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Microsoft Files Dispute Against Current Owner of XboxOne.com
MojoKid writes "Microsoft might have one of the most talked-about products at the moment with the Xbox One, but would you believe it doesn't own the rights to the most obvious domain name to accompany it? Domain squatting is a real issue for companies about to launch a new product. If they register a domain before the official launch, people can find that and subsequently ruin the company's surprise. This particular case is different, however. The domain name wasn't registered just the other day. Instead, a UK resident registered the name XboxOne.com in December of 2011, long before Microsoft itself even likely had a definitive name for its upcoming console. So, what can a company do in this instance? File a dispute with the National Arbitration Forum, an ICANN-approved organization that specializes in dealing with these sorts of matters."
At the moment, XboxOne.com isn't being used for anything, so it's in effect a squat.
You mean they don't have an active website. That doesn't mean the domain name isn't being used for anything. It has A and MX records. Even scanning the ports on the A records and finding nothing doesn't mean it's not being used. It may not respond to any except certain IP addresses.
Now I agree it's likely it's not being used for anything, but as the registrant of several domains which do not have websites associated with them (but DO have email and other services) I call nonsense (if not straight up libel) calling it "in effect a squat."
C'mon guys, this guy just won the lottery.
I for one, wouldn't have guessed it'd be Xbox One, especially not 2 years ago. I Microsoft really wants this name, it's not difficult for them to pony up the dough. Even at 1.000.000$, for MS this would have been a good deal. Going the lawsuit way for someone as powerful as MS, is stupid, they're most likely just going to have haters against them etc.
On the other hand, I don't side with Cybersquatters or people who just purchase 10000 random domain names just because they want to prey on any-company-dot-com, but business is business, if you don't make it your own - it'll be someone else. That's the hard facts of life.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Isn't that the solution to the equation commonly used to model depletion of a finite resource ( say oil reserves )?
dQ(t)/Q(t)=Q(t)*(1-Q(t))
Or put another way, the rate with which you can deplete a resource is proportional to how much resource you have got times how much resource is left, where unity is all of it.
(The derivative of the depletion curve is the depletion rate curve and looks a lot like a gaussian bell curve, extending from negative infinity to positive infinity, peaking at 0.25, and having a total area under the curve of exactly 1; that is... all of it. )
I only wish more people understood the gravity of these equations.... ignoring their prophecy is going to be our undoing.
You impress me greatly by posting it.
I will post AC as I know this is completely offtopic, but I did want you to know there are others out there who have great respect for that little piece of math you just brought up.
anubi
You'd think they'd at least do a quick type-it-into-their-browser before the launch.
Well even searching for a name can trigger registrations of that name. I've had this happen to me while
searching for a name for a customer, I checked several registrars to be sure the name was free. Made the
mistake of doing this over a couple of weeks, and by the time they gave me the go-ahead it was snapped up
by some guy in a spanish speaking country. (The domain only made sense in english).
Sure enough he would sell it for $1000. (Actually he wanted the equivalent in Mexican Pesos.)
In fact the article says:
XboxOne.com isn't being used for anything, so it's in effect a squat
So no matter how long ago he registered it he probably had inside information or results from domain name searches.
That long in advance does seem a little odd, because tacking ONE on the end of stuff only became popular
recently, the Nexus One was the first big example that comes to mind. I wonder how many other names
this guy registered.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
People buy real estate all the time in the hopes that it gains in value...why should domain names be treated specially?
Go ask any of the McDonalds, whose great-great-great-grandpa 200 years ago proudly called himself "Mr. McDonald", how he or she feels about the mcdonalds.com domain
Go ask Uzi Nissan what Nissan Motor Corporation did (is doing) to him over the name that he registered circa 1996. Uzi Nissan, having a computer shop, bought the domain name of his last name. Never mind that he _also_ had a car dealership called Nissan Motors in the 1970s, when Nissan Motor Corporation was still called Datsun.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The guy registered a domain name *2* years ago, probably even before MS would look for a name for their upcoming console. This is just another (yet) case of a big company using its legal weight against the small people.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
It's probably worth noting, XboxOne.com is way older than 2011, it's been around since the original xbox was released http://web.archive.org/web/20021115163519/http://www.xboxone.com/
I have a few domains, none of which have a website and still point to 123reg.co.uk holding page, I have no intention of building websites for them either, I purchased them solely for the email address and forwarders etc. What if the guy who owns it uses it as his primary email and has all his shizzle like fleabay, banking, paypal and other stuff on the domain? What a bummer if Microsoft win and he is left in limbo, even worse the microsoft webmonkey could even then obtain personal information via "forgot my password" shinanigans.
That's not the way it was supposed to work. Way back when the Internet was young and domain names was first thought up, the idea was that Microsoft just puts their site for the XBox on xbox.microsoft.com. If they wanted to simplify it, they could register xbox.com. But that's it; nothing else. Then when they released the XBox 360, they put it on the URL 360.xbox.com. When they release the XBox One, they put it on one.xbox.com. Same thing for e.g. Apple products. iphone.apple.com, 4gs.iphone.apple.com, air.macbook.apple.com, etc.
But because the folks who made domain names decided to make them little endian, the above URLs run counter to how you name things (in English at least). So instead it's become popular to try to register a domain for the product name as you'd write it, which is what makes everything vulnerable to domain squatting.
The folks who made USENET got it right when they made their hierarchy big endian (e.g. rec.arts.sf.starwars.games). You start from the biggest concept and narrow it down with each additional word. If domain names had been big endian, the above URLs would've been com.xbox.360, com.xbox.one, com.apple.iphone.4gs, com.apple.macbook.air, etc. And we probably could've avoided most of this domain squatting mess. Phishing would've been harder too since the non-spoofable part of the domain name would appear first.
Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20.
And their game console design division too, apparently.
Have you seen this thing? And that's even before mentioning the elephant in the room, the laughably suicidal always-online DRM requirement.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife