Even without .com domains, sites can continue to operate.

You can take away a domain name, but you can’t stop people from visiting a web site.

Yesterday’s seizure of five poker company domain names is another case in point.

Still want to get your fix of Poker Stars? Just go to PokerStars.eu.

It reminds me of when online gambling site Bodog ran into legal problems. The solution? Change the URL from Bodog.com to NewBodog.com.

Sure, it lost some players as a result. But a domain name is simply a pointing device. It makes it easier to visit a site than entering an IP address, so they aren’t necessary to visit a web site.

There’s even a plugin specifically designed to help people looking for domains seized in recent ICE cases. The plugin forwards users to a mirror site.

Poker domain seizures involved complex criminal activity specifically targeted at the United States.

Yesterday the online gambling world was rocked by the seizure of five poker domain names used by three large online poker companies.

The domain names were seized by the FBI from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker. According to Compete.com, FullTiltPoker.com gets around 1 million unique visitors a month.

Some people are drawing references to the Kentucky gambling domain seizures and recent seizures from ICE Homeland Security Investigations.

I think drawing parallels here is a mistake. This case is completely different.

At issue isn’t that these companies operated online businesses outside the U.S. that are illegal in the U.S. It’s more than that. The government alleges that the companies:

1. Tricked banks into processing gambling payment transactions by making them think they were e-commerce payments for other goods

2. Invested in struggling banks to get them to illegally process gambling payments

Indeed, if you run an online gambling site and didn’t do any of the above, the U.S. government isn’t targeting you nor your domain names. Even if they are on .com, which is managed by the U.S.-based registry VeriSign.

Should the domain names that were used to run a criminal enterprise specifically targeting the U.S. have been seized? Well, if you get caught bringing drugs into the U.S. on a boat, both your drugs and the boat used to commit the crime will be seized.

Now let’s switch gears to another question: if you’re running a questionable site should you go with a country code domain name with a different jurisdiction?

Well, is what you’re doing legal in the country that the ccTLD belongs to?

For example, you don’t want to run a porn or gambling site on a UAE domain.

Also ask yourself if the country is stable and if it has a history of not changing its domain name policies on a whim.

It’s also worth noting that a number of ccTLDs are managed by registries based in the United States. It might be harder to avoid jurisdiction than you think.

Facebook files trademark lawsuit against owner of FriendFinder.

Facebook, Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Various, Inc., parent company of FriendFinder, along with a couple related companies and John Does. The case was filed in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Califonia on Wednesday.

The entire complaint hasn’t been posted online, but it involves Various, Inc’s trademarks for FriendFinder and AdultFriendFinder.

I know that Facebook has called its tool for finding new friends on Facebook “Friend Finder” in the past, although I don’t see much branding for that now. It’s not clear if this action is related to that.

I’ll post more details when the court posts the actual complaint.

Domain sales database gets a facelift.

Last year domain name investor Adam Strong and a partner purchased domain name sales database NameBio.

You probably wouldn’t have noticed, though, as the site stayed the same.

Until today.

I just went to the site and noticed a new look and feel. It’s a lot cleaner design without that annoying background image. You can access all of the advanced features without clicking between tabs.

Also gone is the “instant search” type feature. Instead you now hit a search button to process your query.

It looks like there will be some sort of sales data graphing feature as well, but it isn’t working as of this morning.

Keep an eye on it; I have a feeling Strong has a number of new features in the works.

DotAsia IDN launch plans released.

DotAsia today announced more details for its upcoming launch of .asia IDNs.

.Asia IDNs will be released in Chinese (Traditional and Simplified matched), Japanese and Korean.

A seventy day sunrise period for rights holders will commence May 11. A landrush period open to everyone else begins August 2 and also runs for seventy days. In both sunrise and landrush an auction will be held if more than one entity submits an application for the same domain name.

Additionally, current (ASCII) domain name holders with Romanized or transliterated names may apply for the name in its native language during Sunrise before Landrush. Such (ASCII).ASIA domains must be registered by May 10, 2011 — so there’s still some opportunity here.

There will also be a Asia IDN Pioneer Domains Program for people and companies interesting in building out premium domain names.