Company puts .brand to work.
Last week I wrote about the .Brand challenge to .Com, and how it doesn’t come in the form of big companies giving up their .com domains. For example, Sony is never going to let Sony.com expire.
Instead, challenge is the thousands of additional domain names companies register to promote contest, microsites, etc. Which is why a site recently launched by Sony is noteworthy.
To promote some of its technology in the new Bond film Spectre, the company set up a site at AssistMoneyPenny.sony.
This isn’t a case of the .com being taken and a company going with an alternative, either. Sony went ahead and registered the matching .com, perhaps in a nod to possible confusion. At the same time, AssistMoneyPenny.com doesn’t resolve. [Update: The domain name was forwarding to the .sony website, but without www. at the beginning. The way the .sony website was set up, this didn’t resolve.]
If I were Sony, I’d have the .com domain name forward to the .sony domain name and track how often people type in the .com. This would give the company a better idea of possible confusion. If there is little, then the company might not bother registering matching .com domain names in the future.
“how it doesn’t come in the form of big companies giving up their .com domains. For example, Sony is never going to let Sony.com expire”.
Allemann,
This article is a bit patronizing, and whooping up a frenzy where there is nothing happening. There’s no menace of even new Corporations, or start-ups ditching their dot COM for new TLDs; do you even know what Sony .COM is worth? The exact price is PRICELESS. I don’t think money can buy it. So, your comment about “Sony is never going to let Sony.com expire” is absurd, they wont even sell it for one billion dollars, so why are you considering its expiration? Bizarre.
Sorry, you put it in a realm of possibility, without telling us why you did so. Forward their Sony .com to a new TLD?
@Domenclature,
It isn’t Andrew “whooping up a frenzy” here.
Sony is using a 3-word .SONY domain. And, at this stage, that’s unusual enough to be newsworthy.
Sony also registered a matching 3-word .COM domain. And Andrew points out that the company is making a mistake by not using this .COM as well. Not only might Sony leak traffic; it isn’t measuring this leakage.
Quite mild and even handed, if you ask me.
True, only if you isolate that concern from the Coupler;.
To state that “Sony is never going to let Sony.com expire”, in essence, barely survives renewal, not even SOLD, implies that lesser quality ,Coms, such as BuySony .com will be definitely dropped. And that’s not the case.
The example of a company letting a domain expire was the scenario Verisign mentioned on its call. That’s why I used that standard. See the previous post about Verisign, which I linked to at the beginning of this post.
I checked out the link, and it didn’t change my opinion as stated, however, it earned you a need for more clarity:
I guess what I’m concerned with, is a general sense of the way you treat the subject of new extensions; it’s as tho you have two moral, and market equivalences, on the one hand VERISIGN’s .COM (although they’re just administering the thing, it doesn’t belong to them; they’re regulated, as you know), and the newgTLDs on the other; you even lump the dotBrands along the commercially useless generics. You being one of the best, fairest, successful, and most stable domain bloggers, I give a lot more scrutiny, including your nuances, and most cases, what you fail to highlight, because Allemann, it matters.
If you recall, I have always had a quarrel with this even handed, lukewarm approach, when in fact reality, and truth is not lukewarm, or even handed. Most times, reality is partial, and lopsided. Not only is dot COM not in the same league as new gTLDs, the cTLD dotTK has more registrations, and use than all new gTLDs combined! Where not start comparing them to that?
.Net, .Org, .info, etc all put in more numbers for total, and new registrations than all newgTLDs combined.
You can understand my position?
“Sony is using a 3-word .SONY domain. And, at this stage, that’s unusual enough to be newsworthy”.
Peterson,
It may or may not be unusual, since there’s a third, and likely, possibility: these Corporations may have acquired these .brands for security, and/or vanity purposes, hence not traffic related [this is particularly addressing your 2nd to the last paragraph {Sony also registered a matching 3-word .COM domain. And Andrew points out that the company is making a mistake by not using this .COM as well. Not only might Sony leak traffic; it isn’t measuring this leakage}].
I don’t think that, even the new gTLD Registries foresee a century when there would be a concern that Sony will let there Sony .Com expire, how much less domainers, Allemann’s audience; certainly not the public. So it is whooping it up a lot. The write-up is not addressing any problems.
