julian

Can I igorne this?

I was wondering if a similar thing could happen in blighty..?

Dear Julian,

As a founding member of the Internet Commerce Association, Sedo believes that it is important to invest our resources in ensuring the long term health and viability of the domain name market and the business of traffic monetization. Whether you buy and sell domains for your business, maintain a portfolio of domain properties, or simply enjoy the use of domain names for personal websites or blogs, a threat has emerged to domain ownership and it is time for interested individuals and businesses to protect our rights.

As you may have already read in the news or on a forum, a bill was recently introduced in the United States Senate by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) that aims to drastically and needlessly expand the scope of rights associated with a trademark outside the realm of traditional trademark law. The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008, or the Snowe bill as it is referred to, appears on its face to be directed to fighting the practice of “phishing”, which is a worthwhile cause, but contains many elements completely unrelated to this purpose, such as creating a cause of action for displaying advertising on a generic or descriptive domain name simply because another company has registered rights to a similar word or phrase.

If this bill is passed by Congress and signed by the President, it would immediately arm large businesses and government agencies with the ability to claim countless valuable and legitimate domains from their current owners. Supported by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), a coalition of companies that include Verizon, AIG, Dell, and several large hotel chains, the Snowe bill is attempting to confuse the issue of malicious phishing scams with the lawful and legitimate business of buying, selling and monetizing domain names.

By removing many of the intended checks and balances of traditional trademark law, designed to ensure that trademark rights are limited by geography and class of goods and services, the Snowe bill is attempting to eliminate many of the roadblocks large companies have faced in their attempt to gain de facto monopoly rights on words that rightfully belong to the public domain. Furthermore, the absence of due process principles make it likely that valuable domain properties could be taken from their rightful owner due only to a vague resemblance to another’s mark.

I encourage all Sedo users and domain owners anywhere to help fight the Snowe bill by joining the Internet Commerce Association, a non-profit industry organization founded to help represent domain name investors and developers and the direct search industry. The Internet Commerce Association is comprised of responsible businesses and individuals who have joined together to improve public confidence in internet commerce. Based in Washington D.C., their mission is to promote and share best practices among participants in the domain name industry and to educate consumers, policy makers, law makers and the media about the value and benefits of direct navigation traffic and the domain name industry.

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accelerator

Let's hope something like this doesn't happen in the UK, but domainers should keep informed.

To be kept updated, you can sign up for the Internet Commerce Association newsletter:

http://www.internetcommerce.org/

paulc

Would be bad news for UK domainers, but it is all round bad news in general.

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