Aftermarket.com to be in the Paris DomainerMeeting auction

Aftermarket.com, probably one of the best domain names in the domain name aftermarket will be sold at the Paris Auction at DomainerMeeting. The reserve is set very low and we expect the domain name to sell to the highest bidder. The domain currently receives AT LEAST 3-5,000 uniques per month and is listed on the first page of Google for the term "aftermarket."

Aftermarket.com has sparked interest from large private domain holders to large parking companies and aftermarkets.

To sign up for the auction or to place an absentee bid for Aftermarket.com, please email Don Lyons at dlyons{@}corp.moniker.com

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Snowe bill threatens to derail domain industry

Sign the petition to stop the "Snowe Bill" at www.SnoweBill.com

US Senator Olympia Snowe introduced S. 2661, the %u201CAnti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008%u201D (APCPA). The bill was also cosponsored by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Ted Stevens (R-AK).


According to a press release by the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), the bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. No hearings have yet been scheduled on this proposal.



ICA strongly supports efforts to thwart trademark infringement, criminal phishing schemes, and the furnishing of inaccurate WHOIS database information.



S. 2661, however, contains provisions that are largely unrelated to these objectives and that radically and unnecessarily expand the rights of trademark owners to essentially provide them with monopoly rights on registered trademarks to the detriment of millions of individuals and businesses engaged in lawful and legitimate Internet commerce.



Moreover, the proposal goes far beyond protecting trademarks to covering brand names and business names that might otherwise not be entitled to trademark protection. Such an expansion flies in the face of established trademark law, poses significant risks to Internet commerce, and would be burdensome on our justice system.



ICA believes that the legislation can be perfected to eliminate these risks without hindering its ability to achieve the goal of preventing phishing and other fraudulent schemes that plague Internet commerce.

ICA is firmly opposed to the criminal activity of financial data phishing and will carefully review the portions of this legislation relevant to eradicating that activity with a view toward supporting those provisions that fill essential gaps in existing law.



However, ICA is also firmly opposed to the establishment of a parallel domain name infringement enforcement scheme that is more expansive and more onerous than the existing, highly effective remedies available to trademark owners through ICANN%u2019s UDRP process and US trademark law.

Trademark owners already prevail in 85% of all UDRP complaints and nearly 100% of all ACPA cases. Yet some apparently now wish to establish a new regime for contesting allegedly %u201Cinfringing%u201D domains that is tilted even more in their favor by denying basic due process and substantive protections to domain name registrants %u2013 and that provides the possibility that they can use their power and influence to sway public officials to expend taxpayer dollars in defense of private Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).




The overbroad and unnecessary trademark-like provisions of this bill are a recipe for massive reverse domain name hijacking by large corporations and are therefore a direct threat to the more than $10 billion in asset value created by the entrepreneurial ranks of professional domain name investors and developers, and to the beneficial goods, services, and information provided to consumers through their websites.



ICA will work with the bill%u2019s sponsors and other members of the Senate Commerce Committee with an eye toward eliminating or narrowing these unnecessary and duplicative provisions and assuring that any final legislation is focused solely on the criminal financial fraud of true phishing schemes.



Relevant provisions of ICA%u2019s member Code of Conduct include:



%u2022 Protection of IPRs: A registrant shall follow accepted trademark law and respect the brands and trademarks of others. Members will not intentionally and in bad faith register and use a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark.



%u2022 Strict Adherence to Internet Fraud Laws: Members of ICA are committed to adhering to all applicable laws that seek to curb and control Internet fraud and abuse.



%u2022 Access to Accurate WHOIS Data: A registrant will provide accurate domain name ownership and contact information to the WHOIS database in a timely manner so that domain name ownership is transparent.

While ICA is clearly committed to best practices and lawful conduct by domain name registrants, we are very concerned that this proposal would establish a separate and parallel system of trademark-related enforcement vis-à-vis domain names that is less balanced, broader and more punitive than existing ICANN arbitration procedures and relevant provisions of US trademark law.



Further, the proposal unfairly targets domain name registrants for a widespread Internet practice %u2013 if its aim is to halt the advertising monetization of brand names and typographical variations thereof when consumers engage in direct Internet navigation or in web searches it utterly fails in that endeavor, as this activity is also engaged in systematically by search engines, web browsers and ISPs.

Network Solutions Stands by Name Policy

Network Solutions is standing by its controversial policy of automatically registering some domain names that are the subject of searches on the company's Web site.

After testing the concept in December, the domain name registration company quietly began doing this over the past weekend. Potential customers who used the company's "Find a domain" search engine would suddenly find the domain names they had been searching for were registered to Network Solutions itself, making them temporarily unable to purchase the domain from another provider.

Industry watchers were quick to blast the new policy, saying that it either forced searchers to become Network Solutions customers, or exposed their ideas to scammers, who would be able to snatch up the domains the second they were released. "It is a deplorable action that Network Solutions would announce potential domain names to the entire world," wrote Jay Westerdal, on the DomainTools blog.

If cutting down on domain name scamming was the goal, "someone should be fired over the implementation," wrote Andrew Allemann, a blogger with Domain Name Wire.

On Wednesday, Network Solutions CEO Champ Mitchell said that his company planned to change the site's design to ensure that users are notified of this policy. The company is also looking into adding a feature that would make give users the option of keeping their searches un-registered, although that would require cooperation from domain name registries, he said.

Ironically, Mitchell said that Network Solutions came up with the search registration process in an effort to cut down on the scamming that has plagued the industry over the past two years. "We are not trying to make a bunch of money off of this," he said.

By registering the domains immediately, Network Solutions is keeping them out of the hands of scammers who take advantage of a loophole in the way names are registered. It has become increasingly common for scammers to register large number of domains for a short period of time and then to keep the ones that generate Web traffic, a practice called domain tasting. Because a domain can be held without charge for up to five days, this practice costs the scammer almost nothing, but it can be lucrative.

In another practice, called front running, scammers have found ways -- some of them illegal -- to keep track of domain name searches and then hold onto those domains themselves, hoping to sell them to the people doing the searching.

Some critics have said that Network Solutions' new practice amounts to front running, but Mitchell disagrees, saying the point of the system is to protect customers from the front-runners.

His company has developed an algorithm, designed to identify legitimate domain name searches and then automatically register the domain names being searched for on behalf of Network Solutions. These domains are held with a Web-page notice saying that they are available for sale for a four-day period. This gives the Network Solutions customer a window of opportunity to purchase the domain before it snatched up by a scammer, Mitchell aid.

Mitchell added that if ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization that oversees the domain name system, would move to cut down on these type of scams, then his company wouldn't have to engage in this kind of automatic search registration. "We would be perfectly happy to end this process if ICANN or the registries would do something to protect small businesses or other small users," he said.

A US$0.25 non-refundable domain name registration fee would probably be enough to make domain tasting or front running unprofitable, he added.



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