Domains

Domain Strategy Can Triple Your Organic Traffic

September 28th 2010

The core of digital strategy is finding your firm’s unfair advantage. This means disrupting symmetrical thinking (large goals need large solutions) with asymmetrical solutions (large results can come from tiny, smart changes.) Here are examples of ways to beat competitors and gain new traffic using domain strategy. Think of Your Domains as a Team of […]

Update on Internet Law: Domain Name Law & Social Media at INTA

May 25th 2010

J. Scott Evans is hands down the person to turn to on emerging domain and online IP law issues. He’s moderating a panel discussion with David Taylor of Hogan Lovells International, and Scot Minden of  Symantec. Is a gTLD expensive compared to dot.com? Taylor offered that generic terms as regular doamins have recently sold for […]

China Prevents All Individuals from Registering “.cn” Domain Names: Yikes!

December 28th 2009

What will they know of China, who only “.cn” know? The Associated Press reports that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has posted requirements that all “.cn” china domains be issued only to registered businesses. AP’s coverage also says that any sites that have not registered with the ministry will be “taken off the […]

Court Rules Domain Registration Privacy Services = ‘Material Falsification’

November 16th 2009

There are lots of legitimate reasons people don’t want their names on domain-ownership records. These range from exercising the privilege of anonymous speech, to avoiding spam, to simply preserving one’s own privacy. Of course this practice makes tracking down responsible parties for infringement or other offenses harder, as it requires a court order to learn […]

Fifth Circuit Faults Court for Not Considering Fair Use in Domain Squatting

May 1st 2009

In a win for both fair use advocates and brand holders, the Fifth Circuit has interpreted the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), and the duty of trial courts to carefully consider fair use and irreparable harm issues when ruling on a request for injunctive relief.  See Southern Co. v. Dauben Inc. The […]

Update: Avoid Facebook Phishing Scam at fbstarter.com and baction.net

April 30th 2009

For the second consecutive day, Facebook has been attacked by phishing scams. Unsuspecting Facebook users get a message from a friend urging them to “check this out” and including a link to a Web page that appears to be a Facebook log-in page.  It is, however, a fake site which steals their log-in credentials, and […]

Google Nemesis and The Growing Business of Typosquatting

April 3rd 2009

Do you know what the domain is for Google Books? Those who’d guess the obvious, www.GoogleBooks.com, would unfortunately be wrong.  Instead of finding the real Google Books, they’d arrive at a domain squatter selling tools for joining them in that business and using a Google’s good name in their domain to take revenue from Adwords and […]

Even the Pope Dislikes ICANN’S Liberal gTLD Policy

March 11th 2009

Msgr. Carlo Maria Polvani, a Vatican diplomat, has issued a warning to the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit entity responsible for the Internet’s naming system, as they considering allowing virtually any word to be used as a top-level domain. Establishing religiously themed Internet domain names would lead […]

Google, Gambling, Gay XBOX & More Online Law “News”

March 4th 2009

Will Obama Break Google Up? Stop laughing. Christine Varney, Obama’s pick to head Justice’s anti-trust unit, describes Google as “quickly gathering market power in what I would call an online computing environment in the clouds”…“When all our enterprises move to computing in the clouds and there is a single firm that is offering a comprehensive […]

Getting Slimed with Deceptive Marketing

March 1st 2009

Whenever one of my web domains is up for renewal, I receive a letter in the mail from Domain Renewal Group, a dba of Brandon Gray Internet Services, Inc. Despite verbiage that says otherwise, it appears to be a bill. Further, there’s an attempt to conflate the need for renewal with the option of renewing […]