Whoah. I accidentally typed our favorite blog's URL minus a period, and stumbled upon this educational reference site. Those devious hippies have gone too far....
posted by adamms222 on Mar 8, 2004 - 23 comments

Have you ever wondered how many Am I X Or Not? sites there are? Check your names here. And if you're looking for inspiration for a new domain name look no further than this nifty tool that they have.
posted by ajbattrick on Jul 22, 2002 - 2 comments

Today's brain teaser: a pro-life activist buys up a bunch of domains (full list at the bottom of this page) similar to organizations (and their directors), newspapers, and products.

Free speech or deceptive domain squatting?
posted by mathowie on Jul 16, 2002 - 40 comments

Cyber gripers arise! In response to the trend of big corporations successfully taking 'sucks' domains away from the owners (vivendiuniversalsucks.com is an example in the article), the Free Speech Center will be offering 'sucks' domains for free for the taking (and presumably first amendment/article 19 exercising).
posted by o2b on Jan 21, 2002 - 10 comments

The Reverend Catherine Sims, on behalf of her Detroit-based "Love Thy Neighbor Corp.", has been using ICANN UDRP complaints to try to wrest control over the domain LoveThyNeighbor.org from "Love Thy Neighbor Fund Inc.", a Florida charity. She's also been trying to gain control over GodSpeaks.net and WuzUpGod.com.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Aug 4, 2001 - 8 comments

Domain name game to get hot this summer... Kent Jordan, who represented .info registry Afilias, said the process has been challenged by people who believe that trademark holders should not have first crack at domain names containing their names. "We reject that," he told the audience. Interesting...
posted by canoeguide on May 8, 2001 - 5 comments

Last week, we got news of new.net, who decided to make a big splash in the alternative Top Level Domain (.com/.net/etc) game, with some moronic, un-coordinated with the other people scheme including some "patented new technology" that amounted to 'set new.net as the search path in your DNS setup'.

Well, apparently they've started a trend, as now there's another player in the market...
posted by baylink on Mar 8, 2001 - 1 comment

Following the earlier post regarding cheap domain names, does anyone know anything about .eu.com domains? I've found one site offering them, but are they actually available yet? What's the story?
posted by Cobbler on Mar 6, 2001 - 5 comments

Network Solutions sells out. The once-monopoly has decided to pool all their domain name registration information and sell it to the spammers of the world. From their marketing website, "Taking advantage of our position as a market leader, we have organized our pool of over 15 million registered domain names into a customer database of over 5 million unique customers. Our data service offers access to the key decision-makers behind millions of leading Web businesses."

True, there is a privacy policy, and you can try and protect yourself following their instructions, but it would seem that once the cat's out of the bag... And, what's to keep someone from purchasing the database of email addresses, fax numbers, telephone numbers, and addresses and selling them off to someone else?
posted by warhol on Feb 15, 2001 - 35 comments

Ford Motor goes after 13 year old girl for her domain name. Personally, I'm disgusted with corporate America right now.
posted by tj on Jan 24, 2001 - 54 comments

Gadzooks!! What in the name of H-E-double-hockey-sticks is going on here? Check on the products and then visit this site. Then do a little WHOIS sniffing and try to wrap your mind around the fact that they are both registered to
Registrant: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
(E-COM-CON-DOM)
10201 W. Pico Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90035 US
sort of via memepool.
posted by donkeysuck on Dec 22, 2000 - 16 comments

Hasbro loses fight to steal Clue.com from Clue Computing. Finding that there was no significant evidence to establish the likelihood of confusion necessary for conventional trademark infringement and no evidence of "dilution", The US Court of Appeals rejected the claim that the "clue.com" violates Hasbro's trademark on the board game "Clue". Score one for the little guy
posted by Outlawyr on Nov 10, 2000 - 9 comments

Divas Defeat Goliath! The Digital Divas have been successful in their effort to get Microsoft to cease and desist use of the Digital Diva name.
posted by netbros on Oct 2, 2000 - 4 comments

