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CEO of MP3.Com Accused of Domain Squatting
Frac writes "
Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "
Domain squatting is perhaps the least of
his "crimes". A few years ago some students
offered a free FTP search engine to the world,
running on hardware their university had provided
for them as a research project.
FTPsearch.ntnu.no was widely known to be the
fastest and most comprehensive FTP search engine
in the world, and the software was even free for
anyone to download and use.
Mr. Robertson apparently saw that this would be
a sweet service to sell advertising for, so he
set up www.filez.com and made it a sort of proxy
for ftpsearch.ntnu.no (today ftpsearch.lycos.no).
The traffic on the poor research PC the university
had put up grew and all the while, Mr Robertson
sold advertising on his leeching service.
On the filez.com website there was no mention where the searches were performed, nor was Tor Egge credited with the creation of the software.
After a while Tor Egge grew tired of this and
added a delay for requests coming from filez.com.
Robertson tried to counter this in various ways, but in the end he had to give up and actually install the search software on one of his machines and actually start doing some work.
I am telling you this because the world needs
to know that Robertson is a dishonest person. Robertson has a history of acting in bad faith. Robertson is the last person in the world you would want to bet money on unless you are willing to take the risks that the press might uncover some real dirt.
Oh, and if you doubt the truth of this story I
suggest you contact the norwegian press or even better, contact Tor Egge and ask him.
A domain name cannot be a trademark violation by itself, since there's no way of knowing what class it's in with no context. It's only if the domain is used for a commercial purpose in a misleading or confusing way that there is a potential problem.
--
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whoi s?STRING=all+ does not show all teh domains registered by person_name. There could be more domains also.
:-)
My theory is based on the arg that " "all" means to search all fields"
CP
A domain squatter is someone who registers a domain hoping to sell it off in the future for a nice chunk of change. Say 10 years ago, you decided to register microsoft.com, hoping to sell it for a cool billion today. That's domain squatting.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The only thing I don't know is the background of the guy who sold it. Here's an excerpt from the April 9, 1999 issue of the San Diego Business Journal (it's not a public domain article, so I'd rather not post the whole thing -- it might be available for free if the SDBJ has it on their web site):
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
How about collaborative reviewing? You download a few songs, and then upload your ratings to the database. Then it could show ratings given by people who rated things similar to how you did. If I like band X and band Y, and you like band X, then the database would suggest band Y to you.
Too bad Slashdot doesn't work like that...
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The thing that really aggravates me is when Robertson/MP3.com try to act like some kind of champions of freedom. Like with the beam-it thing, they tried to get people to their site to test it, and promoted beam-it as basically "standing up to the man," which everybody loves to do. They are defending our freedoms in the face of the big bad record companies. Of course, this was just a ploy to get more hits to serve up more banner ads. That is the only thing that matters to them: how to keep people coming back to the site. And this domain squatting thing is just another example of that; it is another way to generate traffic to mp3.com so they can serve up more ads. Everything else is secondary, and it will be until something more profitable than selling ads comes along. For example, when it becomes more profitable to sell their database of email addresses, I'm sure they will do that. Or if somebody will pay them to track what songs you listen to with beam-it, I'm sure they will do that too. They are a business, and the only purpose of a business is the make money, so they cannot be faulted for trying to do that, in fact, I think by law they have to try and make money for the shareholders. But they must (ok, not "must" but "should") also be ethical, and stealing domain names from other people/companies (audiograbber et alii) is not ethical. But, again, the only thing that matters to them is money, and as long as it is more profitable for them to keep the name than to give it up (e.g., people stop visiting mp3.com in protest of their stupidity), they will keep the domains--unless legal action requires them to surrender them.
On the other side of this, why wasn't audiograbber registered by its author while it was still in development? Domains should be registered before the product is announced, and probably two or three alternates wouldn't hurt in case you decide to change the name of the product. If I am about to release a new compression program called EvroZip, I'll make sure I have www.evrozip.com, if for no other reason than to keep anyone else from it.
