.biz Domain Lottery on Hold

kikta writes: "CNN is reporting that the lottery for the .biz domain appear to be in trouble. A judge barred the lottery and ordered the company, NeuLevel Inc., to set aside $3 million for possible refunds."

Comments

Is this standard practice?

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

It is standard practice to hold a lottery for contested domain names? I don't recall when the .com and .net started up, but did they run lotteries for "popular" domain names? I say first come, first serve... just seems to be a way to make more money

Re:Is this standard practice?

[jd10131]

When the original TLDs were created, there was very little competition for names on the internet. Everybody pretty much got what they wanted, because there were so few companies who needed domains.

It seems that once, long ago, before NSI became a money machine, that they would not register generic terms (sports.com, beer.com) or explitives.

I believe that any contested names should be given to the person who owns the most similar trademark. Names that are generic terms shouldn't be registered at all, it's unfair for one company to get that much marketing advantage over another. If Joe Shmoe is looking for sprockets, the first thing he's probably going to type is www.sprockets.com. It's really not fair to hand that domain over to Cogswell Cogs and exclude Spacely's Sprockets.

Re:Is this standard practice?

[jd10131]

I agree with the idea, but what happens if the name of the company is "News Corportation" or "Sports Store"? What if you're the only company in the world to sell widgets, do you keep the "widget.com" domain until someone else makes them? Not to mention that there is no overall definition to the term "generic". Is "Xerox" a generic term or not? Does it give them an advantage in the copier market?

This is definately a valid point. AFAIK, companies are not allowed to register generic names for their corporation. When I created my company, I had to register the company's name with the provincial government. It's a $30 fee, and they'll approve your name, if it's appropriate.

"Xerox" is a trademark, and it started as such. However, they coined the term to mean photocopier. That happened simply because they started(?) the copier business. Kleenex is also a brand name...in fact, few people I know use the term "facial tissue."

I didn't register a .com name either, because I don't need to be known as a .com company. There are currently a lot of people using .com who don't nessicarily fit the original idea people had in mind when it was created.

Perhaps a TLD should be created for adult material, and all the existings sites moved over to it. ".pr0n" It would unload the .com namespace and make filtering software really easy. =)

What's illegal about it?

[ldopa1]

The thing that irritates me the most is that the article doesn't say what part of the lottery might be illegal. I'd also be interested to know if NeuLevel is allowed to take more entries for the domain names.

What I mean is, if I've applied for ldopa.biz with two other people, and the lottery has been stopped, what happens to my request? What if someone else wants to register it now? Can they register it, or is it taken, even though it isn't yet taken.

Also, how is a lottery illegal, but bidding for a domain name isn't? I can buy ldopa1's-house-of-smackdown.com and auction it off on Ebay if I want to.

Re:What's illegal about it?

[technos]

How is it different?

Ebay doesn't make you pay to bid and lose. Neulevel does, from $2-15.

On Ebay, you win if you are the highest bidder. Neulevel plans on randomly assigning them.

One you have to pay to even get in the game, and it is a game of chance. The other is free to enter, and is not random. That's how they're different.

Why is a lottery illegal? Well, they're pretty much illegal by default. It's a form of gambling, after all, and you need a gambling license. Or leave of the state(s) involved, which you're not going to get because they already have their little monopoly 'tax on people who are bad at math'.

Re:What's illegal about it?

[jmauro]

Gambling is illegal. The new economy is based on it. The stockmarket is just legallized gambling. Some people are good, some people are bad and most people really have no idea what they're doing. They're just interested in taking a risk to maybe make some money. So, there. Gambling is legal.

Re:What's illegal about it?

[JabberWokky]

Wow, an amazing example of flawed logic and disconnected symbolic statements.

And the stock market is not gambling. Gambling, by definition, is a game directly based on an element of chance. The stock market is based directly on the abilities of companies to generate more money from an inital capital investment. The majority of investment is done by large companies that invest on the basis of significant research. Why do you think the bank gives you free checking? The money that you have in the bank goes to a variety of investments, including stock portfolios (depending on how the market is doing, quite a bit of it).

