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Ignorance is no Excuse

Elliot Silver
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Candidates locked in name game over Web domains

I’ve been seeing quite a few articles about politicians buying the domain names of their opponents, but I haven’t seen something as blatant as what the lady in the aforementioned article has been doing. The lady apparently believes that she can buy the domain names of realtors, doctors and other professionals in the hopes of selling to them for a profit. I think this is a case of ignorance more than anything else, but it certainly isn’t right. This is straight-up cybersquatting.

As domain investing becomes more mainstream, educating new investors is going to be important. I believe it is the job of the registrars’ to educate their buyers. Companies like Godaddy have gone mainstream, but I believe they are failing to educate their consumers. You wouldn’t leave out seatbelts in a Ferrari, so registrars should educate their buyers on the laws of cybersquatting and the penalties they could bring. As I said in this post, consumers should have “to check off a box acknowledging that they are aware of the Lanham Act and its penalties before every registration.”

Someone needs to give this “domain reseller” a clue.

Top Notch Domains, LLC Acquires Customs.com

Elliot Silver
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Top Notch Domains, LLC, a Nashua, New Hampshire based domain investment and development company, is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of the domain name Customs.com. The company intends to develop an informational website focusing on foreign and domestic travel requirements.

“We are thrilled to add this great domain name to our domain portfolio,” said Top Notch Domains President Elliot J. Silver. “We believe owning a prime generic domain name is one of the keys to a successful website, and Customs.com aligns with our growth strategy.” Customs.com will launch in Q2 2008.

Top Notch Domains, LLC owns domain names such as Devices.com, DrugCounseling.com, FlightDiscounts.com, and many other valuable generic domain names.

Rabbi.com – A Man on a Mission

Elliot Silver
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An acquaintance of mine is the owner of Rabbi.com. In one of the nicest online gestures I’ve seen, my acquaintance allows our mutual friend, Rabbi Levi Baumgarten to operate and use Rabbi.com. Rabbi Levi (as I call him), is one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet anywhere. He is the type of person I could call right now, and if I needed something that he could provide, I would have it by the end of the day.

Rabbi Levi is the man behind the Mitzvah Tank in New York City. If you’ve been to New York, you may have seen him in his RV trying to recruit Jews to do a mitzvah by putting on tefillin and saying a prayer. He isn’t pushy and doesn’t really preach. His goal is to give every Jewish person an opportunity to take a few minutes of their day and reconnect with their religion. Rabbi Levi is always willing to teach and answer any questions. If he doesn’t have an answer, he will do the research and get back to you. On the rare occasion when I can’t get home for a holiday, I know I have a place at his family’s dinner table.

I was thinking of Rabbi Levi this morning while making plans to try and see him in the Tank today, and I was thinking about the similarity between his mission and the mission of domain investors. Whenever we have an opportunity, we do our best to teach others about the importance and value of domain names. We don’t want to sound like preachers, but we want everyone to realize how valuable domain names are. His mission is much more holy, but we both want others to see our vision.

If only Rabbi Levi would add a Paypal link to his donation page, but I digress…

Did Rick Schwartz Hear from CADNA?

Elliot Silver
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A few weeks ago, Rick Scwartz blogged about CADNA on Rick’s Blog. He took a different tact than many and emailed them offering his assistance by joining their cause. As of a few days later, Rick’s email had gone unanswered. Perhaps they were on vacation since the summer was ending? Maybe they weren’t interested in Rick’s overture? I wonder if Rick ever received a response from them…

Lulu Sues Hulu

Elliot Silver
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Lulu site sues News Corp

No, it’s not a joke – Lulu.com has sued News Corp and NBC claiming that their recently announced Hulu.com video sharing website infringes on its trademark. There are currently 184 live and dead trademarks for the term “lulu” according to the USPTO database. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

BEWARE OF DOMAIN-NAME HIJACKERS

Elliot Silver
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BEWARE OF DOMAIN-NAME HIJACKERS

This article in the “Your Biz” section of MSNBC gives a great suggestion if your business needs to create a website and don’t want to lose it to a domain hijacker. More and more, I have seen articles about different domain hijackings that are plaguing the industry. Most domain professionals take extra cautions when protecting their assets, but I bet there are many businesses who might not know how to protect their domain name assets.

As recommended in the article, never give ownership or overall control of your domain name to a web developer. If necessary, allow the developer to be the technical contact but never the registrant. If the developer is the legal registrant, he technically owns the domain name and controls it. It could be time consuming and costly to get the domain name back if the developer takes off or disappears without giving you control of the name. Also, keep in mind that he would control all of your emails if you use the domain name as the root for your email!

I’m not sure if it still happens today, but one thing I heard about a few years ago was web developers who bought the domain names of local businesses and offered to build a website on that business’ domain name. Some business owners who didn’t realize this was against the Anti-Cybersquatting Act presumably paid the developers for the domain name and for their design services when they weren’t obligated to do this.

Once domain ownership becomes as common as property ownership, I believe it will become more difficult to pull off these types of scams. Until then, it is best to manage your own domain names because they are valuable assets. You wouldn’t allow your business’ deed to be in the name of your contractor, and you shouldn’t allow your developer to control your domain name.

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