Recent Posts
- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
- D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
- Founders out as Com Laude gets equity injection
- PIR’s Diaz to leave domain industry
- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
- ICANN opens $217 million Grant Program
- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
- .ai registry advises buyers not to use GoDaddy
- .post liberalizes with new sunrise period
- Team Internet spends $41 million on content farm
- Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat
- .austin names launch on blockchain
- Freenom shuts down 12.6 million domains — report
- GoDaddy’s next .xxx contract may not be a done deal
- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
- Microsoft moving its cloud apps from .com to .microsoft
- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
- Cosmetics brand terminates its gTLD
- Up to 70 jobs on the line at Nominet as .uk regs dwindle
- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
- ICANN meeting venue “insensitive and hurtful”
- GoDaddy to start selling graphic.design domains
- GAC spinning up new gTLD curveball at ICANN 79?
- GoDaddy’s GlobalBlock supports blockchain names
- Police .uk domain takedowns dive in 2023
- GoDaddy wants to cut the bullshit from .xxx
- Dueling domain blocking services to launch at ICANN 79
- Freename tries to bridge DNS and blockchain
- Olive retires from ICANN
- Whois policy published without life-saving disclosure rule
- UK gov takes its lead from ICANN on DNS abuse
- Tucows reports 2023 results
- Twitter “completely unresponsive” on clickable domains
- ICANN spends $5 million more than planned in first fiscal half
- .art takes a million domains off its premium list
- KeyTrap ‘the most devastating vulnerability ever found in DNSSEC’
- Freenom settles $500 million Meta lawsuit and will exit domain business
- New gTLD lottery to return in 2026
- First GlobalBlock prices revealed — they ain’t cheap
- Domain universe grows on new gTLDs despite .com shrinkage
- D3 signs up crypto gTLD client number five
- GoDaddy reports strong domains growth
- How to qualify for a $40,000 gTLD
- Registry service provider evaluation handbook published
- WebUnited inks deal to “mirror” country’s TLD in the blockchain
- GoDaddy project unveils brand-blocking calculator
- Report: Monster “misappropriated” millions from Epik
- .com is shrinking but Verisign raises prices again anyway
- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
- UK cybersquatting complaints hit record low
- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
- Nominet to overhaul .uk registry, turn off some services
- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
- You can’t use money to buy .box domains
- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
- .ing doing way better than .meme
- DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?
- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
- INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital
- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
- Did I find a murder weapon in a zone file?
- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
- .au regs slide on 2LD anniversary
- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
- Two more dot-brands bite the dust
- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
Using Go Daddy equals “bad faith” registration
Registered a domain name with Go Daddy recently? Unless you’ve updated your name server settings, you’ve automatically committed a “bad faith” registration.
At least, that’s the conclusion I’m drawing from a couple of recent clueless UDRP decisions.
The most recent example is the case of Churchill Insurance, which just won churchillimports.com, following a proceeding with the National Arbitration Forum.
The registrant claimed he planned to use the domain, which he registered just six months ago, to sell cigars. Seems reasonable. Other sites sell cigars using the name “Churchill”.
But the NAF panelist, Flip Petillion, wasn’t buying it:
Respondent uses the churchillimports.com domain name to resolve to a directory website that displays links to third-party websites, some of which provide insurance products and services that compete with Complainant’s business.
…
it is shown on a balance of probability that Respondent uses the disputed domain name to operate a directory website and, thus, profits from this use through the receipt of “click-through” fees. Accordingly, the Panel finds that this use constitutes bad faith registration and use pursuant to Policy
…
as the disputed domain name was registered after the registration of Complainant’s established trademark rights and given the fact that Respondent’s website employs insurance themed links that resolve to websites of Complainant’s competitors, Respondent could not have registered and used the disputed domain name without actual or constructive knowledge of Complainant and its rights in the CHURCHILL mark.
What Petillion clearly failed to realize – or decided to conveniently ignore – is that everything he ascribes to the registrant was actually caused by default Go Daddy behavior.
Churchill sells car insurance in the UK. The registrant is an American, from Georgia. There’s a very slim chance he’d ever heard of the company before they slapped him with the UDRP.
But Petillion decided that the fact that insurance-themed links were present on the site shows that the registrant must have known about the company. Like he put the links there himself.
He concludes the registrant had “bad faith” because Go Daddy’s parking algorithm (I believe it’s operated by Google) knows to show insurance-related ads when people search for “churchill”.
In addition, churchillimports.com is the default parking page that Go Daddy throws up whenever a domain name is newly registered.
The registrant didn’t need to do anything other than register the name and, according to this bogus ruling, he’s automatically committed a bad faith registration.
Where does NAF find these people?
I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this kind of behavior, and I’m sure Go Daddy’s not the only registrar this affects.
I think that a similar Bad Faith approach was used on some domains that were parked on Sedoparking.com a while back. The decisions focused on the fact that the parking text mentioned that the domain may be for sale by the owner.
Good point. But at least in the case of Sedoparking, the registrant actually *did* something with his domain. In this case, all the registrant did was register the domain.
The NAF has shown nothing but a corrupt system run by those panelists which vote in favor of Complainants in order to keep more complaints coming and more fees as well.
I can’t wait until the NAF, the National Arbitration Forum, is sued for their outrageous and underhanded tactics, just like they were for credit cards, to regular folks of an unbiased decision.
The day they get sued I will donate big to the cause. I have xx,xxx waiting to contribute to take down the NAF and their ponzi scheme of stealing domains from rightful owners.
[…] is common practice nowadays. It’s been used to prove a registrant’s bad faith during many recent UDRP proceedings and one registrar is even being sued by Verizon for doing […]