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?!
Russians involved in illicit internet schemes? What's this world comeing to?!?
Also: In Soviet Russia, domain squats YOU.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
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?
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.
MUSLIMS DID LONDON!
I piss on Mecca. I wipe my ass with the Koran. I spit upon Mohammed.
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.
My submission was rejected. Not complaing... but mine made note of the MikeRoweSoft.com site. Microsoft's attempt to take the domain failed. Yet Google's case is inherently the same, yet they prevailed.
And here, no one is kvetching about the Google decision, while everyone did about Microsoft's attempted domain snatching....
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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
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.
I will get mod'ed down for this but:
If a user is stupid enough to miss spell google than they earn any spyware/popups/other web nastys that they get as a result. How hard is it to sound out a word. I was thought that in pre-K. Govenments need to stop protecting idiots.
-Joey
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
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
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.
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!
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).
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.
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 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.
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!
Reminds me of the old amazoM.com dispute from years back.
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.