Slashdot Mirror
TypoSquating == CyberSquating
Lostman writes "ZDNet has an article here that details how WIPO ordered a "typosquater" of altavista.com to give up 43 domain names that might confuse and mislead people. The rationale for this is that these sites were not registered in good faith." Typo sites are odd: I'm cool with most of them (parodies or ones that simply have an ad and a redirector to the real deal) but some really piss me off... like the Slashdot typo sites that frame slashdot with extra banner ads. They do confuse and mislead people: the flame mail in my inbox over the years proves it. I've been called an awful lot of nasty things over a few transposed letters.
What you are talking about is infringement on copyright laws, and this has nothing to do with typosquatting. If someone at www.ed.com did the same you'd still be upset.
Cybersquatting is a bunch of bull. Domain names ate like real estate, and if your company is too slow to get the best piece of that real estate, tough shit. Pay the price if it means so much to you. It is amazing how many so-called capitalist ventures go crying to the government when things dont go their way.
I say, you snooze, you LOSE.
I have no problem with typo squatting as a whole, but there are a dozen Slashdot typo sites, one of which frames Slashdot with a 2nd banner ad. Now I don't care ... but this fools about 1 person every 2-3 days, and they flame
me for selling out and doing something so horrible as framing Slashdot for extra ad space. So I guess typo sites that
frame the site are pretty slimey, but as long as the typo site provides a link to the correct site, I'm totally cool with
'em.
My god did you read that? Taco doesn't care for selling out slashdot! Look at how much you can infer from his quote!
Once you realize that lusers are a renewable resource (There are always more of them on hand than you know what to do with) you can start burning through them like the rest of us abusive elitist crowd who go out of our ways to poke fun at the newbies.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It started out with about 150 unique visitors a day and has gone up to about 700. What I've done to "combat" evil ways is a redirect, so if one types : boogle.com/search it will redirect to googles (yes people type this) or actually, anything other then real boogle pages redirect. Used to have a "how to google" page but theirs has really improved and is much more useful now so I recently removed it.
In short, I earn about $10 per day through the affiliate program at one cent per use. I've not yet contacted google but am fairly certain they know I exist. But plan to share this news soon to see if they hate me (hmm, maybe they are reading this!) Plans are in the works to add various features, we'll see. I find that MANY do not know how to use search engines and it seems do not desire to learn how on their own either so, I'm planning an "ask boogle" (will use alternative to word 'ask' of course) where boogle users will tell me what they are looking for and in turn, I will tell them how I conducted the search and archive these for future generations to learn from. In tests, people have liked this. I consider myself to be a good searcher (18 hours a day will do this) so might as well use these skills.
So why am I writing these words? Well, here is one way I've made success off a misspelling and am proud of it. Crazy thing is, some people actually hear and think boogle when friends tell them google - this theory has been tested, so it's not completely a misspelling issue but also miscommunication. I like this! :-) Boogle is at a crossroads and am building a backend as we speak!
Also, I own hoogle and toogle - they get about 10 or so hits a day each - not even close to boogle. I have planned to turn those over to google (if they accept) but keep boogle, unless sued. So this is my "success story" and it pays for my bandwidth and food! I love google and can't help but spread the word!
.sig --
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Websites aren't the only concern here. I have a friend working at Microsoft. Recently, I e-mailed, mistyping the Microsoft domain name. Minutes later, I was inundated with advertisements for "discount" Windows products.
Somebody out there is harvesting e-mail sent to mis-typed domain names and using the addresses for target spamming.
Okay, this is going to end up another "Why is that post moderated up" but I do have a point:
:-)
Remember that not everyone knows how to spell Altavista. If someone told you Alt*ae*vis*ta on the street, you may end up trying any number of erroneous domain names... Perhaps actavista, Aliavista, autavista, or even antavista?
Look at MY URL: http://www.nodachi.net. When I tell someone "Nodachi", they most likely end up spelling it "Nodatchi", "Nodotchi" or "Nodotchee."
(Hell, word spells it "Nod", "Noachian", and "Joachim"...)
Otherwise, good point.
The full text of the WIPO decision can be found at http://arbiter.wi po. int/domains/decisions/html/d2000-0848.html. If you read this decision you can find an interesting piece of news: Altavista requested a blanket order forcing the domain name registrar used by Grandtotalfinances to hand over any similiar misspellings to AltaVista. The presiding WIPO panelist thankfully turned down that request -- while Grandtotalfinances acted in bad faith other "typo" sites MAY not have acted in bad faith.
Imagine that--WIPO not immediately finding that people are acting in bad faith: At least its a start.
One wonders if Taco's typo was intentional, or just another instance of inadvertant self-parody by the Slashdot crew.
Okay, let's change the emphasis marks a bit and see what happens.
Now, I'm not sure, but this doesn't look to me like he "couldn't care less". It seems to me that he was fairly irritated. I'll grant you that he seems more irritated now, but I think some more responsible highlighting of words is in order, here.
Actually, they couldn't've been tracking you. Just being inside their frameset gives the site no additional powers to track you. You're not going through their servers, and they have no additional JavaScript powers to track you just because you're in their frameset.
