.CM domains soon to be available for registration

For years Cameroon’s government leased out the .cm domain to Agoga.com. Because .cm is a common typo of .com, the company set up a system where if you entered any address ending with .cm, it took you to a webpage filled with ads. Agoga made millions from this deal, profiting from domains like google.cm and weather.cm.

Now Cameroon has decided to end this special deal with Agoga and will open up the .cm domain to everyone. Starting July 15, you will be able to preorder a registration free of charge. Public registration begins on August 1. On August 4, the most lucrative .cm domains will be auctioned off. Normal registrations will cost £217 ($350 USD) for two years.

There is no doubt that Cameroon is trying to make money from typosquatters, crafty individuals who register common misspellings of popular websites in hopes of getting free traffic. Typosquatting often constitutes trademark infringement and is finable by up to £186,234 ($300,000 USD) in the United States.

Cameroon has made a very irresponsible decision regarding its domains. Many trademark holders will suffer as a result of the country’s attempt to make a quick buck. As developing countries build web infrastructure, their governments ought to learn to be more responsible.

Source | Tech Crunch
Photo | Flickr

State of Florida Claims Rights to Four Domains

Domain name disputes rarely involve government entities, but in this case, the State of Florida recently filed a complaint with the WIPO to gain control over four domains: myfla.org, myfl.org, myfolrida.com and myforida.com.

The state claims the names are confusingly similar to myflorida.com, the trademarked name of Florida’s official web portal. In any case, the government site is a victim of typosquatting, a scenario that occurs when someone registers a misspelled domain name similar to the name of a popular site.

High-traffic URLs like Google.com are misspelled tens of thousands of times per day, so it’s easy to see how someone who owned Gogle.com or Gooogle.com might be able to cash in (Google owns both typo domains).

There’s no way to tell how much traffic the owner of the domains received, but the individual in question did not reply to the complaint, so the WIPO has authorized for the names to be transferred to Florida.

Source: Domain News

'Typosquatters' cash in on user mistakes

According to the web security company McAfee, a new business phenomenon is sweeping the Internet, and like so many before it, the intentions are less than pure. Most have heard of cybersquatting, when an individual or business registers a domain that is identical or strikingly similar to the trademark of another, holding it hostage until the victim pays a large ransom. With typosquatting, the perpetrators do not even worry about the trademark owners at all.

These sinister entrepreneurs register domain names that are close to major domain names, with the exception of a few typos. For example, if you want to go to internetblog.org.uk, but you accidentally type internerblog.org.uk, you might find yourself on a site filled with nothing but ads. If you click on an ad (or in some cases even if you do not), you have just made someone money.

In 2003, the United States made it illegal for domain companies to redirect users to sites that might be deemed harmful, such as pornography. However, simply selling ads to people has resulted in only small penalties, sometimes only involving turning over the questionable domain to the trademark owner. The real victims, however, lose valuable time, and some cases even money.

Phil Lodico, vice president of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, said the problem is huge and is expected to explode further with the approval of new Internet domain name suffixes such as “.car” and “.travel.”

“At minimum, it’s an annoyance; at worst it’s a threat to the stability of online transactions,” Lodico said.

Source: Detroit News