This is why I registered www.evanhoffman.com. Evan Hoffman is not a very common name, but I've found more than one. And I'm glad I did register it, because I've gotten five or six emails from other Evan Hoffmans who wanted the name. So while MP3.com isn't playing nice, audiograbber should have taken audiograbber.com long ago. As for cd-now.com, I don't know if an upstart (remember when cdnow was an upstart?) can go and register every permutation of their name (unless they have a war chest like Dubya--
- http://www.georgebush.com/
- http://www.georgewbush.com/
- http://www.bushsucks.com/
- http://www.bush2000.com
- Click for more
)But now CDNOW is huge, so I'm sure if they wanted cd-now.com their lawyers could get it for them.
PS-Does anybody else remember when mp3.com was all about illegal mp3s? Does anybody remember Blex's Page of Good MP3? The true MP3 vets remember Blex.
_________________
rooooar
I'd like to see him innovate "win-zip.com" into something.
Oh, and I stole a promotional flyer from the grocery store, too. It said "Free, Take One" ... but the fact that they chose help me rob them is not relevant. I'm on a downhill slide, it's all so clear now...
What I've really been longing for is a series of independent websites that act as indices into the massive mp3.com archive. An independent site could post reviews from people they pay to wade through all the noise, searching for the elusive signal.
I agree, though I don't think it's necessary to pay people. I'd volunteer to help out with a bunch of quick reviews a month... and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.
Such a system would have to be carefully designed of course, but even an independent opinion on what a band sounds like (not even a full review) and their relative "maturity" would be very useful.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
j(geek and hip hopper--and on mp3.com).
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
I must say that, while it makes sense from a certain standpoint, that it's funny that they decided to reject the offer to transfer the domain to the 'rightful' owner because it was "past the deadline" and "the other party didn't accept the offer".
http://www.domainsurfer.com/
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Domain squatting is really getting annoying, I've registered a few just to put up a web page on them that says 'if you have a legitimate use for this domain, contact me and i'll *give* it to you' because I was afraid a squatter would take them over. bleh.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
This is the problem with the whole "promote your band with free music on MP3s" is concerned: most of the world happily lets the media industry tell them what's good, and aren't in a hurry to change that. Other, non media sanctioned sounds are therefore, by definiton, not worth listening to. They're not interested in wading through thousands of songs to find something that they might have missed otherwise. The media industry has lots of money, and they use it to their advantage to process signal out of the noise. A free music system has no such signal processing capability.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
There is nothing wrong with registering a few domains, heck we have guys that register over a 100 domains per day.
I'm not sure what to make of this trademark issue though, its arguable both ways. But I don't think we can say that this mp3.com guy is squatting so long as he payed for the domains he registered.
Just my two cents...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I'm sorry but your an idiot (don't -1 me yet, I have reasons :)
Have you been to MP3.com? Obviously not. MP3.com is a FREE, PUBLIC DOMAIN MP3 server. Every MP3 on there is there because the creator wanted it to. Looking through the site you see ton's of unknown bands and such there having their MP3's hosted and links to where you can buy their CD's. They are using MP3.com to promote their bands and try to become popular. MP3.com isn't a bunch of known artists work (although there are a few), its unknown ones trying to get known.
Perhaps you should do some research before you run your mouth.
piku
Again, the part about Michael not knowing much about mp3's other than that it was highly searched for on the internet is what I read, too.
-Scott
"there once was a big guy named lou
I doubt a class action suit from all those trademark owners would look good for MPPP's price...
DISCLAIMER: This is just my personal opinion... not a troll or flame. (annoying but necessacery because some people can't moderate)
I am willing to bet that he registered the websites before mp3.com became very popular. Remember that it's success is fairly recent. As another poster mentioned above - he was in search engines. At the time he registered mp3.com. He probably was not thinking about making it into the music giant website that it is now.
IMO however, now that mp3.com is one of the best music websites, he may change his opinion. If a website I had has become as successful as mp3.com, I would not want to ruin my reputation on the internet, by being labled a domain name squatter.