One at a time: It's really, really difficult for a web proxy to keep you inside of the proxy, whether that proxy be for the purpose of tracking you, providing anonymity for you, or whatever. Believe me, I know, building such a proxy is what I do for a living. Of course, were such a proxy to keep you inside of the proxy, it could track you at an arbitrary level of detail.
It's pretty much impossible, barring some horrible bug in Netscape or IE that you'll likely hear about on the 6 o'clock news, for one page in a frameset (or in another window that you have open at the same time; it's all the same to the browser) to tell what you're doing on another frame, unless the two frames are from the same domain. And in order to keep you in the same domain, it would have to proxy your requests. See above.
So, take heart. While I can't check to see exactly what google.net is doing (since the site seems to be down at the moment), I can fairly well assure you that whatever they're doing, they're not logging your activities. Because they can't.
I'm concerned, however, that present and future domain name disputes may be wrongly construed as "typo-squatting," regardless of the intention of the alleged offender. Although the term "typo-squatting" is appropriate in this case -- as the defendant capitalized on common mispellings -- I can see the potential for such a term to devolve into another jingo easily manipulated to trivialize the interests of small website operators regardless of legitimate intent/ fair use; another catchphrase to be leveraged by corporations intent on ammassing valuable domain real-estate.
My concern is magnified by the potential for disparate bargaining power among the parties in such a dispute -- i.e. fan site vs. multinational media conglomerate.
Anyone interested in perusing a compendium of past domain name disputes might want to check out the Consumer Project on Technology's (CPT) page on Selected Domain Name Disputes. This site describes in detail (and links to) relevant decisions made by the arbitrator.
I'm currently on leave from CPT, and will return in several weeks.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
I have no problem with typo squatting as a whole, but there are a dozen Slashdot typo sites, one of which fra m es Slashdot with a 2nd banner a d. Now I don' t care ... but this f o ols about 1 person every 2-3 days, and t hey fl a me me for se l ling out and doing so m ething so horrible as framing Slashd o t for extra ad space. So I guess typo sites that f r ame the site are pretty slimey, but as l o ng as the typo site provides a li n k to the correct site, I'm totally cool with 'em.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
GENEVA -- U.N. arbitrators ruled on Monday that a cybersquatter with addresses in Panama and Latvia must give up 43 domain names it had registered containing variations of the name of the Internet search service AltaVista Co.
...and if they dont want to give up their domain names, the U.N. is going to send in the blue helmets to stare them out?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Explain this one?
http://www.slapdash.org
I am not saying you are squatting, I like the name, but why?
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
actavista? Aliavista? autavista? antavista? Take a look at a keyboard, folks. The C and L are on opposite sides of the keyboard. So are the I and T, though they're closer. L and U are on the same hand, but aren't next to each other (even on diagonals). Same with L and N. Not every letter-substitution deserves to be called a 'typo' in my book.
Are there really people out there who type this badly? I can see the argument for names with characters right next to each other. I can see it for missing characters (alavista, for example) because some people have crappy keyboards that click sometimes when a key isn't pressed. I can see it for swapped letters (atlavista), and for added letters (altravista) next to ones you really are supposed to type, but a bunch of people at WIPO have a really negative opinion of the typing prowess of the average net user if they think enough people are legitimately mistyping a C (in qwerty, the middle finger of the left hand) when they mean to type an L (the ring finger of the right hand) that it's worth their time to arbitrate the dispute.
If someone's typing ability is really that bad, wouldn't they at least be in the habbit of checking what they've typed before hitting enter, given the number of times they must screw things up typing?
I'm not saying that typo squatting is fine (though in most cases I'd say it is), but can't we at least pick plausable cases to argue about?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
the problem is, every time i come here to slutdot.org, i read an article, i post my reply, i quit my browser, i get like 50 annoying pop-ups telling me about these live horny women that want to have sex with me.
taco should really try to get more conservative advertisers.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I remember back before WIPO and the term 'cybersquatting' was developed, there were legitamit registered sites that had the typoed domains for large sites, and on those domains simply had a 15 second redirect and a link to the real site, with the only 'advertizing' was that this service was brough to you by such and such. No banner ads or anything else like framing the other site. These types of sites were cool before we were engrained with knowing the domains explicitly, and they got only minimal advertizing dollars for that $35/yr for registering the name.
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Here, obviously, the group registered the domains in bad faith, hoping to make some money with the domains, and other WIPO cases of late have been a similar nature with those that did specifically grab typo sites trying to make big cash off of them.
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But let's say I know of a popular site X, and whenever I go there by typing in the domain name, 5% of the time I mistype and go to a "domain not found" error page. I decide to register that domain, and simply do the same redirect and link as was done originally, and I let site X know about it, and being the 'white hat' that I am, I suck the costs for simply maintaining that site, with the only stipulation that I have a link to my own web site so that people know who helped out here. Could that, under some of the more extreme WIPO rules, be considered squatting? I hope not, but I'd like to see something a bit more concrete on the squatting rules.
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"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST: