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Dell Suit Reveals Lucrative Domain Name Trade

Posted by kdawson on from the pennies-times-millions dept.

alphadogg writes "A civil suit filed in Florida by Dell and its Alienware subsidiary is giving insight into the enormous sums of money that can be made by creating Web pages full of advertising links. In October, Dell sued a group of domain registrars, alleging the companies bought more than 1,100 domain names with trademark-infringing characteristics, such as 'dellbatterrogram.com' in order to put advertising links on the pages. The practice, known as typosquatting, is illegal. Dell alleges that the group of defendants, mostly registered offshore, control over a million domain names and have used over 64 million." The article also mentions Google's love-hate relationship with such shady advertising practices.

8 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Ironic? by Recovering+Hater · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, I think it is pretty ironic that the very article the summary is linked to is infested with crappy ads.

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    My humor is probably your flamebait
  2. Re:dellbatterogram.com by Yetihehe · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, talk about typos. I had one time tried to say "Could you hand me salt?" to my girlfriend, but by mistake I said "You stupid b**ch".

    --
    Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
  3. Re:Nitpicking by Jester998 · · Score: 4, Funny

    It is as if a million Slashdotters cried out, and then microsoft.com was silenced...

  4. Re:dellbatterogram.com by vux984 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Could you hand me salt?

  5. Re:dellbatterogram.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Go for the eyes, Boo! GRAAAGH!

  6. Delm by cyberfunkr · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sweet. I have a company named Delm, now I can sue this "dell" company for typosquatting my site for millions.

    I mean, when I go to dell.com I'm bombarded with ads.

  7. Re:dellbatterogram.com by sootman · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow, what a URL. I wonder if heydellpleasesendmeabatterymineblewupkthxbye.com is taken.

    OTOH, I guess they didn't want a big red "Click here for information about exploding Dell batteries" link on the homepage. :-)

    Though they could have just buried it a bit: Products -> Home and Home Office -> Parts and Accessories -> Batteries -> Exploding *click*

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  8. Re:dellbatterogram.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    So the traffic consists basically of people you specifically send there? I find it hard to see how it could be so lucrative for these parasites to make money like that. Of the small number of people who go there, how small a number make a typo in the process? And of those, how many wind up paying money for anything such that the money winds up back in the squatter's hands? But yet the problem persists... This is clearly Dell's fault. =] I once heard that the typosquatters have some way to get domain names EXTREMELY cheaply, far cheaper than any of us could, on the order of a few pennies a year for the domains they register. Supposedly, they also can register a domain for a few days (to test it out) for free, to boot.

    I'd LOVE to know how they do it...