Oxford Domain Resolution May Indicate A Shift In Attitude

ajs writes: "As many may have already discovered, Yahoo is reporting that Oxford University has won a domain dispute. The suprising, and perhaps frightening part was a comment from one of their spokespeople: "We want to be sure if you do type into a search engine something about Oxford University or type something into a URL, then you will come to us." The idea that anyone would expect search engine results to be protectable is a little odd. What if google lists my "I went to Oxford" page first?"

Comments

Sure, cut-and-dried, but...

[Masem]

Assuming the details in the brief story are correct, this is pretty much a straightforward win for Oxford; the guy did this once before, and didn't even defend himself in the suit. So 'cybersquatting' sounds perfectly legit.

But, why in the world would a state-supposored (*) educational institution need a .com for?? I know that the 3 big TLD's have lost their intent, but there's still some rhyme or reason to them! And certainly there are private-sector educational systems (devry, for example), that certainly have a right to a .com. If a states-side public school in my voting area was to pull a similar tactic, using my tax dollars to fund a domain name battle to get at a .com name, I'd be writting certain government officials and demanding to know why my tax dollars are used in such a manner.

(*) I believe that in the UK, Oxford is government funded, but I may be wrong.