Slashdot Mirror
Google Wins 'Typosquatting' Dispute
JeiFuRi writes "The National Arbitration Forum has awarded Google the rights to several web addresses such as googkle.com, ghoogle.com, and gooigle.com, alleging that Sergey Gridasov of St. Petersburg, Russia, had engaged in 'typosquatting.' Business Week comments that Gridasov relied on typographical errors to exploit the online search engine's popularity so computer viruses and other malicious software could be unleashed on unsuspecting visitors."
Upon clicking Read More...
The requested URL (yro/05/07/09/1944219.shtml?tid=217&tid=17) was not found.
I fear what slashdot may feel obligated to sue me for now...
Ghood neews fgor erveyonme!
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
I am now going to forced to cede skashdot, slasgdot and propaganda.google.com to slashdot.org?! Where are the courts respecting my rights as a legitimate businessman?!
Looks like they missed one: http://www.glooge.com/ (NSFW!)
There needs to be more action against typosquatting/registering of domain names to provide useless ad-filled "search" sites with no real content. These sites are annoying when they come up as results on Google, and when I make a mistake, like typing slashdot and then Shift-Enter (for .net) instead of Ctrl-Shift Enter (for .org) and go to some other site. Domains registration should require review of the registration request, kind of like USPTO and patents. I find it annoying when I want to register a domain for a site and find it is being used for something stupid, and I can't afford to buy it off of them.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
I think Mavis Beacon should make a USB keyboard that electrifies all of the wrong keys while your typing. Probably need an external tesla coil or something, can't do it all from the USB bus I guess!
Huh? Well? what about Dvorak? gvoogle.com, gorovla.com? The possibilities are endless (and sometimes hilarious)
dupesquatting? Is that illegal?
> Also: In Soviet Russia, domain squats YOU.
Excuse me, but what does that mean, exactly?
So I notice this crap scrolling by on my firewall console:
Jul 9 07:26:30 bugger1 sshd[23399]: Failed password for daemon from 60.31.216.151 port 47429 ssh2
Jul 9 07:26:30 bugger1 sshd[22665]: Failed password for daemon from 60.31.216.151 port 47429 ssh2
Jul 9 07:26:31 bugger1 sshd[23399]: Received disconnect from 60.31.216.151: 11: Bye Bye
Jul 9 07:26:35 bugger1 sshd[4491]: Failed password for daemon from 60.31.216.151 port 47604 ssh2
Jul 9 07:26:35 bugger1 sshd[28252]: Failed password for daemon from 60.31.216.151 port 47604 ssh2
Jul 9 07:26:35 bugger1 sshd[4491]: Received disconnect from 60.31.216.151: 11: Bye Bye
Jul 9 07:26:39 bugger1 sshd[24050]: Illegal user darren from 60.31.216.151
Jul 9 07:26:39 bugger1 sshd[24050]: Failed password for illegal user darren from 60.31.216.151 port 47730 ssh2
Jul 9 07:26:39 bugger1 sshd[13017]: input_userauth_request: illegal user darren
Jul 9 07:26:39 bugger1 sshd[13017]: Failed password for illegal user darren from 60.31.216.151 port 47730 ssh2
Jul 9 07:26:40 bugger1 sshd[13017]: Received disconnect from 60.31.216.151: 11: Bye Bye
(pages more).....
