Running for Chair of the RSS Advisory Board
I announced today that I'm interested in continuing for the next two-year term as chair of the RSS Advisory Board, the group that publishes the RSS 2.0 specification and helps foster interop on issues such as RSS autodiscovery and the common feed icon.
The board went public one year ago with eight new members, publishing our charter and conducting all votes on a public mailing list. Previously, we operated in private and were accorded little credibility -- when I joined the board in 2004 at Dave Winer's invitation, Mark Pilgrim linked to the news with this headline:
entire puppet government of RSS resigns in protest; new puppet government quickly installed
Since going public, 1,200 messages have been posted on the board's mailing list RSS-Public, making it one of the best places to get help with RSS 2.0.
Looking forward, I'd like to see the board publish the RSS profile, a set of best-practice recommendations for feed publishers and software developers, and the clean rewrite of the RSS 2.0 specification. I believe that following the RSS roadmap means freezing RSS elements and attributes and all defined behavior but does not require us to treat the language of the current spec as if it were carved in stone.
But as I told the board, I'm pretty conservative in my approach to our mission. I'd rather work through issues patiently and help incrementally where we can than push through controversial changes, which is why we're still puttering away on the spec rewrite one year after its first draft.
Domain Owner Keeps Pig.Com in UDRP Dispute
In a UDRP dispute decided Monday, the New Pig Corporation failed to take away the generic domain name pig.com after previously trying to buy it for $21,000. I'm hoping that the National Arbitration Forum decision bodes well for my own generic use of Wargames.Com.
New Pig owns a Pig trademark registered in 1987 for industrial absorbents used to clean oil spills.
The decision sheds some light on the money involved in parked pay-per-click search domains like the one currently at pig.com. Domain investor Adam Dicker bought the domain for $50,000.
To make its case look better, New Pig reportedly bid $2.74 per click so that it would show up in the top position on pig.com, which it then used in the UDRP complaint to claim the domain was trading on its mark.
Attorney John Berryhill, one of the small number of attorneys specializing in UDRP disputes, appears to have slaughtered New Pig in this case:
While the Complainant states that, on average, it spends $4M per year on unspecified promotion of its products, no documentation is provided for this assertion. The swine and pork industries dwarf the Complainant's sale of its specialized product, and it is reasonable to assume that the Panel members themselves were aware of the word "pig" prior to this dispute and, like the Respondent, had never heard of the Complainant or its products.
The Complainant now admits that the Complainant itself is responsible for the appearance of its own advertisement on the Respondent's webpage.
Dell: Master of 4,264 Domain Names
Nathan J. Hole, the Loeb & Loeb attorney representing MGM in the effort to grab Wargames.Com, has won four more UDRP arbitrations the past eight weeks:
- Dell Inc. v. Gail Wright for the domains dellcart.com and dellpccart.com
- The National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Namia Limited for the domain frozenfour.com
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. fslc wf-b for the domain thepinkpanther.com
- Dell Inc. v. Oguz Ozdemir for the domain dellpc.net
In all four cases, domain owners didn't file a response, giving them no real chance of winning. This brings Hole's record to 13-0.
I've been a Dell shareholder since 2001, so Loeb & Loeb was working for me when it acquired the following domains for Dell through the UDRP process: dell4mecom.net, dellcart.com, dellcomputerssuck.com, dellcustomersupport.com, dellscomputer.com, delldvr.com, delldvr.net, delldvrs.com, delldvrs.net, delliran.com, dellpc.net, dellpccart.com, dellpromos.com, dellsite.com, dellsite.net, dellwork.com, dellworks.com, wwwdell4me.net, wwwdellcom.com, wwwdellcom.net, wwwdellcomputer.com and wwwdell4mecom.com.
These 22 domains were acquired in 11 UDRP cases that cost $16,900 in filing fees from the National Arbitration Forum plus whatever it costs to have a young attorney write sentences like "Respondent's vague allegations regarding his contemplated use of the Domain are contradicted by the manifest weight of objectively verifiable facts surrounding his registration and use."
None of the domains directs traffic to Dell today, and in two cases nobody bothered to update the name service after the UDRP ruling, so they continue to point to their former owners' web servers. If you visit dell4mecom.net and wwwdellcomputer.com today, you'll find parked pay-per-click pages on two servers that host 1.4 million and 44,000 domains, respectively.
