DOES CADNA THINK YOU ARE CYBERSQUATTER?
September 25th, 2009 Posted in General Domain NewsLet me start this article by asking this:
WILL YOU BE LABELED A CYBERSQUATTER SOMEDAY SOON?
Maybe.
Does every business, online or off, have a dark side? Of course they do. You’ve checked your investments and stock returns in the last year, read the avalanche of news discussing the incredible crimes committed in the investment community, and our government’s “rock and a hard place” response by bailing out the most ingrained of those firms who screwed up. Did these companies dick us out of our money on purpose, or was it all just an “unfortunate misunderstanding”?
Billions of dollars lost. People who worked their whole lives and invested even conservatively for retirement, suddenly find themselves with either devastated investment portfolios or being actually penniless. Working families, saving money for retirement, their kids college funds, or just a better standard of living, have been robbed. It’s so complicated I’m not bothering to explain how it happened. Truth is, I don’t know, but I’m sure there are lots of people with millions in assets and in their bank accounts, who were directly involved with this disaster, could tell us. But they won’t.
That brings us to the Domain Community.
CADNA puts out a PR saying basically “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!” (apologies to the “Lost in Space” robot). Suddenly, domain investing is the new financial bugaboo.
The PR article mentions 10 points of why ICANN is out of control, needs government regulation, etc etc. They didn’t add: “Our sponsors are mainly large companies and we don’t talk about reverse domain hijacking.”
I can’t speak about ICANN. They’re good, they’re bad.
However, CADNA is not the source of advice in regulating domain ownership. I went to their site, again, and found this interesting interpretation on what they say a “Cybersquatter” is:
“Cybersquatting
“The act of registering domain names, especially those identical or confusingly similar to existing trademarks, with the intention of reselling them at an inflated price or otherwise profiting from them in bad faith.”
If you read this sentence very carefully, it’s actually calling anyone who buys a domain name with the specific intention of reselling it or building it out, a cybersquatter. They added a word and a phrase to subtly paints domain investors with a criminal brush. Check it out:
If we take their written description of “CYBERSQUATTING” and remove the interjections:
- “especially those identical or confusingly similar to existing trademarks,”
- and “in bad faith,”
you will get this subliminal message that carries the strength of the description of cybersquatting:
“CYBERSQUATTING:
“The act of registering domain names … with the intention of reselling them at an inflated price or otherwise profiting from them…”
All I did was remove the twelve words listed in the bullet points above. Why is it logical to see this sentence paint such a bad picture of domain investors and the domaining community?
BECAUSE THEY INTERJECTED THE WORD “ESPECIALLY” in their description. This means that even outside and without those “special cases” that the word “especially” identifies, the cybersquatting definition by them is still valid.
Why did CADNA use the word “especially”? Why didn’t they just write the sentence WITHOUT using a word quantifying a “certain segment” of what cybersquatters are? Because in CADNA’s eyes, anyone who buys a generic domain name as an investment, without a pre-existing brick and mortar company, is a cybersquatter. They could have just written: “Cybersquatter, someone who buys a trademarked infringing or intentionally confusing misspelled domain similar to existing trademarks with the intent of profiting off the trademark.”
That would be the fair way to write the cybersquatting description. But that’s not how they see it, and the “intent” seeps through. It’s brilliant wordsmithing, but it can sell a bill of goods to powerful people who don’t understand the domain industry, but who can ruin domain investing with ignorant “fear” decisions. Think it won’t happen? You know about the “Patriot Act” and how it came about. It’s the laws that usurp the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights under the guise of keeping us “safe”. It steps all over our rights, and if we fight against it, we’re fighting against a smartly labeled bill with the word “Patriot” in it. How many politicians will fight to stop the “Patriot Act”? Maybe one or two.
CADNA takes the same position in their approach to ICANN. When they add at the end of their cybersquatter definition, “in bad faith,” they open up a bottle of “near beer” that’s actually moonshine. That subtle suffix preposition, “in bad faith,” is the cute little kid who sets the house on fire because he didn’t get the toys he wanted for Christmas. Nobody believes such a cute kid could be so evil. Who comes up and points the finger at the kid who looks like an angel?