So I traceroute it, and where do you suppose I ended up:
1 0 0 0 0.4 ms
66.36.240.2 AS14361
HOPONE-DCA c-vl102-d1.acc.dca2.hopone.net. 255 US Unknown: 827d82a4
2 0 0 0 0.4 ms [+0ms]
66.36.224.227 AS0
IANA-RSVD-0 ge5-0.core2.dca2.hopone.net. 0 miles [+0] 254 US Unix: 19:52:02. 92
3 1 1 1 1.6 ms [+1ms]
66.36.224.185 AS0
IANA-RSVD-0 unknown.hopone.net 0 miles [+0] 252 US Unix: 19:52:08.637
4 2 2 2 2.0 ms [+0ms]
206.24.226.99 AS3561
SAVVIS dcr1-loopback.washington.savvis.net. 0 miles [+0] 252 US Unix: 19:52:08.669
5 5 3 4 3.9 ms [+1ms]
204.70.192.162 AS3561
SAVVIS bcs2-so-5-2-0-500.washington.savvis.net. 0 miles [+0] 251 US Unix: 19:52:08.704
6 77 75 76 75 ms [+72ms]
204.70.192.90 AS3561
SAVVIS dcr2-so-2-0-0.sanfranciscosfo.savvis.net. 0 miles [+0] 245 US Unix: 19:52:08.891
7 92 89 82 77 ms [+1ms]
208.172.156.198 AS3561
SAVVIS bhr1-pos-0-0.santaclarasc8.savvis.net. 0 miles [+0] 244 US Unix: 19:52:08.902
8 107 78 78 77 ms [+0ms]
66.35.194.50 AS3561
SAVVIS csr1-ve243.santaclarasc8.savvis.net. 0 miles [+0] 51 US [Router did not respond]
9 88 87 83 77 ms [+0ms]
66.35.212.174 AS3561
SAVVIS unknown.savvis.net 0 miles [+0] 50 US [Router did not respond]
10 77 77 * 77 ms [+0ms]
66.35.250.151 AS3561
SAVVIS
[Reached Destination]star.slashdot.org. 0 miles [+0] 50 US Unix: 19:52:09.114
Even Slashdot is affected...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What the hell is this crazy site? I came here looking for slushdoot.
Lift out of order. Bubble sort in progress.
English (and other indoeuropean languages) is flexible enough to survive typo noise, because we can identify meanings that *could be* represented by any label, even if they're close. Drawing on spoken sounds, similar words, etymology, puns. The problem is when one meaning is masked by another, when a corrupted label correctly means something else.
I'm concerned that courts and extrajudicial "star chambers" (like at the WTO, US Commerce Department, ICANN, smoke-filled lawyer's room...) aren't capable of taking such linguistic facts into account. They're winging it. And people without the money to hire linguists and lawyers to use them will get pwn3d.
--
make install -not war
This certain russkie has reportedly been a major moving factor behind joker.com.
This guy simply needs to be shipped off to Siberia where he can freeze his 'nads off.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
As you expect from an arbitration board, the decision is without legal merit. It also serves no legal precedent. And, the matter is not over because the domain name owner can go to a real court and proceed in this matter.
I don't like domain name squatters, particularly ones that appear to exploit typos. But that doesn't mean they are illegal or that they should be against the law. When you attempt to reach an address, you expect to reach it. So long as a domain name has not been hijacked, all that is going on here is that you are reaching the domain name you entered. If this was a mistake on your part, then this was a mistake on your part.
It can be annoying, but the lesson is don't make mistakes.
Does this mean that the http://slsahdot.org/ domain is being given to slashdot too? I really hate accidentally ending up there when I try to type in slashdot. Finally I can simply get redirected to http://slashdot.org/ and not need to be humiliated. Somehow, I don't really expect OSDN to bother with this.
We are seeing quite a change in the concept of property rights in the USA. Between the recent Supreme Court ruling that cities are now able to take land and buildings from one individual and basically give them to another (richer) individual or corporation without proper reparations and this, it looks like property rights in the US are undergoing a significant spectral shift.
Every economist knows that solid property rights are the basis of a strong economy. But it looks like we're seeing a new take on it. I like to call them "anarchocorporatite property rights": you have the right to your property, unless a corporation or rich individual/group wishes to take it from you without due reparation.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the true American conservatives, the people who realize the necessity of stringent property rights for a strong economy, aren't making a bigger fuss about these recent developments.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
So, you can't enter an IP as a proxy in IE and trick slashdot?
Anyone know the work around? How do you keep your identity secret and fool the proxy check?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I do wonder what a private individual would be able to do in a position where someone has registered a typo version of their own domain for malicious intent. I suspect it would be a lot more difficult.
I remember back in the http://www.yaho.com/">good old days (1998) when 'Yaho.com' was actually forwarded you to 'Typo.net'. Then it forwarded you to Yahoo. People were nice, no one wanted to hijack your PC... *sigh*
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand what the *National* Arbitration Forum (emphasis mine) has to do with a dispute between Google, which is from the US, and a guy in Russia. Can someone explain that to me?