Dell currently owns 4,264 domains according to DomainTools and appears on pace to add 1,000 a year. To give a sample of its thoroughness, the company owns dell-sucks.com, dellcomputerssuck.com, delldjdittysucks.com, dellhostsucks.com, dellservicesucks.net, dellsucks.org, dellsucksass.com, dellsucksnow.com and dellblows.com.
Dell has bigger problems than an addiction to domain names -- how do you say "please help, my Inspiron laptop incinerated my mantackle" in Hindi? -- but I'm not seeing the logic of a corporation hoarding thousands of useless and valueless domains related to its brands because some random idiot registered them. Dell's trying to corner the market on an infinite resource.
Amapedia: The Conspicuous Consumption Community Wiki
While browsing Amazon.Com this evening I noticed a reference to Amapedia, a collaborative wiki the company describes as a "community for sharing information about the products you like the most."
The site's newly launched, because there's not a single mention yet on Technorati or Google Blog Search and its About page was created five days ago.
Anyone with an Amazon.Com account can edit the site. Amapedia's list of do's and don'ts for "Amapedians" describes what it's hoping to cultivate:
Do:
- write about your favorite products
- find out what others' favorite products are
- quantify why you like or dislike a product as much as possible
- cite your sources
Do Not:
- self-promote by referring to yourself, your work, or your Web sites in any article
- store personal photos
- create a personal home page (we may support that in the future)
- talk in the first person in the main body of product articles (that's what the "Anecdotes, Experiences, Opinions, Comments" section is for)
- express personal opinions about things that are not products (i.e., while we are very interested in your opinion about a book about the Iraq war -- particularly so if you can calmly document specific good and bad points about it -- we are not at all interested in your personal opinions about the Iraq war itself on this site)
The project appears to have been under development since spring 2005. The domain name Amapedia.Com was registered April 25, 2005, using an anonymous proxy service and programmer Jonah Cohen, in an online resume, states that this was his job at Amazon.Com that year:
Software Design Engineer for Amazon.com. Summer 2005
Wrote large portions of production code for Amapedia, Wikipedia-inspired product website, using PHP and MySQL. Designed and implemented synonym-matching system for item types using Java and PostgreSQL.
There's not much to recommend yet in the wiki's user-generated content (cash register ka-ching!). When I created a new article on the Sonicare Elite 9800 Power Toothbrush I became credited as a "Contributing Amapedian" on my user profile.
I bought the $120 toothbrush because I'm overreacting to some expensive dental work I need. While receiving a crown this morning on one of my molars during a difficult 90-minute operation, my new dentist informed me that I have a "remarkably aggressive tongue."
I believe I've found Amapedia early enough that I can install myself as its leader and establish the community norms. Towards this end, I'd like all Amapedians to addressed me as Amazimbo, First Among Equals.
Wargames.Com UDRP Dispute Goes to Arbitrators
MGM's effort to grab Wargames.Com is now in the hands of a three-member panel of arbitrators for the National Arbitration Forum, who will read the filings of both sides and decide the matter in the next two weeks.
Under the forum's rules, each side got two chances to make its case:
- Dec. 19, 2006: MGM challenged my ownership of the domain in its original complaint, paying a $2,600 fee and requesting a three-member panel of arbitrators.
- Jan. 8, 2007: I made my response, which attorney Wade Duchene filed at the 20-day deadline. Because MGM requested a three-member panel, no fee was required. If MGM had selected a one-member panel for $1,300, I could've paid $1,300 for two more arbitrators.
- Jan. 16, 2007: MGM made an additional complaint, a response to my response that cost the studio $400. MGM only had five days to do this, but the last day can't fall on a weekend or holiday, so it got three additional days.
- Jan. 22, 2007: I offered a response to their response to my response, which was filed by Duchene and Brett E. Lewis, a former attorney for Register.Com who's won more than 20 UDRP disputes. This response also cost $400 and had a five-day deadline.
Lewis, an attorney whose bio claims he can "hypnotize opposing counsel with his brightly polished, gleaming bald head," wrote an article for the domain industry site DNJournal on how to protect your domain names. My favorite tip is that you should not pretend to be a cat.
The timing of this dispute worked out well for MGM, putting most of our work time in the Christmas holidays and giving the studio extra time for its additional complaint.