Give him some time to recognize that domain name squatting is not the thing to do and I am willing to bet he will give up those webpages... anyways - just because someone wanted to make some money (by selling domain names - that he probably registered a while back - before it - cybersquatting - was the problem that it is now) is not a reason for the slashdot crew to slam him.
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
Has anyone ever actually pulled anything decent off mp3.com???
thank god they didn't register napster.com! heh
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
This implies that there's some absolute standard of musical quality, which is clearly untrue.
I won't argue with that point. However, you seem to be implying that, since there isn't an absolute standard, using someone else's standard is useless. It isn't. And it is *certainly* better than nothing. If some site, be it commercial, community-based, or a combination, would choose some representative individuals to sift through and rate things, it would provide a wonderful starting point for the rest of us.
If you don't agree with their opinions, then no bother. You don't gain anything by their rating, but you also don't lose anything. The full archive is still there for you to dig through. But if the rater happens to have similar tastes, then that person has saved you a great deal of time by locating "good" music for you.
You're dead on that record companies provide a filtering service for mainstream music. Unfortunately, they cut out a lot of music that we happen to like, so it never makes it to the radio and Blockbuster. With a rating system, that isn't a problem. If a reviewer doesn't like it, he gives it low marks. The piece is still there to be discovered by others, though.
And what if you think all the reviewers are loco? No problem, you can band together with some others are pick out music that you want to emphasize.
With mp3's, the community can provide its own means of distribution. I don't see any reason why the community can not provide its own filtering, as well. Picture this: a music 'zine web site, financed by banner ads, or a subscription or whatever, hires a few reviewers to maintain sections discussing different genres of music. These people keep abreast of the new music pooring into the archive and rate it as it goes by. They pick out their favorites, and discuss the strengths of various groups. Seems feasible to me.
Or, if you don't like the centralized approach, you could simply have a listener-supported rating system where the listener base rates music that they download. Surely other people around here remember the Hornet Archive? It is now closed, but I used to follow it quite closely, and it would rate mod's as they were released. I don't see any reason why their system couldn't be applied to mp3's.
I think a web music index to mp3.com could work. I've seen something similar work on Hornet. However, it would take someone who was quite dedicated to set it up. Hornet had Snowman, I'm not sure who could be recruited for an independent mp3 site.
--Lenny
Robertson suggested the the advanced AAC format be called mp4, because it was the logical progression from mp3 (even though AAC is not really mpeg layer 4). Others then found out that Robertson had already registered mp4.com in advance, and accused him of trying to rename a format for his own benefit.
...unfortunately you have to wade through *seas* of crap to find it. A while ago, I went off on a "screw record companies" trip and tried finding new music on mp3.com instead. It was a depressing experience. I found pounds of poorly recorded ska and kilos of uninsprired techno. I soon went back to the record store.
mp3.com keeps track of the most popular downloads, which is a pretty good idea. It seems that that would help you zero in on the "good" stuff, right? Unfortunately, I found that it wasn't very useful. Perhaps most people download indiscriminately, or perhaps they have poor taste. Or perhaps there just isn't much to be had at mp3.com
What I've really been longing for is a series of independent websites that act as indices into the massive mp3.com archive. An independent site could post reviews from people they pay to wade through all the noise, searching for the elusive signal. I can understand mp3.com not wanting to post star ratings themself, but it would be very nice if another site(s) could take this up, to give us some clue of what's good and what's not.
Perhaps this could even be a community effort?
dreaming on a Sunday,
--Lenny
If you've ever read an article bio of him, you've probably read how he got started with MP3.com. His field was search engines, and he noticed that one of the most popular searches that people were doing (if not the most popular) was for "mp3." He didn't really know much about MP3s, if at all, but when he noticed what a popular search term it was, he went and registered MP3.com.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Some more information here from Dimension Music. Apparently Robertson simply refuses and ignores requests to have the rightful domain name handed back to their right owners. The programmer behind Audiograbber is getting pretty upset, since mp3.com wholeheartedly endorses MusicMatch, audiograbber's competitor, and audiograbber.com redirects people to mp3.com.