ICANN Can't Find Evidence Of Domain Front Running

from the still-looking... dept

There have been plenty of stories over the years of domain name registrars "front running" domain names, whereby they take domains that people do a search on, and then register themselves, hoping to sell it to the person who searched later for a higher price. Network Solutions, for example, was accused of this practice, though it insisted that it was only "protecting" the domain from others who might snatch it. ICANN was eventually sued for letting this happen. It appears that ICANN also hired Ben Edelman to look into the problem, and his research has apparently turned up no evidence of such domain front-running anywhere. He notes that this doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but he tested it all over and was unable to find it happening. Considering the vast number of reports and complaints about it happening in the past, does this mean that registrars have cleaned up? Or did Edelman miss something?

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After Finding No Joy Elsewhere, SCO Chairman Takes Anti-Porn Fight To ICANN

from the silent-majority dept

A few years ago, Ralph Yarro, the chairman of everybody's favorite tech company, SCO, put forward a plan to ban all internet porn from port 80, the port used by HTTP traffic. He later added that open WiFi should be banned as a means to stop porn. Not surprisingly, his ideas failed to find traction (except with the governor of his home state, Utah) but Yarro and his anti-porn group are pressing on, and are now asking ICANN to set up a "Cybersafety Constituency" to create binding rules on how to deal with net porn. How's this for a binding rule: don't access porn sites, and you won't be bothered with it? The idea that anybody -- let alone ICANN -- should be able to play the role of global web censor is scary, and opens the door to restrictions on all sorts of objectionable, but not illegal, content. As The Register notes, Yarro called for supporters to make comments on the proposal at ICANN's site, and plenty of people from Utah obliged. Wonder what all the people in the state who love net porn think of the proposal...

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Is A GoDaddy VP Bidding Against Customers In Domain Auctions?

from the very-questionable-if-true dept

Slashdot is running an interesting post, suggesting that GoDaddy's VP in charge of managing the domain auctions it runs on expired domains, has been caught participating in the auctions himself, often driving up the prices of those auctions for customers. That's one way to pump up those revenue numbers. If this is shown to be true, it seems incredibly questionable.

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Answers.com Announces A Match Made In Domain Name Heaven

from the there's-your-answer dept

Domain name speculation has been hot for a long time, but lately, it seems, a number of companies are trying to build businesses on the backs of their domain names alone. Today, Answers.com announced the purchase of Lexico, which is the owner of sites like Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. The company says that the tie up will make it a leader in "online information publishing", but this is just generic corporate puffery, intended to mask the fact that the real value here is the domain names. Meanwhile, Answers.com itself, despite its relationship with Google, is not doing particularly well. It has warned of weak earnings due to "more pronounced seasonality", which again, sounds very much like meaningless corporate-speak.

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