You agree that you will not reproduce, sell, transfer, or modify any of the data presented in response to your search request, or use of any such data for commercial purpose, without the prior express written permission of Network Solutions.
I used "blockquote" not "pre"... and put "br" after each line. Oh yeah, to put this back on topic...
I believe that AOL will succeed in stealing aolsearch.com. (Actually, thay have already been successful, and I doubt that the origional owner will succeed in getting it back)
Why? Because AOL is a trademark. AOLSearch is a natural and logical extension to that trademark. AOL has been around and has used the AOL brand for years. Any judge in this land will side with AOL. Especially since AOL is an internet company who provides search services. I was recently involved in another domain name despute. A client of mine registered tumbleweedsbar.com. This client owns a bar called Tumbleweeds. There is a company in Kentucky that owns a whole chain of restaurants called Tumbleweeds. Both are valid company names, as there is no Tumbleweeds here in Florida. Tumbleeds of Kentucky succesfully sued for the use of the domain name tumbleweedsbar.com. The judge sided with them because they had established the trademark tumbleweeds and also had bars in their restaurants. The Judge decreed that a natural confusion would result in my clients use of the domain name tumbleweedsbar.com. The law seems to place imphasis on customer perception. This is why Gateway can sue other computer companies who use cows in advertisements, but can't sue the dairy industry. There would be no customer confusion, as the two companies do completely different things. In the case of aolsearch.com, AOL has clearly offered search capabilities to its clients for as long as it has been in business, so customer confusion is highly likely to occur. In fact, I would be willing to bet that many of the hits to the OLD aolsearch.com site where by people trying to find an AOL search engine, not the African-American OnLine Search that they ended up finding. I personally believe that this was a case of deliberate deception on the case of African-American Online. I know that when I first heard the name aolsearch.com I INSTANTLY thought of AOL (American OnLine) not anything else. I believe that this was an attempt just like whitehouse.com to lure unsuspecting people to a site that did not contain the expected content.
I do not agree with the method AOL used to obtain control of the domain name. This case should have gone to court. Network Solutions has placed themselves in a precarious position on this one, and I believe has opened themselves up for suit. I believe AOL has the right to control AOLSearch.com but I do not believe that it is up to NSI to mediate that right, nor to just hand over the domain when requested. NSI should maintain a stance of neutrality, and then abide by whatever the courts decide.
Remember a format called CD+G ? Sounds just like this DVD-Audio crap. It never took off, just like I predict the DVD-audio will not take off. No one wants to watch lyrics, pictures of the artists and other extra bits while they listen to the music. Once maybe, as it still is new enough to have the "cool" factor. But truth is, music is the background to our lives. It is not the focus. I almost NEVER just sit and listen to music. I almost always have music on. I listen to music while I drive, while I read, while I compute. I go to concerts to see a show, not to listen to the music. Music is a very important part of my life, I listen to it constantly. But I do not sit and focus on the music to the exclusion of other things. I use it to set the tone of my other activities. By attempting to turn a musical collection into a multimedia mess, the powers that be are missing the point of music. CD+G failed, and I predict the same fate for DVD-Audio. Music videos on a disc will succeed in the same niche as Music Videos on VHS, but no one would buy a VHS tape filled with lyrics and artist bios displayed on the screen while the music is playing, so why would they purchase it on some other format?
Civ: Call to Power is quite a new game. It only hit the store shelves about two months ago. Granted, Myth II and Railroad Tycoon are older, but at least Loki is bringing us up to date on Railroad Tycoon by porting not just the game, but the most recent expansion. Besides, new game or old game, who cares? It's a Linux game now. The only reason I keep a Windows box around is to play games. And some of the games I play regularly are OLD games. If I had a Linux port of C&C: Red Alert, Dark Reign, and Mechwarrior 3, I would fdisk and install Linux on my Windows box as well. New games for Linux are important. But Linux versions of old games will sell just as well. All of the Linux users I currently know keep a Windows box around just because of the lack of Linux games. And we all bitch about it. None of us WANTS to run Windows. But we ALL want to play Mechwarrior 3... hehe
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, to put this back on topic...
