bank an email assuming they were located in the city rather than using the name as their trademark, and had I not seen the Maryland area code on the site, I probably would have sent it.

There are many generic terms that are used by companies to form distinctive trademarks, and there is a whole lot of gray area, so use caution.
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22:34
If ICANN Were a Democracy…
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Comments overwhelmingly opposed to .xxx. But that doesn’t answer the question about what ICANN should do.

I decided to check in on the .XXX comment period today to see how the comments were coming in. This is what I saw:

Thanks to an effort by Focus on the Family, there are over 13 pages of comment titles for the current comment period. Many of them are form submissions with the same title and same content.

So how much should these comments from “MITTENS1120″ and “eagleswings07″ weigh in on ICANN’s decision on granting ICM registry .xxx? Most of the comments just say porn is bad, and don’t actually answer the question ICANN posed about its options going forward. Few of them add value.

The truth is, few people from both the general public and the adult entertainment industry are in favor of .xxx. Most of the loud people are against it.

But the issue here isn’t about porn any more. It’s about a mistake that ICANN made. You can argue if the mistake was “approving” .xxx to begin with or withdrawing that approval later, but one of these decisions was wrong.

What if ICANN doesn’t let ICM Registry have .xxx now? The .xxx domain will surely be released in the new TLD round by someone. And ICANN will have a lawsuit to contend with.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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21:43
Demand Media Adds Two Board Members
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
Demand Media bolsters board with media and web analytics talent.

Demand Media, parent company of eNom, has added two members to its board of directors.

Peter Guber, chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group and Josh James, who co-founded Omniture, have joined the board effective immediately.

Guber founded Mandalay in 1995 after leaving Sony Pictures Entertainment, where he was CEO. James founded web analytics firm Omniture in 1996 and took it public in 2006. Adobe acquired Omniture in 2009 for $1.8B.

Demand Media produces over 4,000 pieces of content every day including articles and videos. Its content is distributed to a number of its web properties including LiveStrong, eHow, and Trails.com. It also owns eNom, BulkRegister, and domain name parking company HotKeys.

The company is rumored to be considering its IPO options, with a possible initial public offering later this year. The appointment of a major media executive and a successful serial entrepreneurto its board seem to reinforce this rumor.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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19:27
Domain Name Wire Auction is Now Live
» ‎ Domain Name Wire
First ever auction runs through April 27.

OK, don’t freak out. I’m not starting to compete with Latona, Sedo, Snap, etc. But I am running a one time auction on the Snapnames platform in conjunction with a number of different bloggers.

Last January I was talking with Craig Snyder of SnapNames and I said, “Hey, why don’t we hold an auction on SnapNames with a bunch of inventory from domain bloggers?”. He liked the idea, so I ran with it. I assembled about 50 domain names primarily from domain bloggers, but also from a few larger portfolio holders. I think you’ll like the end result:

-Domains starting at $99 with no reserve including 2 four letter .com’s registered in 1998, a three letter .net, and a three character .com.

-All of the domains are popular terms, and 80% of them are also registered in an “inferior” TLD (e.g. we’re selling .com, but .net or .org is registered).

-All but two domains priced under $5k, and most under $1k, meaning there’s something for every budget.

-Only about 50 domains, so it’s easy to sort through.

To get bidding going, I put some of my personal domains in at below what I paid for them. It’s a risk, but hopefully they’ll get bid up.

So check out the auction now. Bid early and often.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.
Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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17:38
Bateaux.com sells for 25,000 EUR
» ‎ DomainNews

Domain brokerage Sedo has sold the domain name Bateaux.com for 25,000 EUR .

16:28
WebdesignContest.de
» ‎ Domain Smalltalk

Das richtige Portal für Design Wettbewerbe in Deutschland fehlt noch. Dabei kann ich mir gut vorstellen, dass der Bedarf vorhanden ist. Viele Leute suchen nach einem Design für ihre Website und würden lieber einen Wettbewerb starten als sich für einen Designer im Vorfeld zu entscheiden.

Jedenfalls, wer immer diese Aufgabe irgendwann umsetzten möchte, findet hier mit…

16:24
Maraton.net
» ‎ Domisfera

The phenomenon of athletics is more popular every year. The fun runs are becoming more mainstream society and become more dramatic and compelling, thus in turn, that many federations to find financial resources and funding thanks to the rise of popular races that year after year go professional. At the same time, it is possible to turn more and more passionate, supporters and athletes both in short distance races as medium and long.

The distance test exlencencia-marathon - with its 42 195 m win new fans each day worldwide. In fact, there are many marathons that gather over the world. Without going any further, only in Spain are organized every year maratonias various races in various provinces: Valencia, La Rioja, Madrid, Barcelona, Vizcaya, Guipuzcoa, Gran Canaria ...
Although probably the best known and most popular marathon in the world is that of New York, which brings together all the years thousands of people at all levels.

Coinciding with the Madrid Marathon takes place this coming April 25, is taking place on Sedo's domain auction maraton.net. This domain is indexed in search engines since 2001 and has around 1500-2000 hits per month. It is ideal for positioning at the level of speaking.
The reservation is quite good and ranges from 1 to 499 euros.