While I certainly am in favour of the ruling itself, I don't see how a US-american organization could assert authority over handling conflicts that aren't happening in the USA. Did Russia agree to this? What are the rules for arbitrating such matters between people (or entities) from different states, anyway? I imagine that it's regulated on a WTO level or so, but I still find the whole thing rather strange.
If the National Arbitration Forum of Russia (assuming that such a thing exists) decided in favour of a Russian company who sought arbitration against a US citizen, you probably wouldn't feel comfortable with it, either, even if the decision itself was obviously correct.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
What if I made a car company called Fjord? With vehicle names like the Mustaung and the EFF-150? I got a pretty good idea what would happen. This should be an open and shut case.
Not only that, but they're trying to make money off of google's name. Trying to make money and cause damage at the same time. This is illegal.
Unless you're selling cigarettes.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I just use tab completion
Google's case is totally different. Mike Rowe registered his domain because he thought it was a cool domain name, and he hosted his own site on it.
This guy deliberately cashed in on Google's popularity to put viruses and spyware onto people's PCs. Google were completely justified in this case.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Well, MikeRoweSoft.com was a legitimate domain. The rest of these seem to be just plain old scumbags. No, I'm not a Google fanboy, yada yada. I'd expect if Microsoft went after people what were using domains such as "Microsohft," they'd be given the same treatment.
Microsoft's attempt to take the domain failed. Yet Google's case is inherently the same, yet they prevailed.
The mission statement of the arbitration company is to arbitrate in an arbitrary manner...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
slashdot with a story 6 minutes BEFORE fark?
call me impressed
Nobody looking for Microsoft on the Internet is going to type "mikerowesoft.com". Just isn't going to happen.
Business Week comments that Gridasov relied on typographical errors to exploit the online search engine's popularity so computer viruses and other malicious software could be unleashed on unsuspecting visitors."
The method by which this person gets visitors should be irrelevent. Who cares whether they arrive by typo or by goatse-style links to IP addresses?
The fact is that this guy was infecting people with viruses through his website. The plug should have been plugged on the server. If the hosting company doesn't do this when they have been notified, they are complicit in the crime.
Why should a domain name reassignment take place? Yank the website and put the perpetrator behind bars. You don't need to reassign the domain name for that. It's like awarding a burglar's crowbar to a homeowner.
Shew, this is good news. If I had made a typo trying to access Google, and instead of Google's homepage been presented with a link to download a program, goodness knows I couldn't have resisted the urge to download and run it! It already takes a good deal of my time getting around to running all the email attachments my friends send me, plus all these messages with attached programs I get saying my email account is suspended (which is sort of strange, because I administrate my own web site and email server - I guess I keep sending emails to myself and then forget about them). Oh well, that's the cost of being a hip, computer-savvy, in-touch kind of guy.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
MikeRoweSoft is a pretty big typo for Microsoft...
Mike Rowe was the guy's name (IIRC), i don't thing ghoogle, googkle, and any of the others are that guys name (they are obviously attempts to get people that mistype google).
Perhaps because Mike Rowe's domain was a pun and couldn't be accidentally typed into the address bar?
Sorry, but you fail and whoring karma this time around. Try again next week.
Fundamentally different cases. MikeRoweSoft.com is not a typo of microsoft.com. A homonym, yes, but no way a typo. Mike Rowe was playing of the similar sounds.
So tell me, how many times have you accidentally typed in MikeRoweSoft when you meant to type microsoft? These cases are not even close to the same. One involves typos, the other play on words.
troll++
Two completely different things. mikerowsoft.com isn't anywhere near a typo, just a phoenetic similarity. Also the guy was named Mike Rowe, different as well. If the guy named his site microsofg.com or microsotf.com where common typo mistakes would be made, that seeems more of a comparison.
Google had a valid claim because this guy registered these sites specifically for the fact that he could catch people making typo mistakes who were 100% guarenteed wanting google.com.
Seems like Mike Rowe sold his domain rather quickly after gaining notoriety. I don't think he was doing it purely because "it was a cool domain name".
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Up until Google made up "Google", it was spelled "googol".
miss spell
nastys
word.
thought that
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Then they'd be out of a job.
