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."

Comments

Go Microsoft!

[inviolet]

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.

The entire .com TLD is a wasteland

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

The long and the short of it is that if you want a .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.

Should have done this earlier

[jrumney]

Personally, I would have sued the Cybersquatters first, and left innocent kids called Mike Rowe alone.

Re:Should have done this earlier

[Slashamatic]

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.

Bah, it's more annoying than anything.

[tomstdenis]

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

Perhaps it's time for...

[Anonymous Coward]

...eminent domain!
 
/ducks

Typo domains

[Ash-Fox]

I get a distinct feeling that they're annoyed that they aren't making as much money as they could on typo domains (Microsoft redirecting unknown domains in IE to their search site). I have to wonder if this made any influence on their decision to go after cyber-squatters.