Register.com and Staples are offering $1 domains for a limited time. What's the catch?
posted by mathowie on Sep 30, 2000 - 10 comments

"But officer, I don't even HAVE an Pornograph!" Or, "Why we need some kind of indentification technology when it comes to registering domains."
posted by kristin on Aug 21, 2000 - 9 comments

www.excite@home.com Anyone know how they got that domain? Which NICs are allowing "unusual" characters, and how widespread is the standard?
posted by owillis on Jul 3, 2000 - 16 comments

Yet Another Domain Name Dispute Develops (YADNDD): chunkymunky.com gets a Cease & Desist from chunkymonkey.com. One is a windows software site, the other a fan site about a cartoon character. Is there any cause for confusion on the part of users wanting to visit either site (actually, one would have to misspell "monkey" in order to get to the windows site)? Should the chunkymunky.com site owner have taken down his/her site? Who is going to protect domain owners from future things like this happening?
posted by mathowie on May 23, 2000 - 21 comments

interNIC lost my business!!! To take the heat (and any possible lawsuits) off of them, they have now changed thier policy to revoke anyone's domain name at their discretion.

Phil Sbarbaro, NSI's legal counsel, offered a parallel to summarize prevailing law: "You don't own a domain name any more than you own your phone number."

I don't know about you guys, but I am definitely finding another registrar to transfer my domain names to...ASAP!
posted by EricBrooksDotCom on May 12, 2000 - 14 comments

To continue the theme, Yahoo starts going after "sound-alike" domains with a little help from ICANN.
posted by Mick on May 9, 2000 - 2 comments

HTML Tags the new porn
posted by dangerman on Apr 18, 2000 - 7 comments

I don't believe it... I actually agree with something Network Solutions has done. They've apparently changed their policy to make domain name squatting more difficult. The story sounds sympathetic to the two ladies in question, but I'm not. Ok, maybe they should have been a touch more careful in how they *rolled out* the new policy, but the policy itself is about 5 years overdue.

Now, if we could just get them to *do what we tell them to*...

Cheers,
-- jra
posted by baylink on Apr 13, 2000 - 10 comments

Damn Cybersquatters

Here's a little run-in I had with a cybersquatter while trying to secure a domain name for a company I'm starting.

Apologies ahead of time for being self-serving in using my home page there (promise it won't happen again!), but I had no other place to write the content. Hope you guys will have a look and give me an opinion on things! If anything, it's good for a quick laugh even though I'm completely disgusted at the fact people make a living off leeching off hard-working individuals like you and me in such a manner.
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Apr 12, 2000 - 12 comments

Buyer's Guide to Alternadomains . Can't secure a .com/.org/.net domain? As we know, a host of small nations are selling their domainspace, but the requirements have always been a bit confusing. So I did my research and compiled all the basic information on one page. Now you can comparison-shop among .cc, .gg, and .nu!
posted by joeclark on Feb 23, 2000 - 5 comments

The owners of the i.am domain for a long time gave out free redirects. My home page was i.am/so_smrt, and my resume was i.am/for_hire. Now it appears the domain is under new ownership, or it has been hacked. Either way, I have to change my .sig.
posted by luke on Feb 6, 2000 - 3 comments

Here's a gross mis-use of the web: 800-357-7766.com. This mail order company is spamming the airwaves with commercials for their goofy 'tap lights,' and at the end of each commerical, they advertise their website with this unwieldy address. For less than $50, the company could have bought 'taplights.com' and directed customers there, but instead they force people to write down an address that goes against all the reasons why we have the domain registry in the first place. Why don't they just give our their IP address instead? It's about as useful as their phone number domain name.
posted by mathowie on Dec 25, 1999 - 0 comments

Thanks to the scarcity of good domain names, we're stuck with stupid ideas like piiq.com. Here's their deal: you put the letter 'p' and 'q' around anything you want, and their site will come up, like pbookq.com, ptoysq.com, and pfoodq.com. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
posted by mathowie on Nov 28, 1999 - 1 comment