They are not the same. (incidentaly, I also sumbitted a story about MikeRoweSoft way back when that was rejected). MikeRoweSoft is a sound-alike name, but is not a likely typo for Microsoft. Someone looking for microsoft.com may accidentalyh type microsoftt.com, etc. but are unlikely to type the very differently spelled mikerowesoft.com
it isn't dead, i used it just yesterday..
There's also:
http://wwwgoogle.com/
http://www.googlecom.com/
http://www.gogle.com/
http://www.gooogle.com/
http://www.googel.com/
http://www.goolge.com/
http://www.gogole.com/
http://www.466453.com/
And possibly more.
I was about to show my boss an example of cool flash animation and I accidentally typed http://homestarunner.com instead of http://homestarrunner.com! All these nudies poppup up on screen and my face turned red. Man, did he give me beans over that.
This case should not set a precident. If he hadn't been using them for malware, or violating Google's trademark, he should have been allowed to keep them IMHO.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There is a completely legitamet company that has a similar name, off by one letter, to some totally diferent big company product and the big corporation takes down their site for typosquatting.
Adrian Chelar
-
iulian@create.ro
office@create.ro
It started off as a quote from a movie or something, I never did quite get which one. Either way, it's become incredibly popular on slashdot as a way to get an instant -1 flamebait score.
Something like "In America, you vote for president, In Soviet Russia, President votes for you!"
I think it odd that anyone can be accused to squatting on a name. I squat on GREGORY THOMAS MUNDT via a "Birth Certificate", and this is a separate instance to any pre-existing people squatting on GREGORY THOMAS MUNDT. The ICANN should attempt this feat: allow people to claim domain names based on time. This would allow people to visit the true google.com founded on a certain Year, Month, and Day, and apply its respective matter. I know of people that apply their autograph to the Holy Bible and thereafter to the first Magna Carta, state Constitution, and then a Declaration of Indepence of that state.
The fraud committed by NAF and Google is trying to say that legitimate registration is tresspass to another registry. By there actions, that central database has been used for fraud. Of'course, this is applicable to any registry that is centralized. Whoever is charged to minister the law onto that database has obviously been funded to commit fraud on others. The only way to prevent this is file a trademark for the same to be entered.
What really angers me is the coercion to add unto a domain name by the registry. There is supposed to be more than one domain directory service, and registrants accessed thereof, and not this ardent and unqualified application of ".com", ".org", ".biz", ".net", ".mil", ".gov" to the registrant. It's all commerce, and it is good to emphasize that "United States" (USC Title 28, Section 3002, 15(a), "United States" is "a Federal corporation" of the United States) is implying with these extensions a form of prejudice against an internation presence of competing governments by disallowing others the use of these despite there having no relevance as it is all commerce and not government itself.
(I don't have time to proofread, gotta post and run someone at this moment.)
without prejudice
Was this Russian guy intentionally using typos of Google's address to generate hits? Yes. But was he infringing on their trademarks, mimicing their logos, or diluting their brand identity in the process? Not from what I can see. He may be an annoying bottom-feeder who exploits people's typing mistakes, but if he's not trying to present his sites as if they were part of Google, then I don't see why anyone has the right to yank those domain names from him.
Does Google have the right to shut down legitimate names like googol.com or goggle.com? Or if someone whose last name is Igle creates goigle.com, could that be construed as "typosquatting" too? And what about companies with less unique names who are more likely to have "typo collisions" with other legitimate names? Is this going to be reduced to the same bullshit subjective standard as pornography, where some judge "knows it when he sees it"?
If someone suggested applying this same sort of typo ownership standard to telephone numbers, people would think they were insane.
the dude had the domain a long while before apple and their itunes crap.
If Google really cared they should have registered those domains themselves in the first place.
I have to wonder if anybody else uses bookmarks or address-bar pull-down lists. At the very most, I type in each address once in my life. If I found it through search-engine or linking, I didn't even type it once! My bookmark file is so vital, I even port it when I switch machines and OSs and back it up.
This is a grey area for domains as to which are used for typosquatting and which are legitimate. The other domains might mean something else in another language.
