Do Domainers Deserve Their Reputation As Cybersquatters Because They Fail To Police Their Own?

Domain Name Wire has a great post noting that Domainers often want to have it both ways. They 'cry foul' about the fact that many people see the business model of domain monetization, and especially parking pages, as unsavory. Domainers try to distinguish the 'white hats' from 'black hats.' But too often, people in the industry look the other way when domainers broker in squatted domains. Does the industry need to start more aggressively monitoring its own?

Domain Name Wire » News » Editorial: How the Domain Industry Can Clean Itself Up - The Domain Industry's News Source

Earlier today I read DNJournal’s weekly sales recap. There were some good sales, including RoomDividers.com at $75,000 (congratulations, Rick). But all of the good sales were overshadowed by a couple bad sales: Mozzilla.com for $40,000 and wwwMatch.com at $11,100.

Neither of these domain names would stand a chance in UDRP challenges. Both of them are typos of famous web sites. These are the types of domain sales that make the industry look bad.

To make matters worse, Mozzilla.com was sold on DNForum, a respected domain name forum. What signal does it send that domainers are trading trademark typos on a major forum? (It’s not just DNForum, mind you.) Mozzilla.com used to make money from affiliate links for downloading the Google toolbar with Firefox. Now it has a link to download Firefox, but when you click on the link it sends you to various offers such as other toolbars and registry cleaner software.

Technorati Tags: domain names, cybersquatting, mozilla

Comments

[conscience]

Mozilla derives much of their income from its realtionship with Google. And Google derives much of its revenue from its realtionship with 'domainers' and with advertisers. The truth is if all parties are maiking good money and they don't complain, it really does not matter. Disputes are optional not mandatory. (Lawyers might be biased toward one option: what do you think?) Does Match.com have a federal mark? How can you be so sure they would win a challenge to the owner of this confusingly simalr domain?

[free registry cleaner]

As the cybersquatting problem grows, all domain owners suffer.

So we have to ask ourselves - who is losing more by not policing this stuff ourselves?

The answer to all these question lie wthin in us.

[Alan]

""Why is that? Trademark law has always placed the burden of enforcing trademark rights on their holders""

Yes, you are right but this industry is unlike any other industry.

The effects of ignoring the obvious and blatent trademark infringements gives everybody a bad name.

Laws are laws but they don't always make sense and we certainly can't wait for enforcement. What is Verizon losing by not enforcing a trademarked typo?? Probably not much. The entire domain community is suffering more than Verizon.

So we have to ask ourselves - who is losing more by not policing this stuff ourselves?

If the answer is us (as in the domaining community) then throw the concept of who is responsible for enforcing the trademark out the window. That is simply a semantic argument for lawyers who practice law and not business owners who think about growing an industry.

[Enrico S.]

As the cybersquatting problem grows, all domain owners suffer.

[David]

The argument that trademark owners should be responsible for enforcing thier trademarks is somewhat ridiculous when it comes to the top trademarks.

Why is that? Trademark law has always placed the burden of enforcing trademark rights on their holders.

Like anything else, there's good apples and bad apples. We might as well start calling all apples bad just because of a few rotten ones.

[Alan]

The argument that trademark owners should be responsible for enforcing thier trademarks is somewhat ridiculous when it comes to the top trademarks. Whether that's coke, pepsi, verizon - names like mozilla, google etc...

Auctioning off names like this is exactly why the industry continues to struggle for credibility from traditional respectable firms.

The domaining community is relatively small and what we need is to have a greater spotlight on the success stories beyond those who park names.

It may be great that someone made a million dollars from parking domains but as soon as someone sees $20 of that million is coming from a typo of verizon.com or google.com then the person (and the industry) loses more than we gain. Like anything in real life – people love to hate those who succeed and since most people do not understand this industry then we must clean up , educate and put those silly suits on to present ourselves in the fashion that tradiational , respectable industries understand albeit for a limited time.

Give them an inch and they will take a yard – whatever the expression is – the $20 from typos overshadows all the work, all the talent, all the money spent in accumulating a great portfolio because a spammer is a spammer – emails or trademark typos – the public does not know the difference.

In any other industry Frank, Kevin – sooo many of us would be asked to be on popular TV shows like Oprah, Regis and tell the great story of finding this business – all the shows that are credible with popular opinion. And popular opnion is what is needed at this point. Sad, but true.

Success will be measured when everyone knows what a domain is – still a few years to go on that if it’s only our choir preaching –

Back to the trademark auctions, It's too hard to police all of the lesser known trademarks but all auction houses - NameJet, TDNAM, Pool, etc ... should have ANY auction with a bid reviewed by legal for a “first look”. If it resembles a well known trademark then just pull it.

That’s it – can’t rant any longer… :-)