Microsoft Files Dispute Against Current Owner of XboxOne.com 381
MojoKid writes "Microsoft might have one of the most talked-about products at the moment with the Xbox One, but would you believe it doesn't own the rights to the most obvious domain name to accompany it? Domain squatting is a real issue for companies about to launch a new product. If they register a domain before the official launch, people can find that and subsequently ruin the company's surprise. This particular case is different, however. The domain name wasn't registered just the other day. Instead, a UK resident registered the name XboxOne.com in December of 2011, long before Microsoft itself even likely had a definitive name for its upcoming console. So, what can a company do in this instance? File a dispute with the National Arbitration Forum, an ICANN-approved organization that specializes in dealing with these sorts of matters."
Xbox One? Oh my! (Score:5, Insightful)
They's better change that ridiculous name instead.
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You'd think they'd at least do a quick type-it-into-their-browser before the launch.
Get some ideas for names, do the searches (including for other products, as well as domains), throw out any problem names, pick the best of what's left, then file for trademark and domain names and announce the product all on the same day.
Re:Xbox One? Oh my! (Score:5, Funny)
They probably did that and yielded no results with Bing...
Re:Xbox One? Oh my! (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd think they'd at least do a quick type-it-into-their-browser before the launch.
Well even searching for a name can trigger registrations of that name. I've had this happen to me while
searching for a name for a customer, I checked several registrars to be sure the name was free. Made the
mistake of doing this over a couple of weeks, and by the time they gave me the go-ahead it was snapped up
by some guy in a spanish speaking country. (The domain only made sense in english).
Sure enough he would sell it for $1000. (Actually he wanted the equivalent in Mexican Pesos.)
In fact the article says:
XboxOne.com isn't being used for anything, so it's in effect a squat
So no matter how long ago he registered it he probably had inside information or results from domain name searches.
That long in advance does seem a little odd, because tacking ONE on the end of stuff only became popular
recently, the Nexus One was the first big example that comes to mind. I wonder how many other names
this guy registered.
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A couple of years ago I nearly applied to be an ICANN arbiter, only for nominet [nominet.org.uk] (the UK agency). Part of the application involved looking at a few previous cases [nominet.org.uk] to see the kind of thing you'd be getting into, and expected to do.
In this case, the xboxone.com domain contains nothing, its a godaddy holding page, so the owner obviously has either no attempt to turn it into a real site, or failed to do so (for whatever means), so given that, I would have handed it over to MS. Now, if the owner had put somethin
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I did mean "Verizen" or something similar. For example, if you register "verizxon.com" or "cerizonwireless.com" and put cellphone ppc on them, odds are you will lose the UDRP based on the trademark for "Verizon". Those are two examples among thousands.
Xboxone.com is at risk now because the Godaddy parking page is showing an ad for "custom xbox controllers". Even if the owner didn't opt-in for ad rev sharing.
The only good defense is if the domain was registered well before a trademark registration date be
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You're not wrong, all registered from xboxone.com up to and including xboxsix.com. The puzzling thing is that xboxtwo.com is owned by Microsoft, but was registered on "Sun, Sep 11, 2005", some time after the release of the Xbox 360 (wikipedia says "The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005" so some months before). Maybe it was defensive, if belated.
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I always wondered why Ad-Aware never checked for that name (it was owned by ADAware, an ADA software site, when I looked at it several years ago). Apparently those two didn't arrive at amicable terms ... last I saw, ADAware had a link to a different ad blocker on their site.
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They's better change that ridiculous name instead.
And strangely, nobody has yet to register the xboxwon.com domain -- their advertising's double entendre for the XBox One.
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They's better change that ridiculous name instead.
And strangely, nobody has yet to register the xboxwon.com domain -- their advertising's double entendre for the XBox One.
Nevermind. It's gone.
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I always thought exploiting domain name front-running [wikipedia.org] would be a clever way to have an argument—possibly with some kind of "you automatically lose the argument if the WHOIS returns a hit" rule, sort of like Godwin's Law.
WhatDoYouWant.com?
ImJustSayingItsNotFairThatsAll.com
NobodyWantsToGoThereWithYou.com
GoWhere.com?
*bzzt*
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You didn't search for it with Network Solutions did you?
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Xbox One's successor will obviously be Xbox A.
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Xbox One's successor will obviously be Xbox A.
Shouldn't XBoxOne be actually named XBox4Pi to suggest an evolution?
(damn'd: it mid-2013 already and /. still doesn't support Unicode!)
