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Saturday Morning Snipets

Looks like it’s going to be a super hot day in the City today, so I am getting out of town and going to sit by the pool and drink margaritas or beers or something cold. If you post comments or email me today (or tomorrow), I will probably be very slow to reply, so my apologies in advance.

I was in a bar room brawl last Saturday and ended up tearing ligaments and breaking my pinky, so it’s been a bit difficult to write this week.   If you think that’s bad, you should have seen the girl I beat up. Only kidding about the brawl. I did the finger damage when I dropped a football pass on the beach, but the bar fight makes for a better story.

Anyway, on to some updates:

– I finally had the chance to meet my web designer (Mike McAlister) in person in New York City yesterday after 3 years of working together. The ironic thing is that despite never meeting face to face before, it felt just like old times when we got together. It’s cool getting to meet someone you’ve known for years but haven’t met before.

– Snooki should have registered the .com domain name before announcing that she’s writing a “Snooktionary” to help “Jersey Shore” viewers understand what she is saying on the hit television show. A guy in Pennsylvania registered Snooktionary.com on August 6th, the day the book was publicly revealed.

– If you are thinking about going away on a last minute trip this summer, you might want to think about attending the Traffic conference in Dublin in a couple weeks. It can be written off as a business expense, Aer Lingus is offering summer travel deals, and Rick Latona has always said if money is an issue he would try to work something out.   There are also some cool domain investors who live in that area and will probably be at the conference.

– People always seem to be interested in learning what new names I’ve acquired recently, so here goes.   In the aftermarket in the last week or so, I bought NassauHotels.com, ChiliFest.com (to go along with TequilaFest.com and ChampagneFest.com), DrugAdvertising.com, FloatingStorage.com, and WarStrategy.com.

– Totally unrelated to business, but does anyone have a recommendation or two for wine tasting in the Napa Valley (not going to Sonoma this trip)? We’re going out to San Francisco next week and are making a trip to Napa on Saturday.   We plan to visit Stagg’s Leap, Qunitessa, and Artesa, but have time for one or two additional stops.   Any suggestions?

Before You Register a Domain Name…

Registering a new domain name is simple. All you need to do is visit Godaddy, Name.com, Register.com, Moniker.com or another domain registrar of your choice, enter your domain name and extension, give your credit card number and personal information, and you are the owner of a brand new domain name for less than the cost of lunch. It’s that easy, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

As I can see by some of the comments on my blog and mostly elsewhere about the NewYorkNewYork.com judgment, there are a lot of people who don’t understand the legalities about owning and using domain names in a legal manner. An innocent $10 domain registration can almost immediately become a potential $100,000 liability simply by using it in a way that infringes upon another company’s trademark.

Even though it’s simple to buy a domain name and put it to use immediately, domain registrants need to know the laws with regards to properly (legally) using a domain name. The Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act is a good place to start, and I would also say a dose of common sense would be helpful too 😉

NewYorkNewYork.com Decision: Owner Loses Domain Name + $101,000 Judgment

The domain name NewYorkNewYork.com appears to be a completely generic geographic domain name, since New York City is known as New York, New York. However, New York New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas had a major issue with the usage of the domain name, a hotel booking engine that allegedly had its photo on the homepage at one point, and they filed a lawsuit in November of 2009.

The Las Vegas Sun has reported that the lawsuit was won by this MGM Resorts-owned hotel/casino, and the penalty is pretty severe for the domain owner. A $101,000 judgment was issued for violating the Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), and the domain name is now owned by New  York  New  York  Hotel  &  Casino,  LLC, although it currently resolves to a Network Solutions under construction page for me for some reason.

The ACPA calls for penalties of up to $100,000 per domain name that is in violation. This is harsh for two reasons. First, the owner probably didn’t make nearly that much money over the course of his ownership, although that is just a guess. Second, the domain name could have been used as a geographic domain name with a New York City focus, and it would have some aftermarket value. Further, it could have generated revenue by adding a hotel booking engine/widget on the site, although many people probably directly navigated hoping to find the Vegas property.

In my opinion, had the domain owner used the domain name to promote New York City (or to pay homage to the City), he would have been in the clear. He probably also could have used the domain name to book hotels in New York City as well. However, because of his alleged usage of trademarks owned by MGM and its property, he was found to have violated the ACPA, and was penalized.

Calle Strikes Gold with .CO & Hotels.com Domain Name Portfolio

Many people in the domain investment community have come to know Juan Calle primarily as the CEO of the .CO Registry. He regularly attends various domain conferences and events, and he is the ambassador for the new .CO domain extension, which as already seen over 380,000 registrations in under 2 weeks of being live.

Prior to his involvement with the .CO Registry, Juan was the founder of Straat Investments where he currently serves as the company Chairman (Jose Rasco is STRAAT’s Executive Director and Juan Palacio is the CEO for FederatedTravel.com).   The company is invested in real estate, technology, and private equity. According to the Straat Investments website,

STRAAT Investments, along with its affiliates, is a private investment firm with interests around the globe. Through its team of investment and operations professionals, STRAAT creates and invests in companies and entrepreneurial opportunities by leveraging its experience in multiple industries to build long term value. We primarily focus our investments in telecommunications, internet, and real estate.