Domenclature,
If you could seriously read this article, written by a man with much more domaining experience and success than most, and think that the author genuinely entertains the remotest possibility that Sony might let Sony.com expire, then all I can say is you really need help.
Also your critical comments of this story show such a sense of entitlement. Quit the attitude and think about avoiding this website as its content clearly offends you.
Believe it or not, there’s ONLY one blogger who ascribes True or False based on the domain sales success of a commentator; and this gives you away every time you chime in, even tho you disguise yourself in these cool monikers.
Domenclature,
I don’t really understand your waffly comment, it’s very cloak and dagger – why not be clear and to the point instead of talking in riddles?
From what I was able to gather, you are insinuating that I am a blogger in the domain sector. I’m not.
Although you’re not willing to come out and say who you think I am, it could be reasonably assumed you are insinuating that I am Andrew Allemann, hiding behind the name Fido. I’m not.
Go back to your own website – it’s horrendous, I have to say. Better websites existed back in the nineties. Why not devote more time to improving your own internet offer than criticising that of others.
By the way, your Gravatar icon (a D inside a circular border, which I guess is supposed to represent your ‘brand’ consisting of the made-up word ‘Domenclature’) is a wholesale ripoff of the United States Democratic Party logo. All you’ve done is change the colour of the circle.
Then again, I guess if your comment didn’t offer sufficient evidence then your icon proves beyond any doubt that you enjoy having the D inside your ring.
I was NOT insinuating that you are Allemann, no.
Why should I go back to my own website? This is a forum of which I’m welcome to exercise my freedom of speech. I registered with DNW so I can comment on it. Blogs are not limited to their owners alone, and neither are websites. You’re the one that is aloof. You’re not making any sense whatsoever. Go back to my website? what da..?
The D in a circle is not my logo. I thought you would have guessed that I am a Democrat with the capital D, instead of a Republican? That would have been a good guess, but I’m that either. The Gravatar is not my logo. I thought you visited my site? You would have seen my logo there.
Then again, from the way you spelled “COLOUR”, I can tell you’re not in the USA. Here we have certain rights, including freedom of speech. Allemann understands that, and wasn’t thinking the way you thought: ban him or something like that, or at least you were suggesting that.
Let’s drop it. Go do something useful. Your comments are none responsive to the topic. Bye.
OH, I refuse to use canned Word Press stuff, I built my own website.
Thanks.
Ah, yes. So now I know what your sense of entitlement is based on – it’s that good old, constitutionally protected right to free speech.
In that case you won’t have any objection to me implementing my own free speech rights to remind everybody that you, Domenclature, are the very same Mr Uzoma Ojogho who was sentenced to six years in prison in the 1990s for theft and dishonesty.
Convicted on no fewer than “seven incidents of grand theft, five of unlawful diversion of funds, four of making false financial statements and one count of perjury.”
But you wouldn’t want people to take my word for it – and I wouldn’t expect them to.
LA Times, April 23, 1993:
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-04-23/local/me-26434_1_state-revokes-license
You’ve got the wrong person. Sorry!
How does an Electronics Repairman divert funds? Fishy.
Go do something useful.
I decided to look further into this case that you often reference only to discover that the matter was reversed on appeal.
Makes no sense.
Why don’t you then reveal your identity?
For all we know, you could be a murderer, and pointing a finger at a guy who was at least licensed and conducting business.
I ask you to retract, and remove this libel/smear/slander of my name Shane Cultra, and this website is so asked too.
This is the 4th time that you’ve used aliases to deflect from domain discourse into ruining my name by associating me with someone I have nothing to do with.
I will be contacting my lawyers to see what is what.
Thank you.
You haven’t provided evidence, only a citation.
Considering only two days ago you denied being Mr. Ojogho and claimed you had “nothing to do with” him despite your primary business domain name being registered in “his” name, you now seem to have an incredibly detailed knowledge of “his” legal trials and tribulations!
When I first raised your conviction you responded to say that I had “got the wrong person” and that you had done your own research and discovered “that the matter was reversed on appeal.”