Other domains are also for sale on Sedo are nordicwalking.es or caminatanordica.es

16:21
ModernDesigns.de
» ‎ Domain Smalltalk

Viele Webdesigner sind naturgemäß sehr kreativ, wenn es darum geht, den passenden Firmennamen oder die passende Domain auszuwählen. Modern Designs trotzt nur so von moderner Kreativität, denn viele Kunden wollen genau das: ein modernes Design.

Dabei ist Modern Designs ein international verwendbarer Begriff. Als generische Domain bringt sie auch deutliche Vorteile in der Suchmaschinenoptimierung gegenüber Fantasiebegriffen.…
16:17
CSStutorial.de
» ‎ Domain Smalltalk

Es ist wirklich erstaunlich, wieviele altmodische Websites mit Tabellenlayout oder gar Frames Tag für Tag online gehen. Dabei liegen die Vorteile von CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) für Layout- und Formatierungsaufgaben auf der Hand. Auch wenn viele Leute CSS für kompliziert halten, ist es eigentlich nur eine Frage des Verständnisses. Mit einem guten CSS Tutorial kann man…
16:12
Was ist eine Premium Domain?
» ‎ Domain Smalltalk

So eine Definition ist sicherlich Ansichtssache, aber wenn ich sehe, was überall als Premium Domain oder Top Domain tituliert wird, überlege ich schon, wo man eine Grenze ziehen soll. OK, es gibt sicher genug Newbies, die gerade mal erfahren haben, dass irgendeine Domain für einen hohen Betrag verkauft wurde. Ahnungslos registrieren sie dann irgendwelche Domains und spammen das Domainforum und…
12:15
Designerweb.eu
» ‎ Domain Smalltalk

Die Domain designerweb.eu steht zum Verkauf. Designerweb ist ein high-brandabler Name, der international eingesetzt werden kann! Die tld .eu überzeugt dadurch, dass sie länderübergreifend eingesetzt und akzeptiert wird. Ein hohes Plus gegenüber einer einfachen Länder-tld.

Webdesign ist ein immer begehrter werdender Begriff! So verwundert es einem nicht, das schon sämtliche brauchbaren Begriffe belegt sind unter divergenten tlds. So ist es…

11:00
Bido, 22 months after
» ‎ Domisfera

Bido , the platform for buying and selling domains created by Sahar Sarid is very close to the 4,000 sales.

The first domain sold dates from June 18, 2008 ( discountimages.com ). It has been 22 months. In a show of transparency, you can see all the sales together with the bids here .

Almost 1950 domains have achieved a sale price equal to or less than $ 30. About 700 domains have passed the barrier of $ 100, 300 the barrier of $ 200 and more than 100 domains exceeded $ 500.

With a 6.06 average daily sales, the 100 domains were sold more expensive:

Read the rest of this article ...

10:12
Latona’s 200 premium .mx ccTLDS auction ends today
» ‎ DomainNews

200 premium .mx domain names are being auctioned at Latona’s Daily Domain Auction.
10:09
Neustar will report its first quarter 2010 financial results on April 28
» ‎ DomainNews

Neustar,has recently announced that they will hold a conference call and webcast to discuss the first quarter 2010 operating and financial results.
10:08
AAA wins domain name dispute
» ‎ DomainNews

American Automobile Association,also known as AAA,has recently been awarded the domain name aaaautoinsurance.com.
8:26
ICM Registry Goes on Offensive for .XXX, But Still Has No Adult Industry Support
» ‎ DomainNews

ICM Registry has published an open letter to ICANN and the internet community as part of their campaign to lobby for ICANN to approve the .XXX Top Level Domain. The letter notes ICM is disappointed with the possibility that ICANN will disregard the findings of the independent review, but ignores the claims by the adult industry that they do not want .XXX.

7:14
You’re a Black Hat Seo? You’re going to jail: security industry sees Black Hat Seos as criminals!
» ‎ Black Hat Domainer
So you think you’re a real Black Hat Seo? Then, what does “SEO poisoning”, “SEO poisoned page” or “blackhat SEO kit” means?

Well, that’s what the other side calls out little tools. Here’s a translation so that you can read here or this nice new report from Shopos here: [www.sophos.com]
- SEO page: Keyword optimized page
- SEO kit: Auto content creation script
- SEO poisoning: SEO optimizing a page
- SEO poisoned page: SEO optimized page
- Search engine crawler: Spider bot
Hey, Shopos,CA: Black Hat Seos are not crooks. 95% of the Black Hat Seos I know of don’t do malware. The security industry is looking at this in a completely wrong “poisoned” perspective.

These crooks are using Black Hat tools to get traffic, to find people, that’s all. Just as they are using everything else on the net that can bring them people, like mail spam, torrents, emule, instant messaging, whatever. Unless you think mail or IM are evil also?!

They are just playing Google. Why don’t you blame Google instead? You easily blame Facebook when it allows shitty app to spread malware. Now why is Google different? Not in traffic size, last time I checked.

They have created “Black Hat Seo” categories on their security blogs alongside with real bad stuff like Rootkits. I have to be honest in the end I can still take some advantage from this. I have subscribed to their RSS feeds and learned some new tricks, like the fake PDF which is a simple HTML with links (EVIL!), and that has been used lately to gain link juice from Scribd.

Security experts please realign your ideas correctly: one can put links anywhere, one can drive traffic for those links in many possible ways, what matters is what’s on the other side of those links!

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The Domain Industry News » April 19, 2010

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