What does your Credit Report look like?
What is the National Arbitration Forum and does it have any legal power? It seems like an American organisation - how are they going to enforce it on a Russian man? Are they going to make the owner of the .com TLD to enforce it? That wouldn't be fair - it would mean US government/organisation has too much power on the net and others don't.
Ever since they registered domains like gooogle.com, googel.com, and gogle.com, I've seen the amount of typos I make per line increase dramatically. No joke.
I'm just lucky that such sites as images.gogle.com still redirect to Google.com instead of the proper site; this gives me a little incentive to spell the word correctly, and so my typing isn't utterly ruined.
Am I the only one who uses Google this much?
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
You'd have to be a pretty bad typist to mistype MikeRoweSoft.
It is a completely different situation. The guy's name is Mike Rowe. MikeRoweSoft was a funny turn of phrase that nobody with half a brain would mistake for actually being Microsoft, and typos aren't a plausible way to get there accidently either.
By contrast, taking advantage of mistyping of "google" is pure, parasitic leaching. The same would be true for micosoft, mircosoft, etc., which is not what Mike Rowe was doing.
There is good reason to be cautious about the precidents set by these cases, but I think they are both pretty different.
The number of virus infected PC's jumped to an all-time high today, as millions of slashdotters experimented with mis-typed URL's.
I created the lazurus for good, not evil!
Regardless of your original intent, you also have the right to cash in on "A Good Thing"(tm)
I thought that they actually DID get proper reparations, but the issue in that case was whether the property could be taken AT ALL for this purpose. In other words: in what cases can the government force you to give up (for reasonable compensation) your property? The decision was that it was up to the state (not that I agree with the decision).
Try explaining that to the idiots that don't know the difference between their, there, and they're; or type "should of."
Well, I'll be pissed off if the Mocrisoft website gets taken down. It's very informative: show it to a windows user, and their responses will tell you just how fed up they get with the crap microsoft loads on to their users (office "assistants" particularly)
Google vs MSN, GMail vs Hotmail, Firefox vs IE... what is wrong here? Google is not OSS but somehow it has a lot of support from the OSS community.
What would you say if MSN was built-in in Firefox? My best guess is that you would be upset. But MSN and Google are no different, they are open for business.
I guess someday this big Google hype will be in the marketing textbooks.
lucm, indeed.
Yakov Smirnoff.
Wikipedia Article
"My submission was rejected. Not complaing... but mine made note of the MikeRoweSoft.com site. Microsoft's attempt to take the domain failed."
Google's case is about typo-squatting, i.e. intentionally mispelling a domain (slaashdot.org, for example) in order to send ads to people visiting popular sites. Microsoft's case was about trademark infringement. MikeRoweSoft isn't an attempt at squatting, rather Microsoft has to defend their trademarks against dilution. (Sort of like when they went after Lindows.) The stupid thing is that everybody was against Microsoft on both counts. In MikeRoweSoft's case, everybody felt MS should have just overlooked it. In Lindows case, everybody loves Linux and not Windows. There was a hope that MS would lose something very near and dear to them. (The reasons cited were to the tune of 'Windows should never have been granted as a trademark!' The reality is that Microsoft's had that trademark for well over 10 years AND it was distinctive to them. Nobody was crying over the Palm trademark even though palmtops existed well before the Palm Pilot. Everybody ignored the potential confusion caused by selling PCs with the 'Lindows' OS showing screenshots that look very much like Windows.)
Trademarks have to be exhaustively defended. Even little harmless offenses have to be challenged. If Microsoft hadn't gone after Lindows, and another company came along and did something more evil, Microsoft would have to go after Lindows THEN the new guy. In other words, if they don't deal with the minor infringements, they risk losing their trademarks. This is true of any company, not just Microsoft.
In any case, that's probably why your story was rejected. Prevaillance of those cases hinged on different factors.
"Derp de derp."
This was resolved through an arbitration rather than a court process.
That means the two aggrieved parties met with a neutral third party and agreed to let the third party decide the outcome of disagreement.
Uh, what about my typing? Sure, my typing is a little sleepy right now, so I'll send it off to bed for a while. But mind you, typing's aren't all that bad to have around the house. They come in handy every now and then.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
"Oh yeah, what's that?"
