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."
Ghood neews fgor erveyonme!
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
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)
You forgot "slahsdot".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
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.
Nah, that's just the usual proxy checks Slashcode employs.
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.
60.31.216.151 is an address for the Asia Pacific region. I'd tell you more, but APNIC doesn't seem to work for me right now.
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!
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.
Nobody looking for Microsoft on the Internet is going to type "mikerowesoft.com". Just isn't going to happen.
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.
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.
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.
The whole point of slashdot's proxy-discovery feature is to find and ban proxies automatically and quickly. This is a troll-control feature, why would any sane person want to find a work-around?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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
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 is very easy to get around. But why should we tell you?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
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."
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!"
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.
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.
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)
Don't!
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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."
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.
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.
"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.
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.
If you want to make a website called "goggel" that isn't a search engine, that's fine. If you want to make a website called "goggel" that is a search engine or worse just attempts to infect computers, then you're using Google's name for your own gain, which is wrong. If you want to make a name, you have to do it on your own merit.
Also, your line about the "nanny state" is out of place, since I never said anything about the government working to enforce such restrictions. The onus is first on registrars to work proactively to prevent infringement, then on trademark holders to notify service providers of infringement. The state only becomes involved in case things cannot be worked out civilly, and someone brings suit. Such cases should be rare, however.