This was clearly not the case. If “his” conviction was reversed on appeal then “he” (and by he I mean you) would not have taken the matter to the Supreme Court, which also rejected the appeal.
When you were caught out on that one you changed your story that “the Appellate Court reversed in part, and affirmed some minor ones in part, and the Appellant tried to even have those minor ones reversed.”
I submit that this is another lie!
As the LA Times article points out, “Ojogho was convicted of seven incidents of grand theft, five of unlawful diversion of funds, four of making false financial statements and one count of perjury.”
I’m afraid I can’t see anything “minor” among that rap sheet. Not even close to it!
Everything is major. Perhaps the least major, if we can put it like that, is the false financial statements (it’s still serious).
Let’s say I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt and accept that part of the conviction was overturned at the first appeal court, it didn’t result in your…sorry…Mr. Ojogho’s release from prison because the unsuccessful Supreme Court appeal record shows ‘habeas corpus’ was invoked by the appeal lawyers – to the lay person this means that the appeal was made when Mr. Ojogho was in prison.
As for the fact that no record seems to exist of what you claim was a partial reversal of the seventeen convictions…I’ll let the jury decide if your testimony bears scrutiny!
“Fido”
Let’s look further into the substantive issues and the allegations:
Don’t just dwell on the stigma of someone going to jail, after all Mandela went to jail; what did the person go to jail for? True that the Defendant/Appellant in this case may not have been identical to Mandela, after you get a gist of what occurred here, they are similar.
It turns out that Uzoma Ojogho had just made a Three Million Dollar ($3,000,000) purchase of 100% stock of Country Food and Beverage Co. Inc. that owned 13 Restaurants, including the exclusive One West Restaurant, where the Los Angeles Police/Sheriffs had their Mixers, in 1998, [see http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/
search Country Food and Beverage Co. Inc].
This was back in the days where Los Angeles Police was like an occupying force, pre-Rodney King incident.
Mr Uzoma Ojogho was engaged in doing the most advanced form of Satellite Business, and various entrepreneurial activities. It appears they decided to destroy him. If you peruse the allegations, then this will be clear to you. He was not a “repair man” at all, but an entrepreneur, and a business man that employed over 105 people, including 63 in Country Food and Beverage alone. The transcript of trial shows how his clientele, ranged from the famed Don Drysdale of Dodgers (who testified that Mr Ojogho was his friend) to any fun persons in California.
Let’s take the most serious allegation against him, the perjury charge (PC 118), there it is alleged that he attempted to use his middle name, which is in English and easier to pronounce (Godfrey), and the application wasn’t even submitted. That’s it, believe it or not. When you look into this matter, you will quickly discover that the then-LAPD, were the criminals and Mr. Ojogho, the saint. He fought them as you would expect an innocent man to try. However, it’s a daunting task. LAPD was subsequently reorganized, and admonished for being racists.
I urge you to look into it further.
Correction: The Country Food and Beverage purchase was 1988, not ’98.
And that’s the year the matter in discussion here started.
At the Secretary of State’s site at http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/ Search Country Food and Beverage, as it’s highly sensiitive parameters.
Domenclature, you’ve asked me to do something useful, so I will. I’m putting in a lot of effort here, I hope you appreciate it!
The domain name you use for your brand (the contrived ‘Domenclature.com’) is registered in the name of “Uzoma Ojogho” at a street address in Los Angeles, California.
Unless you’re telling me that by sheer coincidence there’s another person living in Los Angeles (which is also where the conviction was made in 1993) called Uzoma Ojogho, who didn’t get convicted, and who is for some reason associated with your domain name, then all readers will happily assume it is the very same person who was convicted.
But how is he associated with your domain name? Without your knowledge, perhaps? Of course not – you’re a domainer. A pretty bad one, but nobody would seriously believe that a person who advertises domain names for sale would not know how to register a domain in his own name!
So in that case, we might expect you to explain why the primary domain name of your domaining ‘company’ is not registered in your name but that of Uzoma Ojogho. But I notice you haven’t done that. Strange.
I also note that this topic of Uzoma Godfrey Ojogho and his 1993 conviction was raised by others in the comments section of another domain blog in December 2013, see:
http://www.thedomains.com/2013/12/07/daniel-negari-lays-out-his-vision-for-xyz-chats-about-the-controversial-namejet-com-auctions/
I know you are aware of this because you commented yourself, under the same name as you are doing here.