"Typosquatting."
"What, like vagrancy?"
"No, on teh Internets. Typosquatting."
"What type, trespassing?"
"No, no, I'm sayin' its typosquatting."
"What freakin' type o' squatting?"
"Yeah, you got it. Typosquatting!"
No? Try this:
I guess if a guy make a mistake on a snowy day, he be typostanding.
Now, call me ignorant. I understand all the other ones, but how the fuck do you get "466453" out of "Google"?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Take a look at nissan.com sometime for another ridiculous cyber-squatting dispute.
Pick up a telephone and look at the numbers the letters G, O, L, and E are on. People have browsers on their cell phones now, if you accidentally type the word google in numeric entry mode, you get 466453. I guess they're depending on the phone browser to fill in the www. and .com parts.
Keith D.
slsahdot.com
Meh.
Seeing as this case involved an american procecuting a russian the language differences make it of dubious use for precedent.
A Domainname could mean something in one language but be phonetically similar to something completely different in another language.
Whose language would take precedence ? probably the person with most money.
[site]
The Simpsons mentioned it in an episode. I also believe Family Guy did as well
The Internet has and allways will be an anarchy. When you go to a website, you have entered somebody's shack; you must follow all their rules, do certain things, don't do others, etc. It just so happens that there are a lot of abandoned shacks out there, or some that have stupid owners. There are many good ones, and every once in a while when you enter a shack you find that what you were looking for to begin with.
And this is the purpose of the World Wide Web. There cannot be a universal governing system because if there was, people would not be able to find that what they were looking for if the universal government disagrees with it (as they will with some).
The abandoned or "stupid" shacks are jealous of those shacks which provide us travellers with what we want. They attempt to decieve us, to lure us into their shack.
I say, let them. This is their shack and it costs them more than it costs us to get out of there. If they like their shack standing their, alone and hated, that is their decision. They paid for it and built even if the rest of us despise them for it.
If Microsoft hadn't gone after Lindows, and another company came along and did something more evil....
Something more evil - would that be a Sin-dows?
LINUX virii?
Tag lost or not installed.
It usually takes our new crop of grad students until October or November to figure out that http://www.latex.com/ is not, in fact, the place to look for help on LaTeX (http://www.latex-project.org/). I haven't seen it in a while (and I've no particular desire to look just now), but I used to see that one around the labs with due frequency. It was easily recognisable -- the background was a lovely shade of #FF0000, with some suitably unclad ladies in interesting poses. As one of the few female CS grad students around here, I always find the reaction of the newbs highly amusing when they see I've caught them surfin' the pr0n.
Whether it's typosquatting or not, someone who sets up websites for the purpose of infecting unsuspecting visitors' computers with viruses or spyware should have all their domains taken away and be locked up for a minimum of 2 years.
Repeal the DMCA!
The stupid thing is that everybody was against Microsoft on both counts.
Excuse me... but Microsoft LEGITIMATELY LOST IN COURT on the Lindows case. They lost for good reason. If you want to argue that the "slashbots" were wrong... and and that the court was wrong, well I guess we could run through that argument if you want. Microsoft then proceeded to engage in vexatious litigation by taking up the case in additional countries and threatening to spend the opponent to death in court costs. Microsoft only "won" in that the owner of Lindows said "Ok, I'll ALLOW you to pay me TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS to use a different name just so you stop harrasing me".
As for the MikeRowe case, once again there was some settlement with MICROSOFT PAYING... I'm not sure what the exact terms of the settlement were but.... wait... WHAT'S THIS? Why lookie here! It's Mike Rowe Forums! Whatever the settlement terms were... whatever settlement terms MICROSOFT PAID MONEY TO BUY, well those terms apparently did not even manage to prohibit the continued use of MikeRoweSoft.com.
Generally when a 270 BILLION DOLLAR MEGACORP attempts to squash a seventeen year old kid like a bug, they generally don't wind up allowing the "offending" domain to continue if they have the money and the lawyers and the law on their side. Hmmm, maybe Microsoft didn't have the law on their side? Maybe MikeRowe was not committing trademark infringment?
