Online Critics and Unlawful Harassment from Trademark Holders

The following is based on my experience and interpretation of the UDRP and the relevant laws of the United Kingdom and European Union. This is not legal advice but just my own experience and interpretation. How does a UK citizen create a non-commercial trademark.tld parody criticism website and avoid harassment from the trademark holder? Here are the steps... more»

Nominet Warns on Recent Jump in Whois Data Mining

Nominet has issued a warning about commercial companies that are swiping copyrighted information on domain name owners from its Whois database.

Several weeks ago, the UK internet registry owner noticed a sharp increase in the number of people accessing its Whois service, an online searchable database that provides ownership details for individual .uk internet addresses, including the name of the individual and sometimes their home address. more»

Change of Leadership at ICANN as Cerf Makes Way for Intellectual Property Expert

Intellectual property and computer law barrister Peter Dengate-Thrush has been elected as new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The former chairman of InternetNZ, the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry for New Zealand (.nz), and cofounder of the Association of Asian Pacific ccTLDs, succeeds the legendary Vinton Cerf... more»

Whois Privacy for Domain Owners Moves Forward

Help may be on the way as the Whois task force last week endorsed a proposal that would give more privacy options to small businesses, individuals with personal websites and other domain name owners.

"At the end of the day, they are not going to have personal contact information on public display," said Ross Rader, a task force member and director of retail services for registration company Tucows Inc. "That's the big change for domain name owners." more»

Canadian Domain Whois Policy Changes Face Opposition from Law Enforcement

Sweeping changes to Canada's country code top-level domain, .ca, will put the country on the vanguard of Internet privacy. But while law enforcement isn't happy about potentially losing an important investigative tool, the half-million Canadians whose personal information is currently publicly available on the Internet shouldn't rest easy that they are safe from wired snoops. more»

"ip who is" Among Google's Top Searches in 2006

On Google's annual top 10 list of the hottest search words and phrases, "ip who is" has taken the top 10 spot in "Who is..." category. Google does not reveal how many searches it takes to reach the top 10, but it said millions of searches are conducted each day. more»

Spammers Operating Anonymously via Whois Privacy

The amount of message board spam has been escalating dramatically since mid-2005, according to experts and a search of Google shows a number of frequently recurring domains are appearing in bogus comments on message boards all over the internet.

Domains such as 888.typo7.com, e-casinoroom.com, HobbyWorkshop.com, onlinepokerment.com, TopSitesRanking.com and g4h5.com all appear in bogus postings which reference online gaming. Many of the actual sites link through to more than one established poker site. more»

ICANN Responds to "Worst Spam Offenders" and the Recent Knujon Report

ICANN has made an official announcement following earlier reports which suggested domain names registered by most spam sites where linked to a handful of domain registrars. From the ICANN Annoucement: "ICANN has sent enforcement notices and notices of concern to certain registrars, including those reported this week as being the registrars for the majority of websites advertised in spam emails... more»

ICANN Says It Is Not an Internet Enforcement Agency

ICANN says domain name issues are not always a matter of contractual compliance... "There remain occasional misconceptions about ICANN's authority. Some appear to believe ICANN is an Internet enforcement agency, with broad power to shut down websites, restrict website content, and penalize Internet users for unethical behavior. This is not the case," says a section from ICANN's July magazine. more»

Domain Slammers Go Phishing

ICANN introduced a requirement for domain name registrars to send out annual notices to all their customers (registrants) to check the Whois on their domain names to ensure the information is correct. While this seemed fairly reasonable (if cumbersome), the fact is it confuses the heck out of people -- and creates a whole lot of confusion for registrants. But that was a problem we could deal with. Fast-forward to October, 2008... more»

Whois Masking Considered Harmful

Whenever you register a domain name, your contact details are published in a publicly visible database called "Whois", where your contact details are instantly harvested by spambots and marketers who proceed to email and postal mail you marketing offers, deceptive "domain slamming" attempts, ads for dubious products, and perhaps even telemarketing calls. Nobody likes that, so over the years people started resorting to various tactics to protect themselves from the deluge of crap that inevitably comes with simply registering a domain name... more»