Thank you to Larry Fischer at DirectNavigation.com for analyzing and posting a link to this CNET article about the proposed new Anti-Phishing legislation. Essentially the CNET article discusses the reasons why this legislation is redundant and unnecessary. It doesn’t touch on the fact that the language in the bill could be detrimental to generic domain owners and could subject them to harsh penalties.
As I said yesterday, the Internet Commerce Association is working on a response to this. As far as I am aware, they are the only group working on behalf of the domain investment community. At first glance, the bill looks like it will be helpful to consumers, but upon close review, the language could and probably will hurt the domain industry. We could be in serious trouble if the bill passes as is.
There is time to make a difference, and I am sure the ICA will lobby hard to amend the bill to eliminate some of the gray area that exists and could hurt us. I don’t like to promote a cause on my blog or use this as a soapbox, but I strongly urge you to join the ICA. Although most of the “big guys” are helping to support them, they need the support of everyone. I joined as a Professional Member and intend to give as much as I can afford.
Domain owners own almost priceless virtual assets. I think this bill could lead to outsiders coming in and threatening (or taking) legal action to secure our valuable assets. If this threat becomes real, which will probably happen if the bill passes as is, our assets could become liabilities, and the values of domain names could go down. We need someone to take the side of domain owners and domain investors, and the ICA is the best organized group to do it.

I just read Mike Berken’s blog post about the proposed Anti-Phishing Bill I blogged about earlier this morning, which upon full review, goes much deeper than simply fighting phishers. Mike goes into much further depth and really sounds the alarm regarding the proposed legislation.
If you are invested in the domain industry, I would advise reading Mike’s Blog today. Those invested in domain names domain industry need to stand united to ensure that the bill (as currently written) isn’t passed into law without modification. I know the ICA is working on a response to this, and I think supporting them is important.

I wanted to share a concern I have with a potential piece of new litigation sponsored by Senator Olympia Snowe and cosponsored by Senators Bill Nelson and Ted Stevens. The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act (APCPA), which is being publicly supported by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), sounds like a consumer and business friendly Act, but I have a concern about an implication of some of the language that makes up the bill.
The goal of the bill is to protect consumers from “phishing,” defined as an “attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.” While this is something we would all like to see stopped, I believe some language in the bill may be detrimental to generic domain owners.
According to CADNA’s press release, part of the APCPA aims to address the “practice of using deceptive Web site domain names, which appear confusingly similar to well-known businesses’ Web site addresses, and may be used to facilitate phishing attacks and deceptive spam attacks, or to divert consumers from their intended online destinations to Web sites peddling unrelated or objectionable goods and services, including those harmful to minors.”
I am concerned that this is

I read a post on DNForum this morning which mentioned that the US Government has seized the domain name WAB.com. According to a message on the WAB.com homepage, the domain name and website were surrendered to the government because of the owner’s violation of copyright laws. The former owner plead guilty “to conspiring with others to violate federal copyright laws.” As of the time of this post, the Whois information still shows the previous owner’s registration details.
It is interesting to note that I didn’t find any legal notices via Google for the guilty plea of the person mentioned on the website. Additionally, the Whois data shows the website is owned by someone in France.

According to a post on CircleID this afternoon, the ICANN Board of Directors held a vote to impose the non-refundable $.20 fee on ALL domain names registered from the moment of registration. The unanimous vote which took place on January 23 was noted in sections 5 and 6 of the ICANN meeting minutes, which were recently distributed. According to the notes,

“the Board resolves (2008.01.04) to encourage ICANN’s budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP, and encourages community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget, subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.” – Preliminary Report for the Special Meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors

By charging a fee on all registrations, people will be much less likely to buy large amounts of domain names with the intention of dropping the unprofitable names. This should close the loophole that was created to protect people who registered a domain name in error. In exploiting this loophole, some people were buying thousands of domain names (and more), keeping them for under the 5 day grace period to test the traffic, and dropping the names that didn’t receive traffic. This led some companies to register and monetize trademark domain names and quickly drop them to avoid being detected.
Dell recently filed a lawsuit against companies they believe engaged in this act, and the case is still pending.