One of the most impressive investments (to me), is the company’s portfolio of generic hotel domain names. As you may recall, I wrote about Swift Rank’s major investments into the city Hotel/Hotels.com space, spending somewhere around 7 figures in the not so distant past. Straat Investment’s portfolio of these domain names is equally (or maybe even more) impressive.

Included in its Federated Travel portfolio are domain names and websites that include (among many others):

  • ParisHotels.com
  • MiamiHotels.com
  • LondonHotels.com
  • ChicagoHotels.com
  • DallasHotels.com
  • CancunHotels.com
  • TokyoHotels.com

In speaking with Juan about a domain name I own, his company doesn’t have much interest in selling off its assets. In fact, it would take “a big purchase ($10m +)” for the company to consider selling these high performing websites.

Trusted Name in Domain Industry Launches Third Party Stats Verification

As the founder and editor of Domain Name Wire, Andrew Allemann is known as one of the two most respected domain industry journalists. Andrew has a no-BS attitude, and he really digs into issues more than most other people would. When I learn about something important that needs to be investigated and reported on involving the domain business, Andrew is generally the person with whom I speak because I know he will look into the issue and provide excellent coverage.

Earlier this week, Andrew launched a new service to help domain owners verify traffic stats on domain names they intend to sell. DNW Certified Stats is a brand new third party statistics verification service that allows domain owners to share verified traffic and revenue stats with potential buyers. Instead of buying a domain name based on a potentially altered screen shot, or purchasing a name with traffic based on a person’s word, domain name buyers can rest assured knowing the reported numbers are accurate and confirmed.

The service is very easy to use and is completely transparent. The domain owner submits the domain names that need to have certified statistics, DNW Certified Stats receives the traffic and revenue report directly from the parking company, and a certified report is issued to the domain owner. It’s very similar to how a sports card grading company operates (this is one example Andrew effectively used to market the new service to potential users). Potential buyers can enter the confirmation code on the site and see the traffic statistics.

At the present time, Domain Sponsor, Sedo, Skenzo, and Name Drive are the four parking companies that are working with DNW Certified Stats. I would expect this list to grow as more domain owners use the service.

Throughout his years of reporting (for as long as I’ve been in the business I believe), Andrew has been unbiased and fair in his reporting, and I think this is an important consideration people should make when deciding whether to use the company’s services. Trust is of utmost importance when buying domain names based on traffic and revenue, and having a trusted source like DNW Stats is critical.

One of the best parts of this is that the service is currently free to use. Sign up and check it out.

MichaelJacksonCasino.com Center of $100 Million Godaddy Lawsuit

MichaelJacksonCasino.comLate last week, TMZ reported that the estate of Michael Jackson was not happy over an online casino being run on MichaelJacksonCasino.com. Apparently someone thinks it’s a good idea to run a casino, sportsbook, and poker room using Michael Jackson’s likeness allegedly without the permission of Michael Jackson’s Estate (this is according to the Estate).

The domain name MichaelJacksonCasino.com has been registered at Godaddy since May of 2005 (on its current registration), and the listed registrant seems to be a company called Corp. Hostarica, with a Miami post office box. Hostarica appears to be an offshore hosting company from Costa Rica, according to its website.

Early this morning, TMZ followed up their original article with another report that Godaddy is being sued for $100,000,000 by the man who claims to own copyrights to some of the photographs that are used on the MichaelJacksonCasino.com website. According to the article, a federal lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles on Monday August 2, and Mann hopes the lawsuit will cause Godaddy to reveal the name of the actual owner of the domain name.

According to results from the Wayback Machine on Archive.org, it looks like there has been a casino on MichaelJacksonCasino.com since 2006. Michael Jackson was still alive at that point, and the welcome message on the site said,

The King of Pop is proud to bring you the most exciting Vegas style online gaming experience on the Net! Along with implementing the most advanced casino software in the industry, Michael Jackson Casino gives you 24-hr. customer support and guarantees you the highest level of security to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of your account. All you have to worry about is winning!”

Additionally, the Wayback Machine shows that the domain name was initially registered as far back as 2002, although the current registration began in 2005. It’s likely that the domain owner dropped this domain name and it expired sometime between 2003 and 2005. Interestingly, in 2003 (which is before the current domain registration), there was a page that said, “Visit our Internet Casinos” with a long list of other casino websites with generic domain names listed.

I don’t know how much exposure Godaddy would have in a case like this, where they acted as the registrar. To me, it looks like Godaddy is not actually hosting the website, as the DNS show nx0.dnscrservices.info and nx1.dnscrservices.info, which are Hostarica’s servers, and they are probably located outside of the US due to US gaming laws.

Thanks to Josh Pelissero for the tip.

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