Whatever happened to the Dotster Dots?

There have been a lot of bad stunts, publicity attempts, and ads put out by domain name registrars. But one of them stands out as perhaps the worst of all time: The Dotster Dots.

Dotster was one of the first discount domain name registrars, but has languished through the last decade while watching Go Daddy take home the crown. In 2006, Dotster took a look at what had happened in the domain name industry since 2000 and saw that Go Daddy was killing it. How? It must be the Go Daddy girls, some marketer thought.

And so began Dotster’s ill advised “me too” campaign, called the Dotster Dots. The company put out a press release and open auditions for female spokespersons who would be called “Dotster Dots” instead of “Go Daddy Girls”.

If you’re going to copy someone, you should at least try to do a better job than they did. But Dotster’s promotion looked like amateur hour. Talk of the Dotster Dots disappeared quickly, as if someone at Dotster realized how dumb it was making them look and made an executive decision to cut its losses quickly after announcing the winners. Now all that’s left is the DotsterDots.com domain name, which forwards to Dotster.com

Of course, attempts to copy Go Daddy’s successful commercials haven’t stopped. At least Crazy Domains hired an A-list name for its knock-off.

What Dotster and other copycats don’t realize is that the “hot models” thing isn’t some plug-n-play method to sell lots of domains. Next thing you know the founder of one of these competitors is going to start hunting elephants in Africa, thinking that must be the key to success.

It takes a lot more than that. Have you noticed how every mobile phone that tries to compete with the iPhone looks just like the iPhone? Whereas Apple tried something new, everyone else is just trying to copy it rather than come up with its own creative solution.

It’s the same thing with video games right now. Nintendo came out with the Wii, and then its two competitors decided they must have some sort of motion controller. Rather than think outside the box like Nintendo did, they’re all playing catchup.

Good luck with that.

Domain name registrar argues that you can’t sue it for negligence because it’s in the TOS.

What happens if you register a domain name at Register.com and then Register.com screws up? Tough luck.

That’s the message the company is sending by asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit Baidu brought against it for handing over the keys to its account to a criminal.

In a motion to dismiss (pdf), Register.com’s representatives write:

Asserting a laundry list of inflammatory claims, Baidu seeks to hold Register liable for the January 11, 2010 cyber-attack, which appears to have originated from unknown criminals who also targeted sites such as Twitter, and which resulted in a brief interruption of service on Baidu’s Web site, baidu.com. But Baidu fails to inform the Court that when it registered its domain name through Register more than a decade ago, it expressly agreed to waive any future claims against Register for precisely the kind of service interruptions that form the basis of this lawsuit. Indeed, in numerous provisions of the parties’ contract, Baidu agreed that it would not and could not bring the very claims it now attempts to assert.

This seems like it’s on shaky grounds. Register.com didn’t just mess up, it really f’d up. It’s almost unbelievable.

If I park in a parking garage, I know the ticket says the garage isn’t responsible for theft. But if the garage operator hands a crow bar to a thief to break into my car, I can hold the operator responsible.

But Register.com claims its mistake was nominal:

In terms of the criminal attack, then, Baidu’s allegations boil down to the core of what actually happened here: a customer service agent mistakenly verified a customer by failing to confirm that the correct security code was provided back by the requester. But that is not an allegation of gross negligence; at best, it is simple mistake or ordinary negligence.

You should re-read what happened and decide for yourself.

Register.com also suggests that Baidu filed the complaint in part because Google had suggested it was moving out of China at the time. (See footnote 9 in the Motion to Dismiss).

Thief resold domain names on Flippa to unsuspecting domain buyer.

A National Arbitration Forum panel has refused to hand over the domain names Recent.net, Than.net, and They.net in a UDRP decision.

I wrote about the case earlier this month, suggesting that the UDRP dispute must be over stolen domain names. UDRP is sometimes used to regain control of stolen domain names, but the complainant needs to be able to show trademark rights to the domain names. In this case the complainant admitted he had no trademark rights to the generic recent.net, than.net, and they.net domains.

The complainant says he bought the domain names on June 30, 2009, but his Go Daddy account was latter compromised and the domains transferred to the thief.

The respondent claims he bought the domain names on December 20, 2009 along with others for $1,000 at domain and web site marketplace Flippa.com. He says Flippa verified the seller by telephone. He also contacted the email addresses listed in the WHOIS to verify that Respondent was dealing with the owner and used an escrow service to effect the transaction.

Just because he won the UDRP doesn’t mean the buyer is safe yet. The fact that Flippa verified the current owner of the domains means little, and using an escrow service doesn’t help you avoid buying stolen domain names. In this case, the buyer would have been wise to look at the whois history for the domains, rather than just looking at the current whois. As I pointed out in my earlier article, the whois records for these domains has been erratic — a common sign of theft.

Sex.co domain name to be auctioned off in May.

That’s not a typo in the headline.

Sex.com may be off the auction block, but the owner of the Colombian ccTLD Sex.co hopes to cash in this May. Mobile Entertainment Group of Colombia plans to auction off the domain name at Sedo.

I talked to Mobile Entertainment Group founder Jan Leijnse by phone today. He explained that he’s not sure how much traffic the domain name gets as it was parked at Sedo only recently.

You may be wondering how his company got the second level domain name before .co relaunches. Remember, anyone who registered a third level .co domain name prior July 30, 2008 can get rights to the corresponding second level domain name. Leijnse’ company owned Sex.com.co and therefore was able to register Sex.co. There is no restriction on transferring these second level domain names to other entities.

Colombia has historically been really strict about who can register domain names, requiring an exact match to a trade name or trademark. Alas, here’s a registration for Sex.com.co.

Study sheds light on potentially biased appointment of UDRP arbitrators.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working with an outside party to analyze the distribution of WIPO cases amongst arbitrators. Now attorney Zak Muscovitch has beaten me to it with National Arbitration Forum data.

For those that follow NAF cases, you won’t be surprised to learn what Muscovitch discovered. But it’s still startling.

One controversial panelist has heard about 10% of all cases: Carolyn Marks Johnson. Muscovitch’s study revealed she has handled 966 cases at NAF. I’m not sure how much NAF pays panelists, but competitor WIPO pays single member panels $1,000. Although earlier fees were lower, this means Johnson may be closing in on $1 million in fees for being an NAF panelist.

So why does NAF select Johnson so often? Perhaps it’s because she ranks #3 in likelihood to find in favor of the complainant. According to the study she finds for the complainant 92.7% of the time. Finding in favor of the complainant helps NAF get more customers, as the complainant chooses the UDRP provider.

In fact, the 5 panelists who transfer the highest percentage of domain names are all ranked in the top 10 for being appointed as panelists by NAF. None of the five panelists who decline the most claims are ranked in the top 10.

Why case assignment shouldn’t be random is beyond me.

Here are the top 10 most frequently appointed arbitrators at NAF:

1. Carolyn Marks Johnson with 966 cases 10% of total cases
2. James A. Carmody with 889 cases 9.4% of total cases
3. Charles K. McCotter Jr. with 818 cases 8.6% of total cases
4. Ralph Yachnin with 720 cases 7.6% of total cases
5. Tyrus R. Atkinson Jr. with 623 cases 6.5% of total cases
6. Karl V. Fink with 499 cases 5.2% of total cases
7. John J. Upchurch with 478 cases 5% of total cases
8. Harold Kalina with 460 cases 4.8 % of total cases
9. Paul Dorf with 440 cases 4.6 % of total cases
10. Louis E. Condon with 437 cases 4.6% of total cases

You can see the rest of the startling data here.