Recent Posts
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ICM opens can of worms with .xxx domain seizures
ICM Registry has suspended several dozen .xxx domain names registered by cybersquatters.
It’s believed to be unprecedented for a mainstream registry to unilaterally shut down domains purely on the grounds of alleged cybersquatting, as I reported for The Register earlier today.
ICM took down 70 to 80 domains including washingtonpost.xxx, cnbc.xxx and verizonwireless.xxx because it decided that the domains infringed trademarks and were therefore abusive.
Many belonged to the squatter Domain Name Wire first fingered as the registrant of huffingtonpost.xxx, named in Whois as Justin Crews.
Crews had told MSNBC that he planned to sell the domains at profit.
There was no UDRP arbitration, no court order, just a breach of the .xxx registry-registrant agreement, which gives ICM the right to suspend squatted domains at will.
This is the relevant part of the agreement, which all .xxx registrants must agree to:
You acknowledge and agree that the Registry reserves the right to disqualify you or your agents from making or maintaining any Registrations or Reservations in the .XXX TLD if you are found to have repeatedly engaged in abusive registrations, in its sole discretion.
I blogged back in May about why it might not be necessary to spend a fortune on defensive registrations in .xxx, given the existence of this policy and others.
Nevertheless, while it may take a while for the implications to become clear, I think the suspensions represent a very significant development.
Coming so soon after the end of ICM’s sunrise period, which saw many organizations spend thousands on useless non-resolving defensive registrations, I wouldn’t be surprised if many companies feel like they may have wasted their money.
If you’ve just spent $200 defending your brand, I imagine it would be quite annoying to see the likes of verizonwireless.xxx or businessweek.xxx get the same protection for free.
I would also not be surprised if, from now on, trademark attorneys trying to defend their rights in .xxx first contacted ICM, rather than WIPO or the National Arbitration Forum.
Why spend thousands on a UDRP complaint when you can just send a legal nastygram to ICM?
ICM president Stuart Lawley told DI today that this wave of suspensions was done independently, not in response to any legal demands.
Still, the precedent has been set: ICM will suspend domains for free, under certain circumstances.
What those circumstances are is less clear.
Lawley said that ICM will not get involved in complaints about individual domains – but it will shut down cybersquatters with multiple infringements.
But what constitutes cybersquatting? UDRP has a definition, but I’m not sure ICM does. It may be quite subjective.
It’s also not clear what ICM will do with the suspended domains, not all of which necessarily infringe trademarks. Some may be bona fide, but the ICM policy is to take down the registrant’s entire portfolio.
So will those non-infringing domains be released back into the pool? And if so, how will ICM determine which are squats and which are not?
And what about the ones that are squats? Will they be released?
AOL may be content for huffingtonpost.xxx to remain suspended forever. As long as it’s suspended, the company does not have to worry about defensive registration fees.
But consider gayroom.xxx, which was also suspended.
The owner of gayroom.com owns a trademark on the word “gayroom”. Gayroom.com is a porn site, but one that has chosen not to buy its equivalent .xxx domain.
What if it changes its mind? If gayroom.com wants gayroom.xxx in future, is there a way to take it out of suspension, or is the company stuck without its .xxx forever, just because a cybersquatter got there first?
ICM’s policies do not seem to answer this question and the company has not yet revealed its plans for the suspended domains.
As a post-script, I should note that Huffington Post owner AOL is currently listed as the registrant of huffingtonpost.xxx in the Whois record.
It’s not yet clear why this is the case, but Lawley stated unequivocally today that the apparent transfer is completely unrelated to ICM’s own crackdown.
Go Daddy, the registrar of record for the domain, declined to comment, citing its customer privacy policy.
Did the cybersquatter transfer the domain to AOL before the suspension? Did he sell it to AOL? Or did he just update the Whois with phoney data? Either seems possible at this point.
What a mess………..
You have a missing plugin on your sidebar Kevin.
Justin Crews is missing several in his frontal lobe.
Maybe the missing plugin is a browser thing at your end?
I don’t know enough about the make-up of the brain to have an opinion on Crews’ frontal lobes, but I certainly agree with your sentiment. Idiot cybersquatter.
While I don’t support .xxx, I do applaud this move. It looks like the IFFOR, or at least Chad Belville, is starting to listen to Adult Webmaster’s concerns. I was one of the people to file a complaint to the IFFOR about a Cyber Squatter that was attempting to blackmail me to purchase Boykakke.xxx (a domain that contains a successful paysite and DVD company on the .com version). Boykakke.xxx was also taken away from the Cybersquatter.
Will this be a start of the changing of a tide, or is it just a small concession to try to temporarily diffuse the current boycott of .xxx amongst some members of the adult industry?
Judging by the Whois, it appears that boykakke.xxx was one of the suspended domains. Is that correct?
Yes. That is correct.
Please see this thread where it was mentioned:
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1049722
.XXX = .FAIL
Fascinating comment Joe, thanks for dropping by!
I saw couple of domains with TM domains on facebook domain groups. Some will never learn.
Gnanes, are those groups open or private? Any chance of a URL or two? I’d like to check that out.
Great reporting and summary, Kevin.
Thanks Michael.
.XXX is getting even more complicated!!
What’s next?
Whois info for Twitter.xxx returns ICM Registry as the owner. ICM is cybersquatting?
If that turns out to be the case I’ll report it, but I really doubt it.
Any defensively blocked .XXX domains show ICM’s info in the Whois. So most likely, Twitter purchased twitter.xxx at some point for a defensive block.
The difference is that twitter.xxx is showing as a “premium” rather than registry reserved.
ICM are clowns. They charge one customer and provide the same service to others for free.
Curious to say the least and as curious is their use of whois or lack thereof. Given their use of whois it is entirely possible (given the way tms work) that more than one company may be being charged and paying to have their domain name removed from general use.
If more than one company share a tm interest in the same term it would be implossible to tell who is paying the extorsion I mean protection fee. ICM is a bunch of BS.
Lawley even went so far last week as to sat that ICM does not recommend defensive registrations!
Say what, you just ran a 5M dollar protect your brand ad campaign and now you say you do not recommend defensive registrations.
OK 1+1 =6
Did ICM run a “protect your brand” ad campaign?
The commercials I saw didn’t have that message.
Many registrars, on the other hand, did play up the fear card. ICM should have reigned them in on that count, imho.