In April of 2008, Jay Westerdal announced that his company had the exclusive sales listing for the generic domain name Harmony.com, and the reserve price was $5,000,000. I don’t recall seeing whether the domain name was sold or not, but I just saw that a UDRP was filed at NAF for Harmony.com on November 12, 2009 (Case #1292225).

Since the NAF doesn’t list the Complainant yet, I can only guess it is the parent company of eHarmony.com who would file a complaint, as they seem the most likely to want the domain name. At first, it would seem like a company is making a grab at this great generic domain name, but if you take a further look at the parked page, it looks less like that. Not only is there a link to learn about purchasing the domain name, there are also dating site links, including one for eHarmony.com. This was just on the main landing page, without even having to do a search to influence the results.

I believe this is similar to a recent case involving Dolphins.com, where the owner had football-related PPC links, and the Miami Dolphins filed a UDRP for Dolphins.com. Although the domain owner does have very limited control over what content is displayed on parked page, owners need to be very careful not to put their valuable domain names at risk.

In a UDRP, a trademark owner needs to prove three things: 1) the complainant has a trademark right that is identical or confusingly similar to the domain name in question, 2) the domain owner has no right or legitimate interest in the domain name, and 3) the domain owner registered and used the domain in bad faith.

Sure, virtually any company can file a UDRP for any domain name they would like (as we’ve seen many times with cases like Pig.com for example), but we shouldn’t make it any easier for them to use the UDRP process to acquire domain names. Harmony.com is a good generic domain name, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The US government’s Federal Trade Commission has changed the guidelines for bloggers (and celebrities) who write paid reviews or offer endorsements, and I think this is a very good thing for people who read blogs. Bloggers now must reveal whether they were compensated for a product or service review found on their website, which is similar to disclosures companies need to make in advertisements. If they fail to do so, they could receive significant fines.

According to the Federal Trade Commission’s revised Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials:

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.

I can’t recall a time when I wrote a paid review on behalf of a company, although I have turned down several requests. On occasion, a company will offer services (development services for example) in exchange for a mention on my blog, but I generally refrain from providing any opinion in those posts.

When I do provide an opinion, it is based on my actual experience rather than simply writing a glowing report in exchange for a fee. My blogging goal has always been to be helpful to others, and if there’s ever a time when something is written and I am compensated, I will certainly disclose it to you. I also want to add that when a person or company does exceptional work or goes above and beyond on a project for me, I want to let people know about it.