--
Evan

Re:What's illegal about it?

[Russ Steffen]

The rule is usually based around Consideration, Chance, and Compensation. As in - you can have any two, but all three together are an illegal lottery/gambling situation.

Some examples:

• Consideration and Compensation - pretty much would mean buying something.
• Consideration and Chance - Video Arcade games
• Chance and Compensation - Just about every promotional contest out there, thats why, say, McDonald's has to say "Purchase not required." in their Monopoly Game ads. The also have to provide an alternate way of entering the contest besides buying something

NeuLevel was doing all three - you had to pay to enter (consideration), a prize would have been awarded -the domain name (compensation), and they were doing by random drawing (chance). That's a lottery.

T'was a scam anyway.....

[IcebergSlim]

I called the company last month to see if our corporate domain had been requested by someone else, and they wouldn't tell me if anyone had or not, and that the only way to be sure I'd get the .biz for our domain would be to put in more bids than anyone (if anyone) else competing for it......

What a scam......

RIP Wild Wild Web...

[Multiple Sanchez]

This makes sense. The web has been wild for too long... the race-for-a-plot-of-land mentality surrounding domain registration couldn't last forever, and frankly has no place in a saner, more mature (read: less exciting) WWW. This is the next logical step, and a welcome one in my opinion.

The 'net mentality that turned whitehouse.com into a porn site is one whose time should end.

a victory for due process

[alewando]

It's a sad commentary that the neulevel/ICANN think that in cases of controversy, all they have to do to resolve the dispute is pick a number out of a hat. If we're going to have a system of enforceable trademarks, and if we're going to extend these trademarks to domain names, then let's be serious about it and apply rules of thoughtful jurisprudence in determining who must win and who must lose. If we're simply going to assign these domains on a first-come-first-serve basis, then let's be serious about it and actually deliver the domain names on a first-come-first-serve basis. If neither system is acceptable, then auction the domains off to the highest bidder; it would hurt the little people, but it would at least be transparent.

Contested .biz addresses are, by their very nature, the popular ones. If a domain name has been requested by at least two parties, then that domain is assigned under this lottery scheme. And let's make no mistake about it: $2-$15 fees are non-trivial when numbered in the millions, and the fees are, by definition, applied in the most popular and therefore most numerous cases.

And why are these fees being charged at all? There's no significant additional processing required to resolve each of these disputes, and the initial price of registration should be sufficient to cover this eventuality. Charging the fee doesn't discourage claims after the fact, and all the information has already been collected by neulevel. It wouldn't be the first or last time a quasi-legal organization has bilked consumers, but there's still no excuse for it.

why was this suit pressed?

[mrbkap]

The article doesn't mention an extremely important fact: what the judge actually found wrong with the lottery. It is also extremely interesting that the person who filed the suit to stop the lottery was attempting to get a .biz domain. Personally I feel that he was just trying to get a free/cheap domain, and skirt the lottery. Of course it is possible that I'm wrong, but without more information, I cannot tell.

The thing that bothers me

[trilucid]

is that they were charging people to "enter the lottery" for contested names. That just doesn't sit right with me; they get your money whether you "win" the domain or not.

Let's consider it. For popular, "hotly contested" domains, dozens (maybe hundreds? who knows?) of people may throw their money in for a chance at it. Now, I'm not going to say the people who actually do this are terribly bright to begin with (the more popular the domain, the more people who'll bid), but it just seems too much for me.

Aside from the implications in trademark law (not that I actually support the bogus trademark/domain claims that some companies make these days), it seems dumb to go through this nasty process when you *could* just register a different (maybe even similar) domain for a lower cost anyhow.

The Problem...