At that time you didn’t give any impression there, like you have done here, that they had “got the wrong person, sorry!”
In fact you made several comments there, and in not one of them did you attempt to make any denials that you were Uzoma Ojogho. So you’re not consistent, are you?
You also say that ‘Uzoma Ojogho’ is “someone I have nothing to do with.” Even if I believed you when you say that your name is ‘Shane Cultra’ (I don’t believe you!) it is not true to say that you have “nothing to do with” Uzoma Ojogho, because that is the name listed as the contact of the primary domain name of your commercial operations.
So even if you’re not the convicted liar and thief Uzoma Godfrey Ojogho, you’re still a liar.
You make this so easy. I’ll turn to the next point.
You claim that I libeled “Shane Cultra.” Let me educate you. A libel is a statement which HAS to meet BOTH of the following criterea. Not one, but BOTH of them!
1) The statement harms somebody’s character,
AND
2) The statement must be untrue.
Let’s deal with these in order: 1) My comment concerned Uzoma Ojogho, yet you claim to be ‘Shane Cultra,” so tell me again, how did I “libel/smear/slander [your] name Shane Cultra” ?
2) It is a provable fact, as I stated and provided evidence for, that Uzoma Godfrey Ojogho was convicted for theft and dishonesty and imprisoned for six years in 1993. And that’s regardless of how difficult you find it to understand how “an Electronics Repairman [could] divert funds” or how “Fishy” you find the conviction.
Therefore as far as your threat of libel goes, you fail on the second condition as well as the first, because what I wrote was true. (Remember I explained to you that for a libel to be committed BOTH preconditions must be met?)
Next…
You say you “decided to look further into” Uzoma Ojogho’s conviction, and you discovered “that the matter was reversed on appeal.”
Really? Please could you provide some evidence of this. Official court records will be best, I’ll also happily accept contemporaneous reports.
You see, I have been looking into Mr. Ojogho’s conviction and I happened to discover something myself. Check out this link:
http://ca.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19940908_0042429.CA.htm/qx
If you need me to explain it (I suspect you do) then this record shows that in September 1994, Uzoma Ojogho appealed his April 1993 conviction (/six year prison sentence) at the California Supreme Court.
This appeal was REJECTED. This is a pretty big deal. Relatively few appeal convictions are taken that far, you were desperate to clear your name! And for an appeal to be heard in the supreme court (which, as its title suggests, is a pretty big deal) the case previously will have come from an appellate court, which means Uzoma Godfrey Ojogho made an earlier appeal to an inferior court, which was also a failure.
This doesn’t quite chime with your discovery that the “matter was reversed” on appeal.
Finally, you say “I will be contacting my lawyers to see what is what.”
Don’t bother! Lawyers are expensive – I think I’ve just helped save you a lot of money!
“Really? Please could you provide some evidence of this. Official court records will be best, I’ll also happily accept contemporaneous reports”.
Yes, you had it right in your tirade. The Appellate Court reversed in part, and affirmed some minor ones in part, and the Appellant tried to even have those minor ones reversed.
See:
Second Appellate District, Division 7, No. B063892 B076889
You are the only one here who seems to be hiding.
You can’t stop anybody from preventing you and your “gang” from defrauding unsuspecting new domainers. Why don’t you do two things:
1. Reveal your true identity 2. Challenge us on substantive domain issues. Latching onto internet gossips that occurred over 20 years ago, on silly unsubstantiated allegations, or things you and I know nothing about will NOT stop anybody from exposing the pump and dump of domain names as you are engaged in.
Of course Allemann is conveniently letting you violate his blog rules by vying off topic, so he doesn’t face my scrutiny. It won’t work.
Letting people such as yourself post idiotic comments in disguised aliases have driven good people away from these forums.
I have always used my name to conduct business on the net. Have you? I doubt it. No aliases.
BUT I’m plowing ahead with scrutinizing all domain theories, don’t waste your time. Tell your sponsors that much. And that you got the wrong guy.
Turning off comments as they’ve gone off topic