I believe that AOL will succeed in stealing aolsearch.com. (Actually, thay have already been successful, and I doubt that the origional owner will succeed in getting it back)
Why? Because AOL is a trademark. AOLSearch is a natural and logical extension to that trademark. AOL has been around and has used the AOL brand for years. Any judge in this land will side with AOL. Especially since AOL is an internet company who provides search services. I was recently involved in another domain name despute. A client of mine registered tumbleweedsbar.com. This client owns a bar called Tumbleweeds. There is a company in Kentucky that owns a whole chain of restaurants called Tumbleweeds. Both are valid company names, as there is no Tumbleweeds here in Florida. Tumbleeds of Kentucky succesfully sued for the use of the domain name tumbleweedsbar.com. The judge sided with them because they had established the trademark tumbleweeds and also had bars in their restaurants. The Judge decreed that a natural confusion would result in my clients use of the domain name tumbleweedsbar.com. The law seems to place imphasis on customer perception. This is why Gateway can sue other computer companies who use cows in advertisements, but can't sue the dairy industry. There would be no customer confusion, as the two companies do completely different things. In the case of aolsearch.com, AOL has clearly offered search capabilities to its clients for as long as it has been in business, so customer confusion is highly likely to occur. In fact, I would be willing to bet that many of the hits to the OLD aolsearch.com site where by people trying to find an AOL search engine, not the African-American OnLine Search that they ended up finding. I personally believe that this was a case of deliberate deception on the case of African-American Online. I know that when I first heard the name aolsearch.com I INSTANTLY thought of AOL (American OnLine) not anything else. I believe that this was an attempt just like whitehouse.com to lure unsuspecting people to a site that did not contain the expected content.
I do not agree with the method AOL used to obtain control of the domain name. This case should have gone to court. Network Solutions has placed themselves in a precarious position on this one, and I believe has opened themselves up for suit. I believe AOL has the right to control AOLSearch.com but I do not believe that it is up to NSI to mediate that right, nor to just hand over the domain when requested. NSI should maintain a stance of neutrality, and then abide by whatever the courts decide.
-Count Zero-
Remember a format called CD+G ? Sounds just like this DVD-Audio crap. It never took off, just like I predict the DVD-audio will not take off. No one wants to watch lyrics, pictures of the artists and other extra bits while they listen to the music. Once maybe, as it still is new enough to have the "cool" factor. But truth is, music is the background to our lives. It is not the focus. I almost NEVER just sit and listen to music. I almost always have music on. I listen to music while I drive, while I read, while I compute. I go to concerts to see a show, not to listen to the music. Music is a very important part of my life, I listen to it constantly. But I do not sit and focus on the music to the exclusion of other things. I use it to set the tone of my other activities. By attempting to turn a musical collection into a multimedia mess, the powers that be are missing the point of music. CD+G failed, and I predict the same fate for DVD-Audio. Music videos on a disc will succeed in the same niche as Music Videos on VHS, but no one would buy a VHS tape filled with lyrics and artist bios displayed on the screen while the music is playing, so why would they purchase it on some other format?
Civ: Call to Power is quite a new game. It only hit the store shelves about two months ago. Granted, Myth II and Railroad Tycoon are older, but at least Loki is bringing us up to date on Railroad Tycoon by porting not just the game, but the most recent expansion. Besides, new game or old game, who cares? It's a Linux game now. The only reason I keep a Windows box around is to play games. And some of the games I play regularly are OLD games. If I had a Linux port of C&C: Red Alert, Dark Reign, and Mechwarrior 3, I would fdisk and install Linux on my Windows box as well. New games for Linux are important. But Linux versions of old games will sell just as well. All of the Linux users I currently know keep a Windows box around just because of the lack of Linux games. And we all bitch about it. None of us WANTS to run Windows. But we ALL want to play Mechwarrior 3... hehe