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Microsoft to Sue Cybersquatters
An anonymous reader writes "The Financial Times writes that Microsoft will
launch a series of lawsuits against cybersquatters, and will urge other companies to help tackle what it says is a growing problem on the internet. Microsoft says it hopes its example will encourage other trademark owners to bring similar lawsuits: "Cybersquatting is a growing problem for brands around the world and we hope to educate other brand holders and encourage them to take action," said Aaron Kornblum, senior attorney on Microsoft's internet safety enforcement team."
I think I shall blow some karma by cheering Microsoft on. Cybersquatting has long tickled my free-rider detector, so it would be nice to see a few of them get pwned.
And never mind the malevolence of many of the squatters' typotrap websites.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
These days the entire .com TLD has been ruined by cybersquatters and profiteers. There are barely any usable .com names available that havn't already been purchased by someone out to make a quick buck by offering to sell it to you at a vastly inflated price. The registrars don't seem to have any interest in solving the problem; after all, they're getting paid plenty of money for lots of domains that they otherwise wouldn't be selling. I wonder what they plan to do in five years time when the entire namespace has been registered and the only people selling domains are domain squatters and resellers?
.com domain today, you may as well go straight to sedo.com and save the wasted effort of trying to register one yourself. It's taken.
The long and the short of it is that if you want a
The above points are all well taken -- I guess I was just concerned about corporations throwing their weight around and rushing to litigate in the knowledge that most people will not or cannot afford to fight them. I was working at Palm when Palm sued the owner of www.mypalm.com, in a move that was internally regarded as completely unjustified by everyone who didn't wear a suit to work. Palm eventually dropped the suit and settled with the guy when the developers revolted against corporate on this issue (if only we'd known that was the tip if the iceberg).
I'm afraid that this precedent could lead to many other cases of companies trying to seize domains they want through legal methods. I'd rather see people get their DNS from someone they trust, than a judge decide that Delta Airlines owns the trademark to the word Delta.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
For example, folk who go to "libtomcrypt.org" will be treated with a squatters website. But if you google for "libtomcrypt" the correct domain comes up near the the top (searching for libtom hits the website on the first link).
Whomever bought libtomcrypt.org had to shell out the $10 or whatever it cost to steal it from me. Will they make money from it? I don't know. I'm not going to buy it back though (their website claims no offer under $1000 will be looked at). So unless they make ad revenue it cost them money to steal it from me. And that brings me to the other point. Just because you were tricked to going there and saw the ads, doesn't mean they do [or should] make any money off that. If advertisers smartened up and only paid per lead actually generated, it would pretty much kill these sites overnight.
That is provided that people aren't stupid enough to use squatter domains to search/buy things.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Let me tell you about a guy named Mike Rowe who registered MikeRoweSoft.com. He was just a kid and M$ went after them in all of its awful majesty and by the time the dust cleared, M$ had the domain and the kid, I think, had a new Xbox and some educational packages "to help his career along". Hm, wonder whether he asked to learn about the Linux kernel.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
However dubious, Mike Rowe has the right to use his name to create a company called MikeRoweSoft. Once there is a legal entity registered with that name then what is the issue? Even when it comes to a personal name like Macdonalds. I believe a lady with that name operates a tea-room in Scotland which was contested by the 'other' one. Macdonalds challenged her in court for the right to use the name but they lost as it was her real surname and there was no intent to deceieve. In fact, the clan chieftain apparently testified pointing out that as a real Macdonald she actually had more right to the name than the Macdonalds company.
To all those of you saying that cybersquatting is simply the result of the free market, well you are wrong. It is the result of improper pricing for domains in the first place. All short or word-like domains should have been priced higher. When prices are too low, a shortage will result -- as it has.
Also, Microsoft has a legitimate interest is removing cybersquatters, as do we all, because quite a few of these (appart from other issues) are phishing or pushing crapware (or just advertizing, but that is acceptable in my book). Also, holding domains captive results in crappier names for everyone, which is a bad thing.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Except that Trademark, unlike copyright and patents, are not selectively enforcable. You can not allow potential trademark violations slide, regardless of how trivial they are, or you run the risk of losing them. In the end, Mike Rowe was very happy with the terms of the settlement (They paid all his costs for the domain and moving to a new site, an MSDN subscription, paid for MSCE training, an invitation for him and his parents for Microsoft's tech fair, and an XBox with games) and Microsoft didn't lose their trademark. It was win-win, and the only people who were upset were third party people who felt that it was somehow some big bad bully at Microsoft trying to oppress the little guy.
If you want to take up action over the issue, look at the trademark laws. The entire gamut of "intellectual property" laws suck in some way or another. The fact that Microsoft occasionally has to look like a bad guy in order to play within them, does not make Microsoft the bad guy.
Check out the history of litigation between Anheuser-Busch (owners of the Budweiser trademark in the U.S.) and Budvar (who make a beer named "Budweiser," ostensibly named for the town of origin.)
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