Slashdot Mirror
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."
Be careful, though. Part of what you see for a given domain name depends on your ISP. For instance, if you're on Cox's cable Internet service and try going to "nonexistent.silverglass.org" (a name which definitively does not exist in the zonefile), you'll get a Web site filled with ads. A Web site I never created and have no part of. If you look at the URL bar, you'll see that Cox has resolved that name (that should've gotten an NXDOMAIN result) to the IP address of one of their servers and redirected you to one of their Web sites. Cox at least does a redirect, some ISPs simply serve up the page as if it came from the server name you used leaving you no clue that the domain owner isn't the one running that site.
It looks from my side like the site's just parked at GoDaddy, and what you're getting is the generic site GoDaddy serves up to every parked domain. The only ad is the button GoDaddy puts there to see about buying the domain, which is there whether the domain owner is interested in selling or not.
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.
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/
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.