Domain Auto-Renewal Pros and Cons

Many domain registrars offer a service that will automatically bill your credit card, on or near the anniversary of your domain registration, to renew your domain. Some registrars have this feature set by default, while others require you to opt-in. At any rate, the outcome is that your domain is renewed without any action on your part.

Pros:
1. You do not have to worry about forgetting to renew.
2. If you have several domains, this will save time.
3. You protect your domain from those who might want to snatch it after it expires.

Cons:
1. If you have multiple domains, it can be a large credit or debit deduction from your account that you may not want to occur automatically.
2. You may not want to renew the domain and actually forget to cancel the renewal.
3. If your only problem is forgetfulness, an auto-reminder might be sufficient.

Using auto-renewal is ultimately a preference, and it depends on your needs. If you expect one or the other, however, make sure you read the fine print when you first register your domain.

Photo Source: Flickr

School Prayer Controversy Heats Up

In recent news, two school teachers at Pace High School in Florida, USA are under investigation for publicly promoting their religion. The news has caused an upsurge in searches for the school’s website and sites related to the controversy. The school’s website can be found at the domain: pacehighschool.net. If someone types in pacehighschool.com, however, he will be met with quite a surprise.

The latter domain points to a pornographic website, and their Whois information is hidden. The only indication of who might own the domain is that they registered it with a Canadian registrar. Parents and others looking for the school’s actual website have complained, but officials of the Santa Rosa school district and even the Santa Rosa County Sheriff claim there is nothing they can do.

Under the UDRP established by ICANN, individuals and organizations have the right to contest domains that are confusingly similar to their trademarks. But it is unlikely that the school district registers trademarks of the names of their schools. Nevertheless, they could still file a complaint against the owners of pacehighschool.com. It would seem at this point, the school district has nothing to lose by trying and much to lose by doing nothing.

Source: Santa Rosa Press Gazette

SCOPE rinses away cybersquatter

The Proctor and Gamble Company (PG), responsible for products such as Tide detergent, Pampers diapers, and Scope mouthwash, recently filed a domain dispute with Richard Jones, a man who registered scopemouthwash.com and used it for his search portal of miscellaneous advertisements available in multiple languages. PG owns pg.com as well as a website for Scope called getclose.com.

Jones did not respond to the dispute and therefore left it completely up to arbitration panel to decide the outcome, which was pretty much an open and close case. SCOPE is a registered trademark of Proctor and Gamble, which I am sure Jones very well knew. It was also clear that Jones registered the domain in bad faith with the sole intent of profiting from the trademark through random ads.

As with all of the cases like this one, it left me wondering what type of income people like Jones receive before they lose the domains. Cybersquatting continues to be a problem for many website owners, including large corporations with significant interest in protecting their trademarks. According to ICANN policy, the panel ordered the registrar to transfer the domain to Proctor and Gamble.

Source: UDRPsearch