Re:Xbox One? Oh my! (Score:5, Funny)
what about XBox For Workgroups
Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Interesting)
Go ask any of the McDonalds, whose great-great-great-grandpa 200 years ago proudly called himself "Mr. McDonald", how he or she feels about the mcdonalds.com domain
Go ask Uzi Nissan what Nissan Motor Corporation did (is doing) to him over the name that he registered circa 1996. Uzi Nissan, having a computer shop, bought the domain name of his last name. Never mind that he _also_ had a car dealership called Nissan Motors in the 1970s, when Nissan Motor Corporation was still called Datsun.
Re: Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Informative)
Nissan as a company was NEVER called Datsun. Datsun is a brand name, derived from an early model called Datson. Nissan is short for Nippon Sangyo. Which was the earlier company name. Nissan as an abbreviation was invented for the stock market (like AAPL for Apple)
Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Informative)
Don't want to just burn karma, but thanks for bringing Uzi's story to my attention.
Here's the link for anyone who would like to read baout it:
http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php [nissan.com]
And yes, Uzi Nissan still holds Nissan.com (it cost him a lot of money though.).
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The impression I got from the nissan.com story was that he tried to make a quick buck (when asked for a price, he said "I don't know, $15 million?") and when he realized that made him look bad he turned it around into a victim story.
Don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse Nissan Motors' behavior. I was considering buying a Nissan Murano in 2005, and chose another brand specifically because of the nissan.com debacle. My wife emailed a copy of the vehicle we purchased instead to their customer service department with an explanation.
Thank you for the perspective. I hate cybersquatters, but assuming that Uzi was not cybersquatting and legitimately using the name, why wouldn't he ask for a few mil? I don't know if that is what he did ask for, but I sure would do the same if some multinational corporation suddenly wanted dotancohen.com from me. Note that I am not cybersquatting dotancohen.com but rather using it for the purpose for which domain names were intended, as was Uzi doing with nissan.com.
Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly I don't see why that should make him look bad. Personally if some mega corp suddenly wanted my domain name, which I do use to receive mail at and to host some other personal stuff on which I can give people a memorable for, I'd ask for a pile of money too.
I mean why not? I have rights to a unique resource someone else has decided is valuable to them. They have no claim on it; I had the name first after all selected for my own reasons. Just like Nissan did, it was his last name after all a perfectly reasonably cause to choose it. Its going to inconvenience me and all of my contacts to change it; maybe not to the tune of a million dollars but its a thinly traded market if demand for it from entity like a Microsoft is high so should be the price.
I'll agree squatting and not using a domain should not be allowed; it is a limited resource there are only so many short, easy to remember, spellable names. Only the dipshits at TSA want to use name most users would need to enter character codes to type or use something like charmap and copy/paste to enter. Otherwise I think if you even so much as receive the occasion mail there and you have an even halfway credible reason why you selected the name in the first place, like "my first cat had that name" quality; it should be first come first serve.
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Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Informative)
well, NOW it's parked after Microsoft brought the lawyers out of leashes and sicked them on the domain owner(s)...
looking on archive.org it seems it used to have an active site on it, for example this snapshot:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110207201840/http://xboxone.com/ [archive.org]
OR this one, from the YEAR 2003
http://web.archive.org/web/20031225193949/http://xboxone.com/ [archive.org]
Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Informative)
oops.. small case of "spoke too soon"/"foot in mouth", i realize this is from before the "domain created" date, so it must be the site maintained by the previous owners of the domain name, name that had expired by the time the current owner registered it.
Anyway, it's a proof that "XboxOne" was already used by someone else in the context of computer games related stuff even since the year 2002 and IMHO should have not been awarded as a registered trademark to MS...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:3)
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Note that these sites are both from before the current owner acquired the domain, and both most likely infringe on Microsoft's trademarks through the use of the XBOX logos without permission. IANAL but I suppose the case could be made that the current owner wanted to build on the reputation of the old site, but seeing as how he hasn't done anything with it for such a long time that might be a stretch.
Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need permission to use trademarks, if they're not being used in a manner likely to confuse consumers. Company names are also trademarks, but Slashdot isn't going to get in trouble for including "Microsoft" in this article. Whether the use of the logo in this particular case is likely to cause people to think it was an official X-box site is another question, but one that is only likely to be answerable by a judge.
Meh, so what (Score:3)
Re:Ask any McDonald about mcdonalds.com domain (Score:5, Insightful)
The second Xbox came out, it was named Xbox 360, everyone called it xbox, and started calling the previous one Xbox 1 to differentiate since nobody wanted to say Xbox three sixty.
The third Xbox is announced, it is named Xbox One, everyone realizes that Microsoft should stop hiring brain dead monkeys for their naming division.