So who determines “bad faith”?
Maybe it will be politicians who are lobbied by large companies and special interests. Maybe internet “real estate” will no longer be a “land rush” or a free-running investment world for smart investors, but a source of quick and easy pickings for the companies who have the most politicians in their pockets.
Call me paranoid. I like being paranoid. It enables me to see them coming. And trust me, they’re coming.
6 Responses to “DOES CADNA THINK YOU ARE CYBERSQUATTER?”
By owen frager on Sep 25, 2009
Yeah that’s the way it works and they are coming so watch your back.
By Anon on Sep 25, 2009
CADNA is run by people that are trying to appear to work on behalf of large corporations whilst inflating the price of essentially doing nothing!
By Helder on Sep 25, 2009
The big companies lost the right timing to get the best generic .com’s, and now they’re doing everything they can to get their hands on them for free.
Simply that IMO
By Ron Jackson on Sep 25, 2009
Excellent article Stephen. It is a shame that CADNA consistently tries to over-reach far beyond the rights their client’s trademarks give them. If they were not so busy trying to set up legitimate domain investors as a “scarecrow” (through the mis-labeling tactics you noted) I think they would find that there is a lot of common ground between the two camps. Better to attract allies to fight for common goals, rather than needlessly make enemies by portraying people as something they are not and claiming rights beyond the legitimate ones covered by trademarks.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Hi Ron,
Thanks for your nice compliment on the article. It’s definitely apparent that domainers have to be very diligent in the coming months and years to protect the “internet property” that is rightfully theirs, by way of first feet (on the property). BTW, I bought into a lame website’s “joke” report that you sold Dnjournal.com. I wrote a nice “goodbye”, and was going to contact you directly, until several people called me and wondered if it was true. By the end of the day, we figured it wasn’t. *The owner of the website had to post a comment for people to “read the disclaimer” at the bottom of the page… teeny little text… What happened in your world after that story was posted?
By Bunk on Sep 25, 2009
Most Cybersquatting complaints are Bunk.
Don’t care who you are. ALL OPEN DICTIONARY NAMES are fair game, unless you are the Latin guy who created the word 3000 years ago you don’t own it.
Miss-spellings, maybe. The problem is if and only if someone trends on a registered trademark or copyright should it be an issue.
If you place content on your site that is trademarked, that’s a violation, and there is already recourse through ICANN and/or the courts. Don’t need more regulations.
With the exception of ICANN or the courts people need to mind their own business. I keep seeing more people posting that this might be a trademark violation or I think this is. That is damaging to a domain that is not in violation. Mark my words some of these busy body type people will get sued for slandering a valid name. If it is not your business, not your trademark, not your copyright, you need to stop trying to be the trademark police, your not qualified to make the determination and stating someone is cybersquatting when they are not is in my opinion even more wrong because your most likely damaging some small business persons legitimate business venture because you think so.
As for protecting names. How’s this. I own a company name Apple Products, Apple Computer owns Apple Computer, Inc.
As Apple Products I start making a computer called the ApplePC and regsiter the name ApplePC.com. Apple Computer does not make PC computers, there commercials even put down on them. The average unqualified cybersquatter busy body will determine Apple Products is in violation. They are not. Apple is a dictionary name. Apple Computer, Inc. can own a unique Apple name combination with Apple in it, but the don’t own the word Apple and all variations. Which person or computer program is going to decide this instantly as people register new names. Not possible.
The current system is just fine.
By Mark on Sep 26, 2009
A domain community that understands your blog does not not trip over itself making a mad dash to the registration page for .CM typos (generic or otherwise).
It’s all about bringing genuine value to the site visitor, and if the domain community did that, we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of potentially lethal regulation. What’s required is a meaningful effort that will benefit the entire Internet community instead of just the domain owner.
The fact that I know I’m playing a domainer’s version of PPC “Smack-a-Mole” when I run across near worthless parked pages makes me no less infuriated.