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."

Comments

l337 pwn3d

[Doc Ruby]

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.