Domain Arbitrators Favor Big Companies

from the that-sucks dept

I had read about this story last week, and this is a pretty good summary of what happened. A guy registered the domain VivendiUniversalSucks.com, and Vivendi Universal brought it up with an arbitration panel saying they deserved the rights to the name. The arbitration panel sided with the big company, for reasons that still don't make much sense. They first suggested that non-English speaking people might simply "ignore" the "sucks" part of the domain, and assume it really was related to VivendiUniversal, and then they said that "sucks" could be legitimately used because the band Primus used the domain PrimusSucks.com. Who knew the panel were such big Primus fans? They also said that the guy had registered the name in "bad faith" because he hadn't done anything with it for 7 months. The article points out that Vivendi Universal owns plenty of domains that it hasn't done anything with for much longer than 7 months - and you don't see anyone claiming they did so in bad faith. When will ICANN realize that the arbitration process doesn't work? There have been so many similar stories that it's become a complete farce.

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