Nomination for the worse online tech support chat ever.

Someone at my web host must have had a bad day Friday. After I discovered a problem with my email forwarding, I opened up a live chat session. Here’s the transcript of the first 10 minutes of the chat.

Support: Hello, how may I help you?

andrew allemann: For some reason none of my forward email accounts under domainnamewire.com are working. e.g. andrew -at- domainnamewire.com, pr -at-domainnamewire.com. This appears to have been a problem for the past month or two at least.

[About three or four minutes later I'm wondering why I haven't gotten the usual "let me look into that", or "please hold on", so I want to make sure my initial query went through...]

andrew allemann: are you there?

Support: Yes

[OK, so the support guy is there. But a minute or two after he said 'Yes', and nothing else, I'm still wondering if he saw my initial query. So...]

andrew allemann: do you have any questions about the problem?

Support: No, I’m checking into it
Support: Be patient

Oh, snap!

Seller of Vodka.com wins UDRP case over StreetPrice.com.

Roy Messer, perhaps best known in domain circles for selling Vodka.com for $3 million, has successfully defended an attack on his StreetPrice.com domain name. Messer was represented by domain attorney Ari Goldberger.

The complaint was brought by the web site StreetPrices.com, a price comparison web site launched in 1997. Messer registered the StreetPrice.com domain name in 1998.

The panel found that the Messer showed he had rights or legitimate interests in the domain name for a number of reasons, including that “Street Price” is a descriptive and generic term. Messer has also registered other descriptive domain names, such as BigSavings.com. StreetPrices.com’s trademark wasn’t added to the USPTO register until 2001, and at that point was only on the supplemental register.

There was some debate amongst the three person panel as to if StreetPrices.com was identical or confusingly similar to the StreetPrices.com mark. The majority of the panel found in favor of the complainant, but panelist Neil Brown dissented, writing:

…the question is whether the domain name streetprice.com is confusingly similar to the STREETPRICES.COM trademark which describes in the most general way the street or discounted prices of undefined objects but, presumably, of goods and services in general. It is, of course, tempting to conclude that the mere omission of the letter “s” in the domain name generates a confusing similarity. But, as was pointed out in Tire Discounters, Inc. v. TireDiscounters.com, where the domain name tirediscounter.com was held not to be confusingly similar to the trademark TIRE DISCOUNTERS, it was the absence of the “s” that made the difference, for, as the three person panel said: “The omission of the letter “s” from the mark is one of those small differences that matters in this context”. It matters because the trademark itself is of a very generalized nature and the difference in spelling in the domain name suggests that the domain name may well be dealing with a different subject than the trademark.

Date set for trial over troubled acquisition.

A jury trial date of April 6, 2010 has been set for the lawsuit between Thought Convergence and Jay Westerdal et al.

Thought Convergence (TCI) filed the lawsuit against Westerdal on May 1 over TCI’s purchase of Westerdal’s company Name Intelligence. Name Intelligence is best known for its DomainTools web site, but it also owns web hosting company Spry. In the suit, TCI claimed alleged breach of securities exchange agreement, breach of employment and non-compete agreements, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and accounting.

Westerdal responded with a number of counterclaims, alleging a “Myriad of deliberate misrepresentations made by TCI during the negotiation process and execution of the agreement.”

Both parties have denied each others’ allegations.

The discovery cut-off is February 16, 2010 and the final pre-trial conference is scheduled for March 8, 2010. It’s rare that a case like this actually makes it to trial; it is likely the case will be settled before then.

Let’s kill the hubris.

Hey, I’ve got a little secret for you: no one gives a crap about the domain name industry. It’s small potatoes. It’s a speck on a fly. It’s nothing. And people don’t like it, too.

I personally think the domain industry is great and incredibly important. But the fact remains that most people outside our industry don’t care or know about it. We’re tiny. And if they know about it, they certainly don’t care for domainers.

I bring this up because a lot of people on forums are calling for law enforcement to investigate the SnapNames scandal.

Here’s law enforcement’s message: we don’t understand and we don’t care. You’re too small to worry about.

Already, someone has filed a complaint with the Oregon Department of Justice. The response?

…Thank you for the information that you sent us. Although there does not now appear to be a need for an investigation or legal action, we will keep your information on file as part of the public record.

Our primary goal is to identify and eliminate the most serious marketplace violations, and many factors are considered in determining what cases we should pursue.

Read: you guys think this is a bigger deal than it is.

Can you imagine if the Oregon Department of Justice pursued and actually handed down an indictment in the SnapNames scandal? How would they explain to the public about their “win” to protect cybersquatters (as the public views it) at tax payers’ expense? “Yeah, so there are these things called domain names. They expire, and people buy these expired domains in an auction…(blank stares)…by taking action, we have helped protect the people that profit from expiring domains, people that every citizen of Oregon should care about their livelihood”.

Let’s face it. Domain theft happens every day. How many arrests and indictments do we know about? One. And that took perseverance to get the police to investigate.

The typical law enforcement agency doesn’t know the first thing about domain names. They understand burglary, terrorism, and domestic violence. And they get glory for pursuing those things.

Like it or not, the domain industry is minuscule. And disliked. Especially people who buy expired domain names. So don’t count on much public empathy or protection from the authorities.

Canadian regulator questions .bank top level domain name.

There are many challenges to introducing new top level domain names. International norms certainly play a part, such as issues over morality.

But who would have thought .bank would create controversy, especially from from a bank regulator?

For background, a group of financial organizations has suggested that a .bank top level domain name might help reduce phishing and instill confidence. Only real banks that meet stringent requirements would be able to register a .bank domain name, thus reassuring the public that a .bank web site is not a phishing scam. (Yes, there are problems with that theory, but we’ll ignore them for argument’s sake.)

Apparently not all bank regulators agree. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada (OSFI) has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom saying that it might undertake an effort to work against .bank’s credibility as a safe web address for banking.

Under Canada’s Bank Act, any bank that is not regulated by OSFI cannot use the word “bank” to indicate or describe a financial services business in Canada. OSFI says that anyone found in violation of the Bank Act would be asked to relinquish their .bank domain name or they would be guilty of a criminal offense.

OSFI said that, if a .bank TLD is introduced, it may use its resources to educate Canadians to “fully understand the value that can be placed on a .bank gTLD”.