"Virgin is not a porn company"
Have you seen their air hostesses? They ought to be!
Sir Richard Branson has wrestled a .xxx domain off a cybersquatter in a challenge over richardbranson.xxx. The Virgin Group founder discovered last week that his Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation was successful. The WIPO panelist handling the case found …
Yes you could, if you had applied for it. There would also be absolutely nothing RB could do about it. As it would be your own name and you genuinely made porn movies, then the name would not have been registered in bad faith. It's more than likely RB would have had to just suck it up (so to speak)
A bit like the Patent Wars of the early 21st Century, Domain Name Wars are going to go down in history as when the lawyers REALLY started to make money.
Who would have thought that expanding new Top Level Domains would have introduced such a huge scope for "ambulance chasing" type lawyers to exploit both sides of a registration.
Come the revolution they'll be the first against the wall.
Unfortunately the new rules running around these new top level domains are desgined to suit the powerful, rich and famous. If someone wanted to take out a domain name based on my full name, could I asked for it to be revoked? Probably not being famous or rich, they'd deny my claim. The old top levels you had to buy out the owner to get the name back. Surely that's how it should work?
Unless someone is using the name in the context of hatred (racism etc), crime or terrorism against someone/group/country/universe, then it shouldn't be pulled from the owner.
Seems like the attitude is that you don't own any of these new domain names anymore. You lease them until someone wants to ruff your feathers.
Wrote :- >>>If someone wanted to take out a domain name based on my full name, could I asked for it to be revoked? <<<<
Yes
>>>>The old top levels you had to buy out the owner to get the name back. Surely that's how it should work?<<<<
Unless the first owner had a natural right to it (like if he was also called Richard Branson) then no, because it is at best extortion and at worst blackmail. In this case it looks more like blackmail.
>>>>Seems like the attitude is that you don't own any of these new domain names anymore. You lease them until someone wants to ruff your feathers.<<<<
Funny that you portray Branson as wanting to "ruff" the feathers of this cyber squatter (of whom no doubt he had never heard of before) when it is clearly a case of this squatter wanting to ruff Branson's feathers, in order to get money to stop doing it, or maybe just to piss him off (disgruntled Virgin passenger perhaps?).
This squatter is rather like a small shopkeeper who puts cans of slugs on his shelves, with labels that look like Heinz even though they are labelled as containing slugs. It would tend to put a lot of people off Heinz food and it would be right for a court to put a stop to it.
And as for Branson being at fault for "being asleep" and failing to register the .xxx name, as some here suggest, you cannot expect every business to recognise every possible permutation of their name and register it defensively. Even if he had registered richardbranson.xxx there could have been richard_branson.xxx, richard-branson.xxx richarrdbranson.xxx ... the list of possibilities is endless.
Surely you'd ignore a slutty top-level domain unless they were detrementing your business to a technical level? I mean if someone bought virginholidays.xxx (now that would be some business!) and forwarded requests and such like.
Cyber squatter or not, loads ordered dot coms and made a zill by selling them as they wee fastest finger first.
Anyway, when did Richard Branson sell his personal services anyway?
(and where's the mini-picture gone from the front-site of richy+bird?) - oh poo.
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"Come the revolution... " (sigh).
Look, UDRP disputes are generally money-losers for lawyers (often done as loss leaders in respect of a larger package of services) and, for that reason (plus unpredictability when compared to litigation), they secretly hate doing them. The people who tend to make money out of the system are the dispute resolution bodies (and then mainly because of bulk rather than fat margins).
Remember, kids, a lawyer never stirs in its lair unless and until a client instructs and pays. So, why not dispose of all the clients instead? Ohhh, hang on a minute ...
The whole arrangement where by one has to enter into a dispute (rather than the .xxx being blocked in the first place because other tlds already have it) is bad news for small entrepreneurs and individual professionals wishing to protect their reputation owing to the costs and time required first of all to apply for a trademark (the end result not always successful, e.g. on the grounds of distinctiveness) and then the cost and time of the registration itself .
A much better approach would be a mandatory, easily enforceable condition that those wishing to register a xxx domain can only do so if the name is not used on any of the other TLDs (and that would include part of the proposed xxx domain which would identify a brand or person). And vice-versa: Those registering a .com domain cannot use names used by the xxx. That to me would keep xxx separate from everything else, and is easily enforceable at the point of domain registration, rather than the lengthly, bureaucratic protection proposed.
Moveover, such a simply enforceable process would be cost effective – particularly welcome in these difficult economic times. It might not be a completely failsafe measure – but it would catch many attempts I think. For others a the trademark based approach might be necessary. And note that I’m not discounting the value of trademarks as I’ve personally been involved in a successful mark registration so I know the process first hand but I feel that it is unnecessary for many cases in this particular situation.