And if you look at that website, or if you look at the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com, and you're somehow confused into thinking that you are interacting with Microsoft, well then I have some very bad news for you.... you're seriously Dain Bramaged. Do not pass Go, do not attempt to tie your shoe laces, go directly out of the gene pool.
As for the current case, I'm certainly not going to claim that I like this guy or defend any malware he may have spewed from his sites.... however on the pure domain name issue I'd like to point out that (1) this was not a court ruling, merely an Arbitration Forum, one that almost always sides with big companies which bring these cases and one that has many times been reversed in court, and (2) for whatever reason they made their ruling WITHOUT EVEN CONSIDERING THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CASE. Now point #2 is quite possible the defendant's fault for failing to present a case... I don't have any idea what's up with that... but it does mean this is a especially hollow even for an arbitration proceeding.
Trademarks are good and useful things, and as you say they *do* need to be actively defended. However people should not be attacked unless they are actually infringing a trademark. There are important legal limits on what constitutes a valid trademark and what constitutes an infringment of that mark. It is a Very Bad Thing when companies abuse the legal system to crush individuals and small entities that cannot afford a legal fight even when they are in fact not commiting infringment.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Reminds me of the old amazoM.com dispute from years back.
"Excuse me... but Microsoft LEGITIMATELY LOST IN COURT on the Lindows case."
Uh huh. So.. they innocently chose the name Lindows, fought heavily against MS in the courts, then when they got their way, they suddenly decided to change their name to Linspire because they were worried about legal damage Microsoft could do to them over time. Funny, if the roles were reversed, it'd be assumed that they played on the "they big evil megacorp is picking on me!" story a marketing stunt.
"And if you look at that website, or if you look at the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com, and you're somehow confused into thinking that you are interacting with Microsoft, well then I have some very bad news for you.... you're seriously Dain Bramaged. Do not pass Go, do not attempt to tie your shoe laces, go directly out of the gene pool."
Heh. Since when was the law measured by common sense? I'm sure the arguments MS used in that case were amusing, but you have to consider what trademark law is about. First off, it is still clumsily trying to find its footing in the internet world. Secondly, cheap 'sound-alike' knock-offs are exactly what trademark law is trying to stop. For example: Trademark law prevents you from making a soda called 'Coak'. Why? This is silly! Nobody's going to read 'Coak' on the label and mistake it for Coke! That's true in that one circumstance, not true if you're at a Mc Donald's drive-thru and you order 'Coak' by accident. This circumstance is laughable in the case of MikeRoweSoft. No voice. (In other words, I agree that it's silly.) However, Microsoft still has to pursue it. If they don't go after MikeRoweSoft, then they can't realistically go after Micr0s0ft.com, either. Stupid? Yep. What'd you expect? When making judgements over law, how do you balance logic and common sense? I'm glad that's not my problem to solve.
"However people should not be attacked unless they are actually infringing a trademark. There are important legal limits on what constitutes a valid trademark and what constitutes an infringment of that mark. It is a Very Bad Thing when companies abuse the legal system to crush individuals and small entities that cannot afford a legal fight even when they are in fact not commiting infringment."
I feel for Mike Rowe. But let's be realistic: There is no way on earth that Michael Robertson had reason to say: "What? Microsoft's suing us for trademark infringement? I'm shocked!" I agree that it sucks that Microsoft can use legal means to grind somebody into the dirt, but I don't have sympathiy for jackasses that intentionally draw their fire.
"Derp de derp."
I guess Google isn't evil... otherwise they'd have a search engine for ghouls.
Nothing insightful about that, just an apologist for big business and knee jerk nanny state bullshit decisions.
Google have no right at all to any domain name but their own. There is nothing to stop someone operating a legitimate useful site or business under the name goggel, gogle etc.
It's just another example of how the rich and powerful can buy whatever decision suits them. It's also another victory for the downright dangerous 'forum poll' mindset that has evolved on the internet that dictates that popular sites that provide a service are 'more weighty' and important and have more of a 'right' to trade than others, and that everyone is unanimous about that.
Thank you dad for naming me "Microsort Smith", I got ridiculed my entire life, but now I'm filthy rich because I sued Microsoft for typosquatting my domain.
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.