UK Businessman in Heated Dispute Over .AE Domain

As if the .ae top-level domain craze could stand to get more sensational, Michael Reed, a businessman from the United Kingdom, is complaining that the UAE domain regulator, .aeDA unlawfully took back a domain he had legitimately registered. The domain in question is Irena.ae. Reed owns a 12-year-old trademark for Irena, a nutritional supplement, in Europe and the UK.

According to Reed, however, when the UAE government made a deal with IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Association, they snipped his registration from over his own registrar’s head. The regulator .aeDA argues that Reed did not register the domain until two days after the IRENA EU statute and that he posted a “for sale” advertisement on youcanbuythiswebsite.com. When they contacted him, they said he did not respond in a timely manner.

Reed contends that he never offered the domain for sale. The .aeDA asserted that its policies grant it permission to revoke registration of domains that are identical to inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), but there is no mention of it in the policy document. Reed is threatening to pull his business out of the UAE completely. Now it will be up to the UAE to decide which is more important to them: their inter-governmental agreements or the business interests and potential commercial benefits of one man.

Source: Arabian Business
Photo: Flickr

Sears loses dispute for my-gofer domains

What do the domains my-gofer.biz,.info.,.net,.org,and .info have in common? Sears Brands, LLC does not have rights to any of them. They apparently thought they did, however, and took the case before an arbitrator. MyGofer is the chosen name and trademark of Sears’ shopping service. Their main website is mygofer.com Sears does own the legitimate MYGOFER trademark.

My-gofer.org is a website for Stage/Film/TV where performers can showcase their talents, and it is a legitimate business. According to ICANN rules of its domain dispute policy, a complainant must satisfy three elements in order to prove that a domain should be transferred to them: 1. Trademark or common law mark,that the domain is confusingly similar to a business name or trademark 2. that the respondent has no reasonable right to the domain, and 3. that the respondent operated in bad faith.

While the first element was undeniable, even by the respondent, the second two were equally deniable. The panel ruled that the respondent was using the two of the domains for legitimate business and had plans to use the others for the same business, which is not in direct competition with Sears or its MyGofer website. Furthermore, there was no evidence that they acted in bad faith, thus no cybersquatting. In this case, Sears loses.

Source: UDRPsearch
Photo: Flickr

Domain Convergence Conference in August

Registration is now open for the second annual Domain Convergence conference to take place in Toronto, August 13-14. It is a conference for domainers to learn from each other, share ideas, network, and acquire useful tools. The first event was held in Niagara Falls, Ontario. In addition to general domainer networking, the conference will feature a session about .ca country top-level domains.

“The idea for Domain Convergence was born from our local DomainerDinner events, where domainers get together for an evening of social networking and open information exchange. Domain Convergence is taking the social concept further and adds sessions that will provide you with valuable information and bring new ideas & partnerships.”

Early registration is C$ 649.00. This seems like an excellent opportunity for both experienced and new domainers interested in exchanging ideas. If you are in Canada or anywhere nearby, it might be worth your time if you can write the registration off as a business expense. As the domain landscape is quickly changing, particularly with the new gTLDs announced by ICANN, it is a good idea for domainers to begin meeting all over the world.

Source: DomainConvergence.com

Is mass web confusion on the horizon?

As ICANN’s expansion of the gTLD landscape grows closer, many bloggers and tech analysts are speculating mass confusion with ensue, that people will not distinguish .food from .eat domains. Some worry that the default .com for businesses will fall by the wayside and make it difficult for users to find the sites they want.

Forget that the practice of inexperienced web users typing “.com” for anything they want instead of using a search engine is sheer ignorance that should be corrected rather than coddled. Forget even that if a company really wants people to go to McDonalds.fastfood instead of McDonalds.com, they will undoubtedly pour millions of dollars into advertising it until people are typing it in their dreams at night. Instead, we should just focus on the reality. The days of .com supremacy are far from over. There is no need to even worry about that.

What the change means for businesses is more about focusing specialties, than general corporate sites. Wyatt’s Widgets will probably still have wyattswidgets.com, but now that main site can provide a central portal to their subsidiaries: sprockets.wyatts, cogs.wyatts and anything else they can imagine. Web site owners are certainly not interested in trying to confuse users. Look for more portals, redirections and large ad campaigns rather than people haplessly tapping in cheapfood.com when they really wanted cheap.food.

Photo: SXC

Google wins domain name case

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ordered an individual in India, Herit Shah, to turn over the rights of his domain name “googblog.com” to Google. The search engine and cloud computing giant had filed a complaint against Shah for holding a domain that infringes on the Google and Blogger trademarks, a practice commonly known as cybersquatting.

Google had initially contacted Shah and requested to resolve the issues before filing with the WIPO, but they were unable to resolve the dispute. Cybersquatters knowingly register domain names that are similar or sometimes even identical to company trademarks in order to coerce companies into paying large sums of money to purchase the domains from them. It is an illegal practice and one that large corporations have been fighting more frequently in recent years.

During the proceedings Shah confessed to his wrongdoing, admitting that he intentionally registered the domain, knowing it infringed upon Google intellectual property. He issued an open apology:

“I was in a bad faith that I can legally keep the domain googblog.com … I really did very unfair to Google. I sincerely apologise to Google for infringement, misuse of their intellectual property (GOOGBLOG.COM),” Shah stated.

Source: India Times

Microsoft's new low-cost servers to compete with Linux

Microsoft intends to promote small business servers running Windows Server 2008 in Asian countries. Their hope is to present small businesses with an alternative to Linux servers, which are growing in popularity in Asia. This scaled-down edition of Windows Server 2008 will function on single-processor servers with fewer than 15 users and will be priced at around $1,029.

They are looking to partner with HP, IBM, and Dell to help small businesses get started on a small budget.

“There’s a big saving on cost, because businesses won’t have to worry about bringing in technical expertise to deploy the OS,” said Khoobchandani (senior director of business and marketing for Microsoft Singapore).

On competition posed by Linux, he said the familiarity of the “established” Windows experience is also expected to “take away the complexity of how to use a server”.

Linux provides more advanced features such as virtualization and fewer imposed restrictions, but Microsoft believes small businesses will not have an immediate need for those features. They believe the trade-off will be having a server with a “familiar interface” that will make starting their businesses easier and more affordable.

Source: ZDNet Asia

Bank of America receives a split settlement in domain dispute

For cybersquatters, the recent Bank of America merger with Merrill Lynch was seen as a golden opportunity to snatch up some related domain names. One company, Webadviso, seized that opportunity, registering bofaml.com, mlbofa.com, bofamerrill.com, and merrillbofa.com. According to ICANN policy on domain name trademark disputes, the National Arbitration Forum heard Bank of America and Merrill Lynch’s (BOFAML) claims and those of Webadviso.

Webadviso referred to themselves as “domainers” and argued that they had the right to park domains and generate pay-per-click revenue. BOFAML argued that the ordering of the letters is too similar to the combined registered trademarks of the merged companies. Webadviso contended that “BOFA” stands for “two highly regarded Chinese characters meaning treasure (bo) and rich (fa).

The arbitrators found that bofaml.com and mlbofa.com must be transferred to the merged corporation, whereas bofamerrill.com and merrillbofa.com would not. The first two, the forum said, were too close to the “Bank of America” trademark (bofa) and should be handed over to them. The latter two, however, were not similar to any registered trademarks since, even though the companies had merged, the names are from two separate registered trademarks. Furthermore, there is no indication that Bank of America intends to use that combination of names.

Source: UDRPSearch
Photo: Flickr

Researchers warn many websites are vulnerable

White Hat Security has release client data indicating that over 60 percent of their clients’ websites have serious vulnerabilities, and websites have an average of seven unfixed vulnerabilities. One of the most serious security flaws fond is the infamous cross-site scripting (XSS). White Hat estimates that there is a 65 percent chance that any given website has XSS bugs.

The average number of vulnerabilities that a website will have over the duration of its existence is 17, ranging from XSS flaws, spoofing bugs, and SQL injection to session fixation. According to White Hat, social networking sites have an 82 percent chance of having security flaws, something that might concern the many millions of people who provide those sites with personal information.

There are two factors that can prevent or slow down the process of sites fixing their security flaws: 1. The amount of effort and time that it takes to find the flaws that could be scattered and numerous, and 2. new vulnerabilities can emerge after old ones are fixed. For this reason, many security flaws go for month unfix or never get fixed at all.

Grossman (CTO of White Hat) says how an organization prioritizes its vulnerability remediation varies from company to company. “How do you judge risk, allocate your resources? You need two strategies — one for the Websites that have not yet been built, and another for ones that are currently live.”

Source: Dark reading
Photo: Flickr

Dell to use laptop chips in mini servers

Via is known for its low power, energy efficient processors, and they often used in portable devices. Using one to run a server seems unfathomable. But Dell has introduced a new ultra-light server called the XS11-VX8 that will rely on the netbook-friendly processors for its computing.

The servers are design especially for light server loads, such as the type of load that would come with hosting websites. The servers will cost around $400, considerably less than the average server, and are part of an effort to reduce power and cooling costs in data centers. It will consume less than 30 watts, a small fraction of power consumption of most servers. Each case will contain up to 12 1.3GHz Nano U2250 based servers.

The XS11-VX8 will be capable of running 64-bit operating systems, which is perfectly suited for Linux -based web servers. Although such servers will not be in direct competition with servers running Intel and AMD processors, it might be tapping into a low-end market neglected by the high powered processor giants.

Source: The Inquirer
Photo: Wikipedia

Study: Other TLDs Important, .Com Still King

Domain giant Sedo recently conducted a survey at Internet World 2009. Out of the 100 participants polled, two-thirds said that a site’s domain extension says a lot about its credibility. While 90% of those surveyed own a .com domain, 45% said they use .uk as their main domain. In addition, more than half said they owned other TLDs such as .eu, .org, and .asia.

Nora Nanayakkara, the Director of Business Development at Sedo, had this to say:

Our research confirms what we’re seeing in our marketplace and is good news for the wider .uk brand. While .com continues to claim more than 75 per cent of all new TLDs sold, .co.uk is proving to be a sturdy investment, especially in representing a local trusted brand. Average sales are now valued at £1,004, making .co.uk a wise purchase from a branding perspective for those companies looking to establish themselves in the UK.

Keep in mind that though only 100 people were surveyed, none of the results are surprising. As more and more businesses and individuals plug into the web, .com domains are becoming harder and harder to come by and alternatives are becoming more desirable.

Source: DomainInformer