Registrar GoDaddy began offering the .me domains from registration, but the process overwhelmed the company with issues.
Failed registrations and multiple registrations of the same .me domain name cast a pall over GoDaddy's .me debut. The new domain, being sold for $19.99 per year with a required two-year purchase (privacy option extra), should end up a profitable venture for the company.
However it will be a bit of a joyless slog getting there. Mashable cited the problems with .me registrations, and one account arriving by Twitter looks like it won't be fun to resolve.
Several posts on Twitter report multiple registrations for the domain aweso.me. At least eight people may possess receipts for the desired domain.
"It appears GoDaddy is buckling under the pressure and is about to have an ugly mess on its hands," Adam Ostrow wrote of the .me problems. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy complaints from frustrated would-be registrants continue to hit the net.
Showing posts with label Keyword advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keyword advertising. Show all posts
Monday, July 21, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
You(r)Tube Privacy at Risk
Yes, we know what you watched last summer, or at least Viacom's attorneys soon will.
The owners of Comedy Central and VH1 are attempting to prove that more people watch pirated clips of John Stewart and Behind The Music than, say, the Wii Fit Girl. In the aggregate, maybe more people are watching clips of The Daily Show on them Internets. But a viral video will still draw more eyeballs than any single thing the mainstream media can belch out, regardless of how clever Stewart is. Partly that's because most people who'd want to see it already have, for free, over the airwaves.
Trouble is, our video viewing habits are supposed to be protected by federal law. After a reporter went dumpster diving on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and came up with Blockbuster rental receipts (he was looking for porn, but mostly he found Hitchcock and Fellini) Congress passed a law explicitly protecting the privacy of movie rentals. The judge in the Viacom case, Louis Stanton, decided that watching a YouTube video somehow qualified as less worthy of protection than Bork's VCR.
The usual answer from people who claim to be perfectly happy having attorneys rooting around their private lives like squirrels in a nuthouse is that they've "got nothing to hide." To which I usually say, "terrific, now drop your pants." Everybody's got something to hide, even if it probably isn't what they watched on YouTube.
The right to keep one's thoughts and interests private -- and by extension, things that indicate thoughts and interests, like books and movies -- is one of the keys to democracy. Nobody can demand to know what's going on between my ears (and trust me, you don't want to know). That's the way I like it.
The real problem here is the obsession with data collection that infects Google, Microsoft, and other major service providers. If there's a reason to keep a running record of every YouTube video I've watched or Web search I've run over the last 18 months, I can't see it -- and Google has done a p*** poor job of explaining why they need it. Because if a record is out there, you're almost guaranteed that some day a lawyer with a subpoena may come looking for it.
Do you YouTube?
The owners of Comedy Central and VH1 are attempting to prove that more people watch pirated clips of John Stewart and Behind The Music than, say, the Wii Fit Girl. In the aggregate, maybe more people are watching clips of The Daily Show on them Internets. But a viral video will still draw more eyeballs than any single thing the mainstream media can belch out, regardless of how clever Stewart is. Partly that's because most people who'd want to see it already have, for free, over the airwaves.
Trouble is, our video viewing habits are supposed to be protected by federal law. After a reporter went dumpster diving on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and came up with Blockbuster rental receipts (he was looking for porn, but mostly he found Hitchcock and Fellini) Congress passed a law explicitly protecting the privacy of movie rentals. The judge in the Viacom case, Louis Stanton, decided that watching a YouTube video somehow qualified as less worthy of protection than Bork's VCR.
The usual answer from people who claim to be perfectly happy having attorneys rooting around their private lives like squirrels in a nuthouse is that they've "got nothing to hide." To which I usually say, "terrific, now drop your pants." Everybody's got something to hide, even if it probably isn't what they watched on YouTube.
The right to keep one's thoughts and interests private -- and by extension, things that indicate thoughts and interests, like books and movies -- is one of the keys to democracy. Nobody can demand to know what's going on between my ears (and trust me, you don't want to know). That's the way I like it.
The real problem here is the obsession with data collection that infects Google, Microsoft, and other major service providers. If there's a reason to keep a running record of every YouTube video I've watched or Web search I've run over the last 18 months, I can't see it -- and Google has done a p*** poor job of explaining why they need it. Because if a record is out there, you're almost guaranteed that some day a lawyer with a subpoena may come looking for it.
