The man sticks it to group that was trying to stick it to the man.
A group that bills itself as a union for current an former Huffington Post bloggers has lost its main domain name.
Huffington Post Union of Bloggers (HPUB) just lost a dispute brought by Huffington Post parent AOL under the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP). Basically, AOL said HPUB was cybersquatting.
While HPUB says it’s a union, it’s site is actually a news site very similar to the Huffington Post.
HPUB made an amusing argument in its defense:
Respondent argues that it is common practice for collectives, labor organizations, labor unions or other non-profit corporations to utilize names that identify the commonality of such individuals. Examples include, the “Starbucks Workers Union†(starbucksunion.org), the “National Football League Players Association†(nflplayers.com), the “National Basketball Players Association†(nbpa.org), the “National Hockey League Players’ Association†(nhlpa.org), the “US Airline Pilots Association†(usairlinepilots.org) (US Airways), the “Major League Baseball Players Association†(mlbplayers.org), and the “Amalgamated Transit Union†(atu.org)
Right. But if the Starbucks Workers Union was opening coffee shops under the Starbucks name, that would be an issue.
HPUB also owns the domain name HPUB.org. But all of its content is hosted at HuffingtonPostUnionofBloggers.org. So it’s going to lose all of its search engine rankings.
Frantisek Mrazek says
They have 10 + 5 days for 302 redirects co Google will reindex it to the new domain name in this time