Cyber-Squatter Mentality: Greed In Action!

bugnuts writes: "A pseudo-cyber-squatter is showing typical mentality of greed by suing ICANN for defamation. ICANN warned that TLDs were not decided, because some companies were selling preregistered domains with no clue what those domains will be. The suit claims that this warning was defamatory." Now I've seen it all - scammers suing ICANN for warning people about their scam.

Bogus!

[www.sorehands.com]

Nothing in that article indicates libel.

They would not only have to show libel, but also show that their announcement was directed at RegLand Inc.

To show libel they must prove that:

• A defamatory communication about the complainant,
• Which was untrue
• acting with actual malice, in the sense of knowledge that the communication was false or having reckless disregard of its truth or falsity

This is the standard for public figure libel. Even if they are not a public figure, the issue, being of public interest, would make them a limited purpose public figure.

In Texas there is no anti-SLAPP statute [casp.net] which would have made it easier to dismiss. But, the courts agree that this type of case should be dismissed as early as possible, if it is proper to dismiss.

Of couse, we don't have all the facts and are speculating here.

What a waste of time!

[Kris_J]

Can a judge summarily rule that the complainent must pay a large fine for wasting everyone's time with crap like this? Somewhere beyond such frivolous legal actions are real issues that desparately need attention.

Again, why we need TLDs with restrictions

[Masem]

The actions of this registar indicates that they expect the new domains (whatever they might be) to be completely opne, and given ICANN, I wouldn't be too surprised. But if the new TLDs had strong resistrictions on who can register a domain in those TLDs, such that trademark owner do NOT have a first shot at those domains, then this pre-registration thing wouldn't be a problem. But of course, ICANN will screw this up, and the domain anem situation will be as bad as it was before.

dot coms not as valuable as before

[Numeric]

With all the companies going bankrupt, does it seem that great domain aren't as hot anymore (See fuckedcompany.com [fuckedcompany.com]). I found this article [abcnamebank.com] which list the Top Ten Most Expensive name purchases. Besides altavista.com [altavista.com] which sold for $3.35 million, I haven't been nor need to visit any of the other sites like wallstreet.com (a gambling site nothing about stocks or trading is mentioned there) or drugs.com (there isn't even any information about drugs on the site just click through links to generate money).

I don't believe you need to have "standardize" name as your domain to be sucessful at all. Google.com and C|Net.com are doing pretty good with their branding AND w/o spending $X mil for their domain.

I use to work for a company who bought a "high profile" domain name and it hasn't been as successful as they thought and the company laid off some people, including a good friend. So any company tempting you with their advantage of having a high profile domain instead of their product or whatever...beware.