Microsoft to Sue Cybersquatters 221
An anonymous reader writes "The Financial Times writes that Microsoft will
launch a series of lawsuits against cybersquatters, and will urge other companies to help tackle what it says is a growing problem on the internet. Microsoft says it hopes its example will encourage other trademark owners to bring similar lawsuits: "Cybersquatting is a growing problem for brands around the world and we hope to educate other brand holders and encourage them to take action," said Aaron Kornblum, senior attorney on Microsoft's internet safety enforcement team."
Go Microsoft! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I shall blow some karma by cheering Microsoft on. Cybersquatting has long tickled my free-rider detector, so it would be nice to see a few of them get pwned.
And never mind the malevolence of many of the squatters' typotrap websites.
The entire .com TLD is a wasteland (Score:4, Interesting)
The long and the short of it is that if you want a
Re:Go Microsoft! (Score:2, Interesting)
(And yes, this person squating my domains is doing so maliciously as they are a former user who continually harassed other users. Then there is also the person who put up the same site and service as mine and used the same domain name, but with one letter off - causing people to constantly confuse the two so that I frequently get complaints by email about problems on my site... that is actually on the OTHER site).
So... frankly.... I don't give a fuck about all of this. Yay corporations. Have fun running our internet.
Re:OpenDNS (Score:3, Interesting)
The above points are all well taken -- I guess I was just concerned about corporations throwing their weight around and rushing to litigate in the knowledge that most people will not or cannot afford to fight them. I was working at Palm when Palm sued the owner [com.com] of www.mypalm.com, in a move that was internally regarded as completely unjustified by everyone who didn't wear a suit to work. Palm eventually dropped the suit and settled with the guy when the developers revolted against corporate on this issue (if only we'd known that was the tip if the iceberg).
I'm afraid that this precedent could lead to many other cases of companies trying to seize domains they want through legal methods. I'd rather see people get their DNS from someone they trust, than a judge decide that Delta Airlines owns the trademark to the word Delta.
Bah, it's more annoying than anything. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whomever bought libtomcrypt.org had to shell out the $10 or whatever it cost to steal it from me. Will they make money from it? I don't know. I'm not going to buy it back though (their website claims no offer under $1000 will be looked at). So unless they make ad revenue it cost them money to steal it from me. And that brings me to the other point. Just because you were tricked to going there and saw the ads, doesn't mean they do [or should] make any money off that. If advertisers smartened up and only paid per lead actually generated, it would pretty much kill these sites overnight.
That is provided that people aren't stupid enough to use squatter domains to search/buy things.
Tom
Re:Go Microsoft! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OpenDNS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Should have done this earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
Cybersquatting != free market (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, Microsoft has a legitimate interest is removing cybersquatters, as do we all, because quite a few of these (appart from other issues) are phishing or pushing crapware (or just advertizing, but that is acceptable in my book). Also, holding domains captive results in crappier names for everyone, which is a bad thing.
Re:Should have done this earlier (Score:1, Interesting)
If you want to take up action over the issue, look at the trademark laws. The entire gamut of "intellectual property" laws suck in some way or another. The fact that Microsoft occasionally has to look like a bad guy in order to play within them, does not make Microsoft the bad guy.
Re:Should have done this earlier (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out the history [wikipedia.org] of litigation between Anheuser-Busch (owners of the Budweiser trademark in the U.S.) and Budvar (who make a beer named "Budweiser," ostensibly named for the town of origin.)