MGM's intellectual property firm Loeb & Loeb has become one of my weblog's most avid readers. Its second complaint includes screen captures of several weblog posts here on Workbench to pursue its claim that everything I've done on Wargames.Com is an attempt to hide a long-unrealized desire to profit from MGM's 1983 film:
When Respondent "launched" the <wargames.com> website on September 14, 2006, it did not even merit a mention on any of his websites. A printout from Respondent's blog showing entries from the days surrounding September 14, 2006, is attached as Annex E. In fact, during the three (3) months that elapsed between Respondent's first use of the <wargames.com> domain name and MGM's filing of this dispute, Respondent did not publicize, announce, or mention the activation of the <wargames.com> website. Indeed, the first public announcement of new <wargames.com> website was in connection with Respondent's blog post announcing that MGM filed the complaint in this proceeding (see Annex D). Thus, if Respondent is to be believed, after spending more than two (or eight) years and 1,000 hours developing the <wargames.com> website, he did not so much as mention when it finally went active. That Respondent only began to publicize his website after MGM initiated the instant proceeding betrays his claims regarding his efforts to develop an active website using the Domain, and further suggests opportunistic bad faith in attempting to capitalize on the dispute for his own financial benefit.
They overlooked the links to Wargames.Com in the "Working On" sidebar of this blog -- even in their own screen captures -- and wargame ads I've run on other sites I publish. Google has indexed more than 13,000 pages where I've linked to my store, an effort that takes 3-6 months to improve its standing in search results.
Both of MGM's documents are filled with stuff like this, where its attorneys take a thin inference from something I've written -- or in this case not written -- and stretch it into a Perry Mason moment where I break down on the stand and admit I killed kindly Miss McGillicutty for the $13 in her Little Sisters of the Poor donation bucket.
Dancing Mortgage People Ate My Brain
My weblog entry on protecting yourself from dancing mortgage people attracted the attention of New York Times reporter Brad Stone, who tracked down Jennifer Uhll, the graphic designer who created the ads for LowerMyBills.Com.
Whenever I see one of these ads, I'm reminded of the door-to-door meat salesmen who occasionally show up at my house offering steaks from a beer cooler in their trunk. Every time they do, I want to ask, "Who are the people keeping you in business?" I half expect to find they're also selling human organs for transplant.
I'll buy high-definition 1080i DirecTV from Jessica Simpson, but I'm not buying meat from some mullet-headed stranger's trunk and I won't trust a life-altering banking decision to creepy dancing silhoettes with undulating pelvi. The ads are so successful for the company it spent $74.6 million running the ads and was bought by Experian for $400 million in 2005.
The people have become so pervasive on newspaper sites that the Times had to admit it inflicts them on readers.
Stone did not pass along my warning to web users that the time has come to recognize the threat the dancers pose to humankind. We have to stop the rooftop couple, line-dancing cowboy clones and fist-pumping zombie Gregory Hines now, before LowerMyBills.Com and its minions unleash some new form of Lovecraftian brain-destroying contagion on the world in the name of affordable mortgage refinance.
UDRP Response Filed to Save Wargames.Com
My attorney Wade Duchene has filed our response to the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) complaint made by MGM Studios over Wargames.Com. We're getting closer to the day where a panel of three arbitrators decides whether to give the domain to MGM, which owns a trademark registered in 2003 for the 1983 film WarGames.
UDRP arbitration is an increasingly popular tool for intellectual property lawyers trying to acquire domains for clients, as MGM's firm is attempting here. If they lose, all it costs is a $1,300 or $2,600 filing fee and their time.
The math's not as pretty for a domain name holder: You have to fight like hell to defend your rights against accusations of cybersquatting and anything else an attorney can claim to make you look dodgy, and all you get with a victory is to keep what you owned in the first place.
Actually, that's not entirely true. There's at least one benefit to me: I'm making new friends at the OfficeMax copy center and UPS Store. When I showed up yesterday to make copies of the UDRP response for some reporters, they greeted me like Norm on Cheers.
I'm also getting a great too-late-for-me education on how to reduce your risk of a UDRP grab.
If you own a domain you haven't launched and there's a trademark holder with a mark close to your domain name, you're vulnerable even if you've never offered it for sale. The time to defend your rights is before you've been contacted by a trademark holder. In a UDRP arbitration, the actions you take after that first contact are disregarded as self-serving.
My emphatic advice: Start your business today. Don't wait until everything's perfectly in place and the site's near to launch.
I registered a fictitious name statement in Florida in 2004 when I began work on Wargames.Com, which is my first (and only) retail business. That's probably the first step you should undertake. You can register a fictitious name, also called a DBA or do-business-as, with a service like MyCorporation.Com or do it yourself with your state. I paid around $50.
Registering a fictitious name tells the world you'll be doing business under that name, establishing a verifiable public record of your intent. I'll pester my attorney to explain how that helps.
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