Domains

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 ... (read more)

2007/01/24

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, ... (read more)

2007/01/11

The Digger Diggs, and Having Dugg Moves On

When Ryan Tomayko's blog was linked recently on Digg, he was so freaked out by the experience he wrote some code to reject all Digg traffic: The funny thing about Digg is that it changes the way people read. The average Digger seems to assume that people write stuff solely for the purpose of making it to the Digg front page. ... No one knows you there so you have to write in a way that is completely void of who you are and what you're about. That sucks. I'd rather just opt out of the popularity ... (read more)

2007/01/10

Top 10 Wargames of 2006

After hearing about the battle over Wargames.Com, the Los Angeles weblog LAist asked me for a list of the top 10 wargames of 2006. Since this could be the last year I'm legally allowed to use the word "wargames" in a sentence, I jumped at the opportunity. 10. Naruto CCG: Every time I play a seven-year-old kicks my ninja's ass and tells me I bring shame to my family. 9. Advanced Squad Leader Armies of Oblivion: Published by Curt Schilling, who spends his time between pitches calculating how to ... (read more)

2006/12/22

Red Herring: The War Over Wargames.Com

Red Herring interviewed me for a news article on the war over Wargames.Com. The story's pretty fair, though I was never uncertain about what I wanted to do with the domain. I've been playing wargames since Dungeons & Dragons was still considered a wargame in the late '70s. She covers my background in the article: Two years ago, Mr. Cadenhead registered www.BenedictXVI.com. When the new pope announced his new name, the website saw 500,000 hits in two days. Mr. Cadenhead decided to donate the ... (read more)

2006/12/20

'The Deck is Stacked Against Cadenhead'

Jim Ledbetter, writing for the Business 2.0/Fortune blog The Browser, covers MGM's effort to grab Wargames.Com: Over at Techdirt, they're pretty pessimistic about the little guy's chances: "Given the history of the domain name arbitration game, where the big company almost always wins, the deck is stacked against Cadenhead". But wait! The Browser is not an attorney, and does not play one on television. But we noticed something curious about MGM's trademark of the term. Although the movie came ... (read more)

2006/12/19

My Battle with MGM Over Wargames.Com

For the past three months I've been privately engaged in a time-consuming dispute with Nathan J. Hole, a lawyer representing MGM Studios who claims that Wargames.Com, a domain that I've owned since April 16, 1998, is the rightful property of the film company because it produced the 1983 movie WarGames and registered it as a trademark. I received an e-mail this morning indicating that MGM has filed a legal complaint with the National Arbitration Forum to take the domain name away from me. I ... (read more)

2006/12/18

The Blogger To Be Named Later

A few years ago, outspoken tech blogger Russell Beattie got a phone call at home after he angered someone with one of the entries on his site. They asked to speak with his young son. Beattie didn't want the incident to feed anyone's fear, but I think it's worth recalling in the discussion of whether it's OK to reveal a blogger's identity, as Michael Arrington appears to believe. Arrington's put the chill on the unnamed author of Dead 2.0, a blogger critical of the web 2.0 bubble that has become ... (read more)

2006/09/22

Remembering Brian Buck

A comment spam showed up today in a year-old Workbench entry marking the death of Brian Buck, a blogger who told the story of his five-year fight with cancer to its end last April. The entry about Buck was the last before I created an international incident by popesquatting Benedict XVI. So in a nice bit of serendipity, thousands of people drawn here by international press coverage read about Buck, a remarkable person whose blog stands testament to the power of personal journalism. In a ... (read more)

2006/04/14

Mobile developer Russell Beattie likes the new .mobi top-level domain:... something what we've been desperately needing in the mobile web: A standard navigation scheme. Now users can guess "cnn.mobi" or "yahoo.mobi" or "amazon.mobi" and KNOW that their phone isn't going to barf at them, and the companies will have a standard name to rally around as well. I would imagine that very soon, the handsets themselves will incorporate this, so instead of having to type in .mobi at all, that will be the ... (read more)

2006/04/01

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