Google Sued Over Parked Domain Ads

Documents filed in the California Northern District Court show that Hal K. Levitte is suing Google Inc.

It’s been reported that Levitte ran an advertising campaign for over 2 months and received 202,528 impressions from parked pages. Apparently he only received 668 clicks and zero conversions.

It’s alleged that Levitte spent $136.11 on advertising on parked domains and error pages, which equates to 15.3% of his $887.67 ad campaign.

So, what do you do when your $800 ad campaign doesn’t work? Well, if you live in America, the chances are that you carry a lawyer with you everywhere you go, so its just a matter of pressing the “on button” and hey presto!

Seriously though, I don’t know all the details; he might have a case! I would have thought the legal fees would be more than $800. Based purely on the financials, this thing doesn’t make sense to me.

Nominet Changes DRS Policy and Procedure

UK based Nominet is changing its dispute resolution policy with the new changes coming into effect on July 29 2008.

While there has been a truckload of modifications, here are a couple that stand out:

1. For those disputes where there is a response, the case goes into mediation and you have to pay an expert fee of £750 plus VAT.

2. “Respondents can pay for an Expert decision if the Complainant declines to pay, in order to request a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.”

3. A “likelihood of confusion” factor has been introduced. This means that a threatened use of a domain name may be evidence of an Abusive Registration.

A full summary of the changes is available on the Nominet web site.

Carlsbad Takes Legal Action Over Golf Course Domain

A lawsuit filed in the federal court in San Diego claims that Prince Reza Shah hijacked and unlawfully profited from the domain name thecrossingsatcarlsbad.com.

SignOnSanDiego reports “according to a domain registration site, Shah owns more than 280 names, some of which are for sale. Among the domain names are “tiger-woods.mobi” and “trump-golf.mobi.”

Apparently the city held a contest in 2006 to name the golf course and announced the name on Oct. 18, 2006.  Shah applied for the trademark on Nov. 30, 2006.

New Security Flaws In ICANN Proposal

Last month I talked about ICANNs new proposal to allow domain names with non Latin characters. The media has yet to realize the true implications of this, so I’m going to spell it out in “plain English”.

• www.pàypal.com
• www.ebày.com
• www.bànk.com
• www.päy.com

Notice that mark on your screen? In German its called an umlaut, also known as an accent mark.  What does it mean for the Internet:

1. An increase in phishing sites that look like the real thing.
2. A new opportunity for typosquatters to profit from registering domain names.

So when is an a, not an à’ ? What happens when an international visitor goes to www.pàypal.com in their browser? Will they go to www.paypal.com or www.pàypal.com? That depends on the characterset they use!

For domainers, its time to start thinking about those new domain names to hand register. For corporates, it time to think about tracking down all those domain names with a view to getting them registered when this thing goes live.

Adobe Trademarks Air & Goes After Domains

It’s been reported that Adobe is sending letters to people using the word AIR. James Whittaker, creator of the freshAIRapps.com says he was on the receiving end of a letter.

“You may not incorporate the Adobe AIR trademark, or any other Adobe trademark, in whole or in part, in the title of your Developer Application or in your company name, domain name or the name of a service related to Adobe AIR.”

It sounds like oxygen theft to me.

.UG Regulator Takes A Chill Pill

Back in 2006 the The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) expressed some concern around the .ug ccTLD. Now there seems to be a change of heart. In an interview, Patrick Mwesigwa, UCC’s technical manager said “There is no immediate intention of claiming that domain name”.

It’s been reported that entrepreneur Charles Musisi has managed Uganda domain names for the past 12 years. He got it from IANA back in 1995.

Apparently there are 4,000 .ug domain names in a country where 50,000 people use the Internet.

ICANN Domains Redirectred & Blog Hacked

For about 20 minutes on June 26, 2008, the domains iana.com, iana-servers.com, icann.com and icann.net displayed this message:

“You think that you control the domains but you don’t! Everybody knows wrong. We control the domains including ICANN! Don’t you believe us?”

ICANN was quiet about this until recently where it posted a Response to Recent Security Threats stating:

“The redirect was noticed and corrected within 20 minutes; however it may have taken anywhere up to 48 hours for the redirect to be entirely removed from the Internet.”

“In a separate and unrelated incident a few days later, attackers used a very recent exploit in popular blogging software WordPress to target the ICANN blog. The attack was noticed immediately and the blog taken offline while an analysis was run. That analysis pointed to an automated attack.”

“ICANN has started an internal review of its existing security procedures to see if there are any lessons that can be learnt”

Do you get the feeling that ICANN’s decision of .WhatEverYouWant could be the issue?

Snapnames SSL Cert Expires

It seems that Snapnames is still working on the problems. When you search for domains using the advanced search or search box, you get warning about a certificate expiring:

This is really quite strange as Overture belongs to Yahoo. When you visit the link you get:

To VIP Status: OK
Server Status: OK

The title tag changes to “Hello from Apache ”

and then it diverts to the Overture Small Business website. Perhaps Snapnames has included some Yahoo code somewhere?

Snapnames Returns After Outage

Snapnames sent me the email (below) a few hours ago. I have highlighted in bold the interesting bits.

—

Dear SnapNames Customers:

As you are likely aware, the SnapNames service was unavailable between last Thursday evening U.S. Pacific time and today.  We are pleased to tell you functionality has now been restored and that important data, including transaction history, has been fully retained.

Please note that auctions scheduled to close between July 4-7 will now close at (time EDT) on Tuesday, July 8. Please monitor any auctions accordingly.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during this time.  Should you have furtherquestions, you can reach us here:

Technical Support:         support@snapnames.com
Telephone:                    (800) 385-4075 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+ 1 503 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

Sincerely,
The SnapNames Team
—

Their website reads:

Thank you for your patience during the recent outage to our service. The SnapNames system is again fully functional and ready to accept your orders and bids.

Please note, auctions scheduled to close between July 4-7 will now close on Tuesday, July 8 or later. Please monitor any auctions accordingly. If you have questions, please contact us at supp...@snapnames.com.

Snapnames Down – No Answer!

One of the 3 major backordering companies is currently down. I put a call into the SnapNames support phone number, nobody answered and it went to voicemail – so I left a message.

Not only is this very unprofessional, but it gives their competitors such as NameJet and Pool a  clear advantage.

There has been some discussion on DNF and a thread on NamePros regarding this issue, but nobody from Snapnames has posted. If you know what the situation is, please contact me.