back to article Verisign, .xyz and the ABCs of a cutthroat domain-name industry

A lawsuit against upstart internet registry .xyz has been dismissed just a few days before it was due to go to trial. The case was brought by industry giant and .com registry operator Verisign and alleged .xyz had infringed Verisign's trademark and committed false advertising. However, the lawsuit was widely seen by the …

  1. frank ly

    Paying lawyers to bring suits against the competition

    How is this different from paying thugs to throw bricks through their windows (apart from the fact that lawyers are more expensive)?

    1. Mark 85
      Devil

      Re: Paying lawyers to bring suits against the competition

      Tossing bricks will get someone jail time. Hiring lawyers won't. Pity.. maybe if the lawyers got some jail time when a case is tossed out, maybe there wouldn't be so many lawsuits.

      Then there's patent troll attorneys and drawing and quartering... but that's for a different article.

      Icon ----> closest thing to a lawyer icon.

  2. Mike Flugennock

    On the upside...

    ...the .xyz TLD has proven to be an excellent spam indicator.

    Seriously, I'd love to know -- out of all the domains .xyz has claimed to have registered, how many of them are spammers? ...because the only email I've ever gotten from .xyz domains has been spam.

    1. Turtle

      @ Mike Flugennock Re: On the upside...

      "Seriously, I'd love to know -- out of all the domains .xyz has claimed to have registered, how many of them are spammers? ...because the only email I've ever gotten from .xyz domains has been spam."

      Well, possibly because the .xyz domains that are not spammers are not sending out spam at all; so you would only get spam from... spammers!

      Seems logical to me. Is there a flaw there?

      1. C-L
        Holmes

        Re: @ Mike Flugennock On the upside...

        Huh! Why is it that whenever you look for a logical explanation, you always find it in the last place you look for it? :-)

        C-L

      2. John Savard

        Re: @ Mike Flugennock On the upside...

        Well, yes. No doubt he gets E-mails that are not spam.

        However, your logic is almost right. At the moment, few ordinary people have their regular E-mail accounts on the xyz domain, so it's sensible that hardly any of the legitimate E-mails people get are from there.

    2. Martin-73 Silver badge

      Re: On the upside...

      All xyz sites I've ever come across are scammers, also

    3. DreadPirateRobot

      Re: On the upside...

      I have myuncommonlastname.xyz registered and forwarding to myjokedomain.eu as I got them both for cheap. I don't send out spam, merely collect it.

    4. Doctor_Wibble

      Re: On the upside...

      A fair question but surely the overwhelming majority were auto-registered freebies? I got given one to match one of my existing domains but didn't do anything with it because I already have a few and more to the point '.xyz' just looks like someone needed some filler to get the right number of letters to fill a box on a form.

      It's a crap extension because it isn't meaningful for anything and doesn't 'sound' right in any context other than 'filler'. Crap investment by companies, happens all the time, get the lawyers, argue over who pays the bill. Sounds like standard procedure!

  3. P. Lee

    So Close!

    I'd like to run the .xyzzy domain.

    The domain for mystery tours of your local area!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So Close!

      Ah, XYZZY - the mystical runes engraved on the back of my Moto G 2015 :)

  4. Warm Braw

    .security .theatre

    They just need .airport and they've got the set.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all dirty words in the domain biz

    The whole domain business is filthy so this is par for the course - these guys are just more visible at the top of the pyramid. Remember the Dickergate Godaddy Auctions bidding scandal a few years ago where the auction boss Adam Dicker was bidding? He's back in the news after calling himself the Dotcom God and selling - and often not delivering - four figure basic Wordpress sites on the strength of domain industry Developer of the Year awards.

  6. John Savard

    Costs

    People who aren't proven to have broken the law should not be forced by the law to endure any out-of-pocket expense whatever, so Verisign should now be compelled to pay for the legal costs it inflicted on this competitor by choosing to start a baseless suit against them. Justice should be a right, not a privilege of those who can afford lawyers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Costs

      The flip side to your solution though is that nobody small would dare bring a lawsuit against somebody big - they couldn't afford to lose.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good filter for clueless websites

    I am a legitimate user of .xyz, for email as I can use firstname@lastname.xyz as an email address. (I used to have firstname@lastname.net on a shared domain, but the owner thought they could make more money selling the domain than by selling email).

    The big problem with .xyz is on-line merchants who have last-century website programming that doesn't recognize email addresses that end in anything other than .com or .net.... and when pushed those merchants tell me to just use gmail. No thanks, I prefer to keep my emails to myself thankyouverymuch.

    I will keep this article handy for the next person who says "so that's @lastname.xyz.com, right"?

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Good filter for clueless websites

      on-line merchants who have last-century website programming that doesn't recognize email addresses that end in anything other than .com or .net

      That wasn't correct in the previous century either. The term you want is "broken". And the correct response to such merchants is "I'm taking my business elsewhere".

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