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And their game console design division too, apparently.
Have you seen this thing? And that's even before mentioning the elephant in the room, the laughably suicidal always-online DRM requirement.
What's there to dispute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fork over some money, Micro$oft, if you want it that bad...
Re:What's there to dispute? (Score:5, Informative)
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Microsoft has staff lawyers that won't cost them anything other than the fee to file the dispute. Since the domain just goes to some GoDaddy parking page filled with ads it's more likely to go in Microsoft's favor. I'm sure their lawyers are aware of this.
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I kind of agree. They could have saved up all those lawyer fees and just paid the guy off. I'd take Microsoft money any day.
They just filed a dispute, not like they are going to court.
And we have no idea if they tried to get a hold of the person, or if they couldn't, or if the person said, sure, for 1 Million pounds.
What I don't understand is why people treat domain squatting like it's a bad thing. Free market and all that? The website name is property, and as far as I know there isn't a law saying you have to use your property or someone else can have it.
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considering it costs $1400 USD to file complaint, its more likely the cheapest option
They could have offered to buy the domain from the current owner for $1000, and saved 20% off the cost of the complaint fee, and avoided the costs that will be incurred for the legal representation altogether.
Re:What's there to dispute? (Score:5, Insightful)
They could have offered to buy the domain from the current owner for $1000, and saved 20% off the cost of the complaint fee, and avoided the costs that will be incurred for the legal representation altogether.
Except:
a) Creates a precedent - much better to encourage people to think there's no money in domain squatting against MS
b) $400 is - literally - nothing to a company like this. They would consider the costs to be equivalent, and immaterial, and go for the one which has a better strategic flavour (be it PR, precedent, etc)
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a) Creates a precedent - much better to encourage people to think there's no money in domain squatting against MS
It's a known fact that there IS money in domain squatting. There is no new precedent to make. The only doubt is if there is money in unsophisticated cybersquatting; where the squatter has not leveraged experts in the rules and law, UDRP processes, and lawyers, in order to assist them in structuring their squatting operation to be protected against a successful dispute.
But for it to be done
Re:What's there to dispute? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That happened with mike rowe and only provoked a lawsuit from microsoft alleging bad faith scalping.
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That happened with mike rowe and only provoked a lawsuit from microsoft alleging bad faith scalping.
Making such as a standing offer is sure to be seen as bad faith. Whereas putting the domain into an "open ended" arrangement, where buyers may make offers, and there is a minimum offer amount for automatic acceptance, may have better results for the squatter.
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but then all your domain will belong to us
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Except the only content of XboxOne.com is advertising; as in domain parking, apparently.
That will give Microsoft a pretty clear victory, due to the special rules regarding cybersquatting about domains only being used to serve ads and not content.
Things would have been harder for Microsoft, if the domain was both in active use and used to serve content of commercial value, and for one reason or another was not a violation of trademark (E.g. legitimate parodies, companies in other markets businesses the
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Actually in this case, I hope Microsoft gets it free and clear.
I DESPISE "domain parking". If you're not using it, give it up and let someone else use it.
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This was exactly my thinking. I avoid making assumptions in most cases. A 5 digit /. id would make the member around 30 or older with more exposure to /. content than myself.
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Please look up the definition of bias. Your using it wrong. What we have made is assumptions based on the knowledge that a users id length is relevant to the order in which users joined the site. If memory serves correctly with a very limited set of exception involving a hand full of 4 and 5 digit id's that were auctioned off some years back.
A bias comment would be stating that all Anonymous Cowards are trolls when in fact many are people who for one reason or another dont feel like creating an account or s
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I have had domains for private services such as databases(accepts request only from a list of IP's), file servers, and messaging services. I also use them for dynamic addresses.
My general rule of thumb as far as user id's: If your id is higher then mine I will give you toss it up to the member being young and ignorant about a topic when they overlook something simple. If there id is lower then mine they should be at least my age, and have a decent background on technology and its history as they lived it.
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domains only being used to serve ads and not content.
Ads are content... just ask any advertising agency, magazine/newspaper publisher, or Slashvertisment poster ;)
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The (current) owner *is* using MS' trademark in the domain name, so they've got a decent case.
Did MS have it trademarked at the time the domain was acquired? If not, I would think MS was the one that has a problem.
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I'm talking about "Xbox", which MS has had for over a decade.
Yeah, I figured that out while I was posting something else.
Do they tolerate domains like "xboxclub.org", etc? If not, they might still have a problem.
AIUI, you *have* to complain against people who use your trademark, or else you lose it. If that's the case, they should have complained about this a long time ago. (Though finding everything with "xbox" in it might be recognized as an intractable problem.)