Do you YouTube?
Monday, June 9, 2008
If You Want It, Bid On It - The Keyword Battle
Another court has decided use of trademarked terms in metatags and keyword advertising does not constitute trademark infringement, but the issue is far from settled and only gets more complicated as more courts hear arguments from both sides.
In this case, Designer Skin sued S&L Vitamins for reselling Designer Skin products online. S&L was not an approved retail channel, and was selling the self-tanning product at lower prices. Also, the company dropped the Designer Skin name into the metatags of its site to help with organic search rankings (a practice with debatable efficacy), and bid on Designer Skin keywords in order to drive traffic to the site.
Most often in keyword trademark infringement cases, the issue centers on whether competitors – in this instance, another maker of self-tanning lotion – have the right to use keywords in metatags or bid on trademarks. Courts have come down on both sides.
In this case, heard in Arizona, it is not a question of competition, but of sales channel control. At issue is a concept of "initial interest confusion," meaning when searchers see an ad or listing for Designer Skin, they could mistake S&L, a seller, as the maker of the product. The judge didn't think any consumer with a half a brain would make that mistake:
In contrast to the deceptive conduct that forms the basis of a finding of initial interest confusion, S & L Vitamins uses Designer Skin’s marks to truthfully inform internet searchers where they can find Designer Skin’s products. Rather than deceive customers into visiting their websites, this use truthfully informs customers of the contents of those sites. Indeed, in practical effect S & L Vitamins invites Designer Skin’s customers to purchase Designer Skin’s products. The fact that these customers will have the opportunity to purchase competing products when they arrive at S & L Vitamins’ sites is irrelevant. The customers searching for Designer Skin’s products find exactly what they are looking for when they arrive at these sites. S & L Vitamins is not deceiving consumers in any way.
The outcome of this case will be used as a precedent when deciding others and will bolster the argument that use of keywords in metatags and bidding on trademarked terms for search purposes is a legitimate practice. Fairly often, plaintiffs are more concerned about control of channels and control of competition than they are about trademark infringement.
Eric Goldman, author of Technology and Law Blog, goes into much deeper detail in his posting, and concurs that Designer Skin's suit was asking too much of the legal system. "[C]ourts are realizing that they are being asked to facilitate anti-competitive practices, and wisely they are balking," he writes.
In this case, Designer Skin sued S&L Vitamins for reselling Designer Skin products online. S&L was not an approved retail channel, and was selling the self-tanning product at lower prices. Also, the company dropped the Designer Skin name into the metatags of its site to help with organic search rankings (a practice with debatable efficacy), and bid on Designer Skin keywords in order to drive traffic to the site.
Most often in keyword trademark infringement cases, the issue centers on whether competitors – in this instance, another maker of self-tanning lotion – have the right to use keywords in metatags or bid on trademarks. Courts have come down on both sides.
In this case, heard in Arizona, it is not a question of competition, but of sales channel control. At issue is a concept of "initial interest confusion," meaning when searchers see an ad or listing for Designer Skin, they could mistake S&L, a seller, as the maker of the product. The judge didn't think any consumer with a half a brain would make that mistake:
In contrast to the deceptive conduct that forms the basis of a finding of initial interest confusion, S & L Vitamins uses Designer Skin’s marks to truthfully inform internet searchers where they can find Designer Skin’s products. Rather than deceive customers into visiting their websites, this use truthfully informs customers of the contents of those sites. Indeed, in practical effect S & L Vitamins invites Designer Skin’s customers to purchase Designer Skin’s products. The fact that these customers will have the opportunity to purchase competing products when they arrive at S & L Vitamins’ sites is irrelevant. The customers searching for Designer Skin’s products find exactly what they are looking for when they arrive at these sites. S & L Vitamins is not deceiving consumers in any way.
The outcome of this case will be used as a precedent when deciding others and will bolster the argument that use of keywords in metatags and bidding on trademarked terms for search purposes is a legitimate practice. Fairly often, plaintiffs are more concerned about control of channels and control of competition than they are about trademark infringement.
Eric Goldman, author of Technology and Law Blog, goes into much deeper detail in his posting, and concurs that Designer Skin's suit was asking too much of the legal system. "[C]ourts are realizing that they are being asked to facilitate anti-competitive practices, and wisely they are balking," he writes.
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