I am really concerned about a piece of legislature that has been getting pres. On February 25th, 2008 US Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced S. 2661, the “Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008 (APCPA)”. The bill is co-sponsored by Ted Stevens (R-AK, of the “Series of Tubes” fame fame as pointed out by Marcia) and Bill Nelson (D-FL).

If you are a domain owner, most notably a domain name developer or web site owner, or operator of a geodomain, this is something that you should be following very closely and trying to work toward having it revised. The Internet Commerce Association is following this as well.

This bill in particular really concerns me because of the things that were coat-tailled onto the bill that basically provide any government office, non-profit, business or other entity an opportunity to identify a registration that is ’similar’ as being unlawful and subject to enforcement, injunctions, and recovery of damages.

Look, I am all for professional responsibility in computing and I strongly believe in eliminating phishing. In fact, I am anti-phishing and applaud and contribute with efforts to combat illegal activities like phishing. I also support efforts to help reduce trademark infringement, and I encourage people to always use accurate information when submitting domain name registrations.

There is clearly pain in the trademark and intellectual property world with respect to how domain names work. The pain is in removing tangles from the way that the domain name system and the trademark systems are obtuse to each other, coupled with the glacial pace of many corporations and businesses adoption of competent and market savvy strategies for their domain name management. There has been over a decade of evolution to these worlds towards untangling the mess and improving remedy and it is evolving. Meanwhile it is not becoming perfect any time soon because there are fundamental differences in the ways that the worlds of domain names and intellectual property work.

This bill which is intended to eliminate phishing has been unfortunately co-opted in a clear attempt by the trademark interests to essentially eliminate the hard earned balance and improvements that have been accomplished in the area of domain names and trademarks and domain names and makes the system entirely trademark centric, while shifting the bulk of the burden of enforcement onto our overburdened civil and judicial systems and shifts the costs onto the American tax payer.

It creates the potential system that completely is biased against all domain owners in a manner that obnoxiously favors trademark interests. I applaud that these senators from three of the tips of the United States have hoped to put an end to phishing, and I really hate to see that their efforts will have so clearly been undermined by the interests of businesses to inject clearly belligerent coattails.

I have had it mentioned to me that S.2661 needs to be focused on addressing Phishing, it needs massive edits to become reasonable and rational. In that same conversation, it was presented to me that as it reads now today, the bill could potentially give the rights to a non-profit such as an “East Bay Autistic Youth” (fictionally presented for conversational example) the opportunity to contest ebay.org or ebay.com for that matter.

Put yourself in the shoes of a person who owns a domain trackshoes.com. Now today, that is an extremely generic and brandable domain name. This legistlature could put that domain name in jeopardy and create disruptive burden on the domain name owner, not to mention burden a legal and civil system that our tax dollars pay for.

This is the trademark interests clearly pushing their agenda.

Over on Berkins’ blog, my long time friend Joe Alagna suggested that it would be wise for people who are opposed to S. 2661 should be able to contact these Senators, so here is their contact information:

Senator Snowe | Senator Nelson | Senator Stevens

 Looking for feedback from the readers here, please pick the one that is most near and dear to you, and write one in if I missed it.

According to the NIC, A bid was tendered, with three primary parties vying for this opportunity. 

According to a Dutch Telecom Paper (googled - non/pw version), Afilias and GoDaddy have partnered with Montenegro’s MeNet and are the top candidate for managing the registry of .me (Montenegro’s ccTLD).  They had been competing with  Neustar and a consortium of companiesand VeriSign’s Registry Services. The government will now negotiate the final terms of the contract with the lead candidate.

All strong candidates with very capable registry services.  It must have been a true challenge for the parties having to determine the most favorable bidder.

I am joined by Phil Corwin, Roger Collins, and Tom Barrett in discussion of the Domain Marketplace and some of the current terms and trends in the industry, following a very well attended marketplace panel discussion at the ICANN meeting.

The session is titled “What’s in a name? The History and Future of the Domain Name System“.

Here is a teaser video:

Also, catch an interview with Desiree at Domaine.info.

So Hollywood “Gets” the Domain Industry — as in for a few days the Domain Industry will gather there. January 21-23 at the Renaissance Hotel at Hollywood and Highland.

It was good to see some stars and entertainment industry people at the conference last year. There are a lot of pioneers in entertainment that are leveraging on line delivery and media content to propel their success. There are also many who are using the tried and true “Ostrich” method of wait and see.

I did a quick search on Hollywood and Domain Names and I found the following article about Hollywood not getting it about domain names. In all fairness, some of the studios do get it. NBC/Universal has a very progressive approach, as does ABC / Disney. Warner and other studios definitely do. So, mileage varies, but one can always learn how to get the most out of the potential.

Many of the studios leverage brand management professional organizations like Mark Monitor, Iron Mountain, VeriSign DBMS, or consult with digital brand experts like Names@Work or Fairwinds Partners.

There is a special session on the agenda at the DomainFest entitled “Winning Domain Name Portfolio Strategies for Corporations and Businesses” that is pulling in some heavy hitters in the Brand Management space. The goal is to discuss domain management for businesses and brands, and to “Mash-Up” some of the best practices that “domainers” are leveraging into use in the corporate arena.

Brilliant Idea.

Our venue hotel had a lot of spillover crowd from the Oracle World conference, and so thre were mixed crowds socially.  Mash-up a who’s who of alpha dog domainers and Oracle enthusiasts, developers and middleware providers, and it is interesting to see what happens.

Being a former valley dweller, and having done some migrations to the Oracle platform from other systems, I was at home discussing varying levels of technical development or bizdev with some of the attendees.

It was wild to see the look on people’s faces who are  in the Oracle space when the light bulb came on over their head about the value of domains and direct navigation from a discussion with one of the many key speakers and panelists.  It was like they saw

Ron Jackson, the editor of DNJournal.com, a respected friend and industry expert, was the lunch keynote speaker at the GeoDoman Expo, and he made a joke about seeing all the banners that said Oracle when he arrived making him feel respected and welcome until he realized what they were really there for.

I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with Matt Bentley from Sedo about the opportunities beyond .com.  We both came at the discussion from different angles, but were fairly in sync on the message.  Dot Com is the Boardwalk and Park Place if you think of the world like a big game of Monopoly, but there are other neighborhoods that have their values, and those other neighborhoods will have value with hotels built on them.

 Anyway, the sessions were great, but what stood out most to me was the quality and caliber of the attendees.  This was a room full of people who all got it, so the content was a bit more advanced, and the dialogs and hallway discussions were some of the most in-depth on some really interesting topics surrounding the industry.

I founded the Domain Roundtable conference and executive produced the first two, so I know a little something about these conferences, and I tip my hat to Patrick Carleton and Associated Cities on a fantastic show.   I will certainly attend these in the future and I encourage others to attend as well. 

 Great Conference!

I have more energy, and I am getting more toned in the process.

These are great! 

Like anyone who works out will tell you, one initially gains some weight as the muscle tone grows, so I did go up in weight a little initially, but came back down.  I was told this would happen, so it was not a large shock.

 I just hope that I can keep on track through the holidays and the sinful distractions of all the cookies and candy that come with this time of year.