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MichaelJacksonCasino.com Center of $100 Million Godaddy Lawsuit

Elliot Silver
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7

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.

Logo Selected & Template Chosen

Elliot Silver
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7


With the deadline for launching Bahamas.CO looming, I have selected the winning entry in a logo competition held on 99 Designs. Not only was the chosen logo my favorite of all submission, but it was also the leading vote getter in the poll I set up with the final designs. I feel like the colors, font, and graphic design elements are perfect for the website.

Although I wasn’t aware of it before determining the winner, the logo designer is a person that the domain investment community knows quite well – Theo Delevegas. Theo and I have not always seen eye to eye on certain things in the past, but I do respect his opinions. I also believe he is a talented designer, and this marks the second logo he has designed for me (ActingCoach.com is the first).

I also selected the template I plan to use as a base for the new website. It’s going to be modified to meet my needs, but I found something I like on ThemeForest.net. It will be a WordPress-based website to make it easier for me to update it, add plugins, and make changes as the site grows (both in content and traffic). Hopefully my designer will be able to make these changes for me, but if not, I will post an RFP on eLance.com.

At first, there will be somewhere around 50 articles, and I plan to continue to add content to the site. Down the road when Google has the site indexed and traffic is at a solid level, I plan to integrate a booking widget using WCTravel or IAN.com. This will help maximize revenue and will create a relationship with visitors, helping to build the Bahamas.CO brand. By no means will this be a mini site.

Anyway, things are progressing quite well, and if all goes as planned, I should be able to launch the site very soon. One of the best parts of this project will be another Bahamas trip.

Verizon Changes Tactics: Files UDRP Complaints Instead of Lawsuits

Elliot Silver
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5

Verizon is known to fiercely protect it’s trademarks, and they’ve done so using the US Court system in the past. In 2008 Verizon filed lawsuits against companies like Navigation Catalyst and OnlineNic citing the Lanham Act (cybersquatting ).

With its litigious reputation, I was surprised to see that the company opted to file UDRP disputes at the World Intellectual Property Organization, in lieu of filing lawsuits. As of the present time, Verizon has at least two UDRP complaints pending and a recent victory for domain names that include (among others):

  • verizoin.com
  • verizonswireless.com
  • verizonwieless.com
  • verizoon.com
  • verizopn.net
  • versizon.net
  • vewrizon.net
  • virazon.com
  • verion.com

Filing a lawsuit can be an expensive endeavor, and while federal law dictates that penalties up to $100k for each domain name may be given, the fact that respondents do not appear to be US-based may have been the rationale for using this mediation procedure rather than filing suit.

As mentioned above, Verizon won a $30+ million default judgment against OnlineNic, although it is unclear if they have been able to, or will be able to collect on this amount. Perhaps they’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the time and/or effort to chase after cybersquatters in other countries. I really don’t know, but whatever the case is, Verizon remains on the hunt for potentially infringing domain names.

It is surprising to see Verizon filing UDRPs but it might make the most sense given the situation.

Sedo Releases Domain Market Report for Q2 2010

Elliot Silver
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3

SedoIt’s always interesting to read Sedo’s market reports because they tend to give a good overview of what’s happening in the domain investment space. With nearly $22 million in domain sales facilitated during the quarter, Sedo is in a unique position to give an overview on the health of the domain resale market.

Some second quarter highlights, as reported by Sedo include:

  • A total of 11,146 domains sold on the Sedo global domain marketplace during the quarter, showing continued growth in the domain market compared with Q2 2009;
  • Despite the introduction of new extensions, the .com remains the most popular TLD extension, accounting for more than 46 percent of total sales on the Sedo marketplace and 74 percent of all generic TLD sales; The average price of a .com domain was $2,401;
  • Among ccTLDs, the .de extension remained the most popular, accounting for 64 percent of ccTLDs sold. The .co.uk and .eu extensions both took secondplace, each representing 15 percent of sales on the marketplace;
  • Offer-Counteroffer sales are the most prominent sales type. Selling fixed price domains has become the second most popular, due to the increased usage of Sedo.com’s “Buy it Now” option.

The pdf report in its entirety can be downloaded from the Sedo website.

IHG Fought to Control Domain Names But Parks Two of Their Own Generics

Elliot Silver
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5

A while back, I wrote about Intercontinental Hotel Group’s massive UDRP filing for 1,529 domain names that they believe infringed on some of their hotel brands. They ended up winning a large majority of the domain names in this filing, and the few domain names that I checked smartly forward to the proper IHG website (see staybridge-suites-reno.com and hotel-indigo-london-paddington.com as examples).

I was doing some domain intelligence today, and I came across something that was very surprising to me. Intercontinental Hotels Group owns at least a couple of fantastic generic domain names such as NashvilleHotels.com and SanAntonioHotels.com, yet they aren’t forwarding them to any of their own websites. Instead, they are parking them.

Sure, they are making money when a visitor clicks on one of their competitor’s links, but they are losing potential customers. According to the IHG website, there are 32 hotels within 30 miles from San Antonio and 18 hotels within 30 miles from Nashville. With all of these hotels, you’d think they would at least try to drive dollars instead of earning pennies (and even paying for their own traffic since Holiday Inn is a PPC advertiser and a IHG hotel).

I don’t understand why the company would park these names instead of forwarding them to the IHG main reservation website. It doesn’t seem to make sense that they would meticulously forward the UDRP-won names to the proper place, yet they haven’t done anything with these two great generic domain names.

PS, if someone from IHG reads this, I would love to buy these domain names. You know how to contact me.

Steps to Building Out Bahamas.co

Elliot Silver
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37

Just a quick   evening post to let you know where I am at with the development of Bahamas.co and the steps I’ve taken so far. I want to show you how development doesn’t have to be time consuming.

1) Posted a coming soon page on Bahamas.co and submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools. It’s nothing fancy, but I figured that I might as well put up a placeholder for now. As you can see, it’s already been indexed in Google.

2) Held a logo design contest on 99Designs.   I invited some designers I thought did quality work, and others participated as well. Hey – why don’t you take a minute and vote for your favorite logo?

3) Found a few templates I like on ThemeForest.net, which will be modified and customized to my liking. I don’t have much time to get the site live, so the custom option is going to have to wait. I plan to have a travel search function eventually, but for now a template is going to have to suffice.

4) Did some research to see what people are looking to find when looking for information about the Bahamas and wrote down a list of article topics. There are roughly 40 article topics in total.

5) I posted a job listing on eLance asking for writers to create a proposal for the aforementioned articles, which will need to be sent to me within 2 weeks. All articles need to be custom written and come from at least 2+ sources (with citations in the event there’s ever an issue). I then selected the most cost effective proposal.

One I have the articles written for me, the logo chosen, and the template modified, I will begin the time consuming process of loading the articles onto the site. I will then build a XML sitemap, submit it to Yahoo and Bing, and hopefully start gaining some traction.

At the beginning of 2010, I promised myself there wouldn’t be any additional development projects this year. Having the opportunity to build and own Bahamas.co was too good to pass up, and it is going to launch in a couple of weeks.

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