[NatePWIII]

Ok, forget about .biz, .info, .whatever. The heart of the problem is with the institution called "ICANN". Who ever made ICANN the governing body of domains and the internet structure as we know it? Seems to me they sort of self appointed themselves and now have a system in place to keep their little hierarchy afloat...

I think a total reorganization is called for, something akin to the United Nations but for ruling and policing the World Wide Web. Its not called the World Wide Web for nothing. There are no political or geographic boundaries.

I propose that we create an organization called the World Wide Web Consortium. Each country who has a cctld would elect or appoint two representatives from their country. Also to make things more fair the countries with the largest Internet presence would form a sub-group within this framework much like the security council within the U.N.

As a whole this body would then make decisions about country domains and new TLD's like the .biz .info etc...

There would be no one company controlling a monopoly such as Network Solutions (ie. Verisign) or Affilias or NeuBiz. These companies might be contracted however the in the long term best interests, the organization and administration of TLD's should be directly handled the WWWC.

Just some food for thought...

Our experience

[kindbud]

I work for a company a lot of people love to hate, and we're pretty protective of our marks, but not to the point of registering the *sucks.com versions of our marks (thanks largely to me).

We got a message from our registrar (who shall go nameless) telling us that we had a few more weeks to get our "applications" in for our marks under the .biz TLD, and that many Fortune 500 companies were putting in 1000 or more applications for the major marks, and 100-500 for their minor marks. For only $5 per application, our registrar was willing to make the applications for our marks on our behalf. Well isn't that nice.

Our attorneys (who turn to me whenever confronted with anything remotely technical, guess I'm lucky that way) have decided not to pursue any additional applications, in .biz or in .info. Of course, being famous, all our applications have been contested, and are subject to this "lottery". Our lawyers simply realized that no matter what the outcome of the lottery, our marks are still our marks and the winner does not win the right to infringe.

They used to tell me "go register this domain for us please, it's cheaper than sending a cease & desist letter." This time however, they decided that sending a C&D to the "winner" is going to cost much less than playing along with the silly lottery.

They also associate ICANN and NSI with increased workload due to all these nuisance issues that come up with domains. I have educated them well. :)

W3C

[kindbud]

I propose that we create an organization called the World Wide Web Consortium.

There is already an organization by that (appropriate) name, they are at the obvious URL, doing the obvious standards-setting things regarding the world wide web.

Furthermore, since DNS != HTTP, and the Internet != The Web, the name you propose is badly misleading.

ICANN, by the way, is exactly the sort of organization you propose. Thanks, but no thanks. Been there, done that, didn't even get a T-shirt.

Wait, .biz even matters to anyone?!?

[thesolo]

I can't believe people are even signing up for this domain in the first place.

My initial reaction when I started to get the hundreds of spam emails for .biz and .info that netizens would be far too intelligent to buy into them. However, I guess I overestimated their intelligence.

I think the main problem here is that a LOT of people are still looking to make a quick buck like people did in the mid 90s with .com names. They figure if they get a good domain name, someone will eventually pay them big bucks for it. However, .biz will NEVER have the same consumer-friendly ring to it that .com does, and people need to realize that before they purchase one of these absolutely idiotic domain names.

Brace for Collision

[budgenator]

Anybody registering a .biz, will be in for an interesting time. You see there is nothing to stop anyone from running their own TLD, all you need is to set up DNS on a computer, connect it to the internet and have people use it for DNS (that's actualy the hard part).

Well the .biz tld has been in use for quite some time now, well before ICANN had decided to open up their own .biz TLD, and when ICANN activates their .biz TLD there are going to be collisions in name resolution. poiuyt.com has a short blurb about it and links to more authoritative content. Several of the alternative NIC's have banned to gether and resolve each other's name spaces, It's interesting that these other guys play nice with each other while the official DNS acts like the school yard bully. What happens when you "win" your favored .biz name and someone else can prove that they've had it and used it complete with traffic logs for several years? who do you complain to when your domain resolves to two seperate IP addresses?

Things are going to be interesting, stay tuned for more!