Trueman says decision was “foolish and unnecessary”. Pat Trueman, former Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, called ICANN’s decision on .xxx today “foolish and unnecessary” in an interview with Domain Name Wire. Trueman se...

.XXX still has hurdles before it becomes a top level domain name. As expected, ICANN’s board approved a resolution today that allows ICM Registry’s .xxx application to move forward. But there are hurdles, or at least red tape, between now and the introduction of the top level domain na...

Asian language top level domains coming to the internet. The Board of ICANN has approved the delegation of two Chinese-character country code top level domain names to China, two to Taiwan, and one to Hong Kong. During ICANN’s board meeting today in Brussels, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom calle...

As parking companies get more sophisticated, scammers get creative. Ask any domain name parking company what their number one nuisance is and they’ll say fraud. Click fraud is big, but it all starts with trying to get an account at the parking companies. One large parking company told me it ...

There are many similarities between baseball card collecting and domain names. I suspect that many domainers collected sports cards growing up. There are a lot of similarities between baseball cards collecting and domaining. We like to show off our prized domains. We often gravitate toward cert...

Security is only a minor concern for upcoming ICANN meeting in Colombia. My image of Colombia is colored by the past. It’s an image of the days of Pablo Escobar, rampant kidnappings, crime, and guerrillas forces. It’s shaped by books such as Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo and the 2...

.XXX to get green light, but the value to ICM registry has wilted. Ex-ICANN staffer Kieren McCarthy is reporting that ICANN’s general counsel has spilled the beans on .xxx, saying ICANN will approve the new top level domain name tomorrow during its board meeting. Make no mistake, this is a ...

Company claims women has no rights to her first name. Let’s say your first name is, I don’t know…Andrew. And you register Andrew.com. There are of course companies that use the name “Andrew” as well. Could they claim that you have no rights to the term “Andre...

Report makes some lofty estimates for typosquatting. Fairwinds Partners, the group behind Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, released a study today suggesting that typosquatting costs the 250 most visited web sites $327 million per year. Like the creators of many studies, Fairwinds has something ...

Registration open for August’s domain name conference. Registration for The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain name conference taking place in Dublin, August 24-26, is now open. Early pricing until July 15 is €695, although there’s also a link for a lower $730 USD price at the time of writing. H...

Domain registrar gives domain to estate of Freddie Mercury. Tucows’ Yummy Names has donated the domain name FreddieMercury.com to the estate of the late lead singer of rock group Queen. An announcement on QueenOnline.com reads: In a recent act of fantastic generosity, domain registrar compan...

Trademark examiner refuses Ad.com trademark again. AOL’s continued battle to trademark a domain name it doesn’t even own has hit another roadblock. On June 21, a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office examiner refused the trademark for Ad.com on the grounds that it’s generic. The USPT...

New book gets a laugh out of unfortunate domain names. I first became amused by domain names with double meanings when a now-defunct domain name blog put together a list several years ago. One example on that blog was TherapistFinder.com, which, when not capitalized, looks like TheRapistFinder.com...

Domain broker has good sales week. Sedo completed three six figure domain name sales last week, capping off a great week for the company. First, it sold the three number domain name 027.com for $100,000. It also sold Pengyou.com and Pengyou.net, each for $100,000. PengYou appears to be a Mandari...

Door opened to favor long time new TLD supporters. A lot of companies have been involved with shaping the new top level domain name process. They’ve spent significant funds over the past several years working through the many drafts of the applicant guidebook and some have been involved sinc...

Kurt Pritz explains what’s left to do in the long march to new top level domain names. During Monday’s New gTLD Program Update session during ICANN’s meeting in Brussels, ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz spelled out the steps remaining to launch new top level domain names. ...

Sports network asks arbitration panel to give it domain name for new 3D network. Sports network ESPN has filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name ESPN3d.com. The company announced its new ESPN 3D network in January, saying that it would show 85 sporting events in 3...

Largest domain conference sets date for 2011. Oversee.net’s flagship DOMAINfest Global conference is moving back a week this year to the first week of February. The conference will take place February 1-3, 2011 and will again be held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California....

Company settles trademark dispute. Frank Schilling’s company Name Administration has reached a settlement with the holder of a trademark for Cheat Code, according to documents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Late last year CheatCodes.com LLC started going after people who had “...

Red Bull spends big bucks disputing domains, then let’s them go. Is it possible that Red Bull’s lawyers are too caffeinated when they file domain name disputes through UDRP? More than perhaps any other company, Red Bull finds itself winning domains at UDRP that are “canceled”...

ICANN’s actions on .xxx go well beyond this one top level domain. ICANN’s Board of Directors will once again consider what to do with the .xxx top level domain name during its board meeting at the culmination of the Brussels meeting this week. More than just a decision on a mistake IC...

The dates tell the story. The owner of a trademark for “MyCyty” has failed in his attempt to get the domain name MyCity.com through UDRP. That someone would go after the correctly spelled version of their made up trademark is a bit surprising. But the circumstances in this case are par...

KnujOn calls out eNom for pharmacy sites. Internet security research group KnujOn isn’t afraid to pick a fight. And its latest report (pdf) picks a big one, going after 162 domain name registrars including eNom, the second biggest in the world. It even says that eNom is an “active fac...

Company files patent application for ranking algorithm. Demand Media has content revenue prediction down to a science. The company has an army of freelancers who produce content based on the company’s prediction of how much ad revenue each piece of content will bring in. Now the company wan...

Video game creator shoots bullseye with domain name purchase. A long awaited video game has a new home on the web – Rage.com. ZeniMax Media Inc. purchased the domain name from a man in Great Britain for $49,999, and is now forwarding the domain name to rage.bethsoft.com (Bethsoft is the publi...