RE: [ga] UDRP dead? Is the dot-biz registry typosquatting on AT&T's trademarks?

["Jay Westerdal" <Jay@Westerdal.com>]

Sovereign nations and sponsored TLDs doing wildcard tricks is one thing. But
it is a dangerous precedent to allow a unsponsored gTLD to do this.

I can imagine the typo rate in .COM is huge and the effect on consumers
would be mass confusion if Verisign were to follow Neustar's actions. Small
TLD like .biz can really get away with this right now, which is bad because
this creates an extremely dangerous precedent for Verisign say, look we are
only following the example of the other unsponsored registries.  We are
setting up a slipper slope that is easy to follow.

Unsponsored gTLDs should not just launch new features that confuse consumers
and undermine how DNS has behaved for years. I am not even talking about the
legal ramification here, just consumers getting confused. Not to mention
that these ccTLD operators that you speak of resolve to a page that says,
"This domain available for sale". Neustar is not even doing that, they are
landing people on a very deceptive page that states, "The page you are
looking for may have been removed, changed name, or be temporarily
unavailable."

What Neustar is doing is cashing in on the confused traffic, I find it
immoral for a registry to land people on a pay per search engine where the
registry receives payment for every search the confused user does. They are
not even telling people the domain is available. I see a class action
lawsuit coming against this soon. Mark my words. I would advise all
unsponsored gTLDs not to behave or follow Neustar's example. I can only hope
Neustar comes to their senses and stops this deceptive practice on their
own.

Jay Westerdal
Name Intelligence, Inc.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ga@dnso.org [mailto:owner-ga@dnso.org]On Behalf Of
Hollenbeck, Scott
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 12:09 PM
To: 'Stephane Bortzmeyer'
Cc: ga@dnso.org
Subject: RE: [ga] UDRP dead? Is the dot-biz registry typosquatting on
AT&T's trademarks?


> > As reported on ICANNWatch, the dot-biz registry is redirecting ALL
> > unregistered domains to money-making webpages
> (pay-per-click, powered
> > by Looksmart).
>
> It is outrageous but do note that Verisign GRS started the trend with
> the answer to non-existing Unicode domain names in '.com' and
> '.net'. ICANN did nothing
> <URL:http://www.iab.org/Documents/icann-vgrs-response.html> so other
> registries step in.

Just to set the record straight: VeriSign did not start the trend.  There
are at least 11 TLDs (.cc, .cx, .io, .mp, .museum, .nu, .ph, .td, .tk, .tv,
and .ws) that have been using DNS wildcards for quite some time to offer
either domain registration services or to provide web navigation assistance.
.museum's service is even documented in their agreement with ICANN:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/museum/sponsorship-agmt-att13-16oct01.h
tm

Scott Hollenbeck
VeriSign Naming and Directory Services
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