Amazon Threatens "Kindle" sites

You would think you be reasonably free to register a domain name with the fairly generic terms of "kindle" or "amazon" in the name. Right? Wrong if you are an Amazon affiliate.

clipped from blogoscoped.com Jason Schramm registered the domain KindleReport.com a while ago to report on Amazon’s ebook, the Kindle*. Jason also has an Amazon affiliate (aka Amazon Associates) account, which makes him some spare change when people buy Amazon stuff through his site. Sounds like Jason is a double-win for Amazon – he provides a Kindle resource and also sells Amazon stuff. Right? Not quite, according to Amazon’s lawyers. They sent Jason the following letter signed with “Amazon.com Account Specialist”:

Dell's Lawsuit Reveals Lucrative Domain Name Business

A legal case brought by Dell is apparently revealing the "enormous" sums of money made by Web Pages full of paid advertising links.

clipped from www.technewsreview.com.au Each of the websites in question was monetised and has advertising provided by Google Adsense and Google was ordered to hold the first $1 million collected in a special account "on behalf of the defendants each month. The second $1 million that accrues in the account every month will be given to the defendants. If more than $2 million accrues in one month, the money is split between the defendants and the Google account."

Nominet: Country Coded Domains "Boosts Business"

Registering a country coded domain such as a co.uk will help you win local business, argue Nominet.

clipped from news.isearchm.com Search engine optimisation allows companies to gain web exposure regardless of their moniker, but a generic domain name in the .com or .co.uk domain can bring additional traffic to a site from web-surfers navigating directly through the address bar. Phil Kingsland, director of marketing and communications for Nominet, said: "We’re responsible for the .uk country code and that includes .co.uk, .org.uk, etc and generally research that we’ve done shows that the people use these to become more local."

Win for MySpace in Domain Dispute "Suprising"

Although MySpace.co.uk was registered in 1997 its likely the Independent Expert was swayed by the owners of the domain switching the use of the domain to exploit the success of MySpace.com

clipped from www.freedomtodiffer.com MySpace has won the right to have the MySpace.co.uk domain name despite another firm having registered it six years before the social networking website launched. The ruling, by domain registry Nominet's dispute resolution service, has caused controversy in the industry because Total Web Solutions of Stockport registered the myspace.co.uk name in 1997, long before the US social networking website launched.

Nominet's EPP Goes Live

Nominet, the UK Domain Registrar yesterday launched its Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) service.

Traditionally Nominet domain name registrars have used the Email Automaton using PGP Encryption to registation. Nominet intend to continue with the Automation service.

This service gives registrars an alternative method of registering and maintaining their portfolio's of .uk domain names.

The main benefits of using EPP are:

1. Responses to commands are generally instant. You can issue a command to register a domain, get a response and then confirm with your customer that this has happened all in real time.

2. Investment in EPP client programming should be transferable when integrating with the EPP service of other registries.

Other global domain registrars have offered an EPP solution for some time.

To connect to Nominet's EPP server registrars are required to register for the service. An EPP testbed will be available to allow registrars to test their EPP implementations.

You are a Legitimate Domainer if you don't Cybersquat

Domainers aren't all cybersquatter's you know. They are usually after generic domains and traffic.

clipped from www.domainnews.com A recent posting on the TRAVERSE legal blog looks at how to be a legitimate domainer, and says you can be a legitimate domainer if… you do not cybersquat! The article makes the point that the difference between cybersquatters and domainers is cybersquatters “target well known brands and trademarks, as well as typos of those marks” while domainers “target generic words that have limited or no trademark rights.” The article begins: There is a major perception problem that all domainers are cybersquatters. Of course, this is not true. Cybersquatters target well know brands and trademarks, as well as typos of those marks. Domainers target generic words that have limited or no trademark rights. The White Hat Domainers often get lumped in with Black Hat Cybersquatters. This misconception is typified this ‘tongue-in-cheek” post on the Domain Kid Blog as set forth below. Notice how it implies that cybersquatting activities are inherent in domaining.

Snapnames Live and Silent Auction Results

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Nominet DRS Award MySpace.co.uk to MySpace

Controversial decision regarding a high profile domain name dispute, reported today on The Register.

clipped from www.theregister.co.uk MySpace wins UK domain name that pre-dated its service Social networking company MySpace has won the right to have the domain name myspace.co.uk transferred to it despite the fact that it was registered six years before MySpace was founded. The fact that the myspace.co.uk address led to a 'parked' page with adverts for social networking sites including MySpace was taken to be evidence of an abusive registration and the domain name was given to MySpace.