Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of IAC, acquires direct navigation company Sendori.

Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), has acquired direct navigation monetization company Sendori for an undisclosed amount.

Sendori offers an alternative to domain parking that automatically redirects type-in traffic rather than requiring a user to click on a sponsored link. For example, if you type in a car insurance domain name that would typically show a parked page full of links, with Sendori it may be forwarded directly to GEICO.

Sendori has 130,000 advertisers and access to 33 million unique visitors per month. The company has 11 people including contractors, and 10 of them will be going to IAC.

I’ve been skeptical of Sendori since it launched, especially because a similar service from advertising.com failed. But that service was launched before domain parking went mainstream, and Sendori was able to attach itself to domain parking companies by offering an alternative monetization. Sendori would serve one of its redirects only if it would generate a higher RPM than a parked page for the domain owner.

Sendori has also been used for affiliate arbitrage, allowing people to buy traffic and forward it as a referrer to sites such as eBay.

The company raised capital from First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Maples Investments and Felicis Ventures. It was founded in 2006.

This acquisition is a good sign for the domain name industry and adds further credibility to the direct navigation channel. There’s another lesson in this for domain companies: file patents on your core technology. It makes you a better acquisition target.

Alternative rock group wins bizarre domain arbitration.

This is a follow up to the story I wrote in November (Rock Group Wants ThirdEyeBlind.net). Third Eye Blind has prevailed in the dispute.

In November I speculated:

The owners of ThirdEyeBlind.net seem to be dodging the band by changing its whois information repeatedly. The latest whois information shows the owner is “Third Eye Blinds & Curtains” of India. This seems like a ruse to claim that the domain will be used for a company with the same name. But the whois record has changed many times, according to DomainTools. It just changed to the current record between October 8 and October 24, 2008.

The respondent seems to have gone to great lengths to prove that it is really a window coverings business in India:

The Respondent claims to have acquired the disputed domain name because it matches the name of its business. The Respondent claims to have been developing a website in connection with that domain name, which is almost complete. As supporting evidence, the Respondent provides various copies of what it says to be draft webpages. The Respondent therefore claims to have a legitimate interest in the disputed domain name based on demonstrable preparations to use it, for the purpose of paragraph 4(c)(i) of the Policy.

The Respondent also claims to have a legitimate interest because it is “commonly known by” the disputed domain name for the purpose of paragraph 4(c)(ii) of the Policy. The Respondent provides a copy of what it says is a registration card with the Government of India and the Income Tax Department of India stating the firms name to be “Third Eye Blinds & Curtains” and that the date of formation has been given in the said card as April 15, 2007. The Respondent provides other evidence, including a brochure and an “estimate memo” under the name of “Third Eye Blinds and Curtains”, which it says it provides to its clients.

The panel didn’t buy it, but also said it couldn’t prove otherwise. So it focused on other issues, such as how ThirdEyeBlind.net doesn’t have an ‘s’ on the end, which dramatically changes its meaning.

Moniker customers will be able to list domains for sale on SnapNames from within their accounts.

Domain Name Wire has learned that Moniker and SnapNames will introduce a new feature next week that makes listing domains on SnapNames easier. The feature will allow customers to list domains on SnapNames from within their Moniker accounts.

This is a marked improvement over the current process, which requires filling out a lengthy spreadsheet. SnapNames is a good venue to sell domain names, particularly in the $50-$200 range. However, the spreadsheet listing process made the time/benefit equation a bit harder to swallow.

The ability to list domains directly from a Moniker account is the second major synergy between the two Oversee.net owned companies since they were acquired. Last year SnapNames allowed domains to be listed on its service that were registered at Moniker; prior to that the domains had to be transferred to a SnapNames registrar.

The move comes just in time to beat back competitor NameJet, which is currently allowing some customers to list their non-expired domains for sale on its platform. I’ve been told that this feature will open up to a wider audience in 2009.

SnapNames and NameJet may become more critical in 2009 as many domainers look to liquidate unwanted names. With their daily volume of customers hunting for expired domains, these services provide more liquidity than other domain name sales venues.

I suspect we’ll hear about this new feature at DOMAINfest next week.

Here are some things for domainers to consider now that the Kentucky case has been overturned.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals has overturned a trial court’s ruling that the state could seize domain names associated with online gambling. The Court of Appeals ruled that domain names weren’t “gambling devices”, which was part of the statute used to justify seizing the domains.

As Michael Berkens pointed out, this is a narrow victory. Electronic Frontier Foundation writes that the ruling suggests to the Kentucky legislature that it can change the definition of “gambling device”, but it still believes the case will be without merit because “In addition to this type of domain name seizure still raising serious First Amendment, due process, and other constitutional problems, Kentucky courts (as pointed out in our joint amicus brief) also lack the authority to directly order out-of-state registrars to turn over customer domain names.”

The Kentucky domain seizure case prompted a lot of cries to move domain names to domain name registrars located outside the United States. As I’ve written before, I don’t think this is a good idea. For a number of reasons, I think the United States is one of the safest places to keep your domains. In fact, U.S.-based Geo domainers who own foreign city and country names will keep the domains under the ownership of a U.S. company and lease them to a foreign subsidiary. And it seems that foreign interests in ICANN are mostly concerned with whether particular domain names and new TLDs are “moral”.

To be sure, there are some countries that may provide more protection for your domain names. If nothing else, these countries will stall efforts to seize domain names.

If you’ve been thinking about moving your domain names (or other aspects of your business) offshore, you should consider going to Domainer Mardi Gras next month. The entire agenda is about risk mitigation. I will be on a panel about moving offshore.

eWeek writer can’t get copycat whois record changed.

I’ve heard people complain about “whois identity theft” before. Essentially, this is when someone uses your name on their whois record. You can imagine how this could potentially be troubling for you, depending on the domain name. But in the case of eWeek writer Larry Seltzer, the “identity thief” went several steps further.

First, the domain that is being spoofed is LarrySeltzer.net. Second, the perpetrator used Seltzer’s phone number and address (although a different email) in whois. The registrant name is “Larry Seltzer Astroturfing LLC”. Then he used his LarrySeltzer.net email address to make posts to a mailing list and to try to get eWeek’s security team to send him login credentials. Ouch.

Seltzer tried to get it taken care of by filing an inaccurate whois complaint (twice, actually) and complaining to eNom (the domain is registered at an eNom reseller). Then he went directly to ICANN with his press credentials. It is still unresolved.

As Seltzer points out, the registrar probably contacts the domain owner via e-mail to verify ownership. The e-mail address is correct. The phone and mailing address is not.

ICANN has recently cracked down on a couple registrars that it felt were not responding to inaccurate whois complaints. But I can understand Seltzer’s frustration. And, from a registrar perspective, I bet that if this domain were at GoDaddy the problem would be resolved already. For all its faults, GoDaddy has stringent whois policies (and it doesn’t just delete domains with inaccurate whois anymore).