Same as real estate (Score:2)
Use a straw purchaser. Probably someone with a track record of domain squatting. So when people see them buying yet one more domain name, they'll think nothing of it.
Yes, that's going to cost money. But in the overall product marketing scheme, its a minor cost.
Notify GoDaddy (Score:3)
Am I the only one that gets the GoDaddy.com spiel when I try to go to xboxone.com? Seems shenannigansy.
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Seems shenannigansy.
Not really. You can register a domain through them. If you don't configure the name to point to an actual site, it just stays 'parked' at GoDaddy with such a page.
I could never defend a cyber squatter (Score:4, Insightful)
If the domain owner had actually been using the name (rather than just to show a default launch page) then I might have some sympathy for them. But those people who speculatively register thousands of domains just to extort money from legitimate users deserve to be sued.
Nobody should ever reward the bad practices of those douchebags. They are the equivalent of patent trolls.
Re:I could never defend a cyber squatter (Score:5, Insightful)
If the domain owner had actually been using the name (rather than just to show a default launch page) then I might have some sympathy for them. But those people who speculatively register thousands of domains just to extort money from legitimate users deserve to be sued.
Nobody should ever reward the bad practices of those douchebags. They are the equivalent of patent trolls.
I don't agree. Sure, it sucks, but the name is property. People buy up property cheap all the time with the hopes that the area might become developed and the property will go up in price.
Just because MS wants it doesn't mean they should get it. Just because the person hasn't done anything with his website doesn't mean MS should get it. This is mostly just catering to the corporations.
MS should of bought all the Xbox* names they could of back when they released the original xbox. They didn't, tough shit, imo.
And why do you need a new website name for a new console? Why not just have Xbox.com show the new console? It's not like they are going to keep selling and advertising the Xbox 360 after the Xbox One is released.
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I don't agree. Sure, it sucks, but the name is property. People buy up property cheap all the time with the hopes that the area might become developed and the property will go up in price.
The property is the domain databases and name servers the ICANN or whoever it is uses, and charges you annually for. They can either have a legitimate client (MS legitimate for once, LOL) or make a subcontractor have money off squatting, which would make sense commercially but it's not in the mission, I HOPE.
Re:I could never defend a cyber squatter (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not the way it was supposed to work. Way back when the Internet was young and domain names was first thought up, the idea was that Microsoft just puts their site for the XBox on xbox.microsoft.com. If they wanted to simplify it, they could register xbox.com. But that's it; nothing else. Then when they released the XBox 360, they put it on the URL 360.xbox.com. When they release the XBox One, they put it on one.xbox.com. Same thing for e.g. Apple products. iphone.apple.com, 4gs.iphone.apple.com, air.macbook.apple.com, etc.
But because the folks who made domain names decided to make them little endian, the above URLs run counter to how you name things (in English at least). So instead it's become popular to try to register a domain for the product name as you'd write it, which is what makes everything vulnerable to domain squatting.
The folks who made USENET got it right when they made their hierarchy big endian (e.g. rec.arts.sf.starwars.games). You start from the biggest concept and narrow it down with each additional word. If domain names had been big endian, the above URLs would've been com.xbox.360, com.xbox.one, com.apple.iphone.4gs, com.apple.macbook.air, etc. And we probably could've avoided most of this domain squatting mess. Phishing would've been harder too since the non-spoofable part of the domain name would appear first.
Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20.
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This sounds cool, but actually doesn't make any sense. The problem is not big endian versus litlle endian. Microsoft could very well use com.microsoft.xbox.360, but then somebody could squat com.xbox.360. Or microsoft could use com.xbox.360, and somebody would try to squat com.xbox360. The advantage of USENET is that its hierarchical structure was more or less well defined, while in the WWW it is completely arbitrary what you put before the .com part.
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Not having a web page would make it potentially legitimate. Having an ad parking page makes it a squatting troll.
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Does that not depend on the company with which the domain is registered? Some will automatically create a default web page advertising the registrar. Then, if the domain is only used for mail or only sub-domains are used ,,,
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That's OK, your domain is safe. In the case of xboxone.com, the domain was created based on an existing trademarked name and it was not in active use.
As a private individual, you can never be sure that pretty much any name you pick is not trademarked as, say, a brand of cat food in Botswana.
The trademark system and the DNS system should never have been allowed to meet. A trademark always applies to a trade, i.e. a specific area. DNS records don't. You can register a trademark for "Xbox" just fine if it's not for a games console or anything related but, say, a type of gift wrap. But there can only be one xbox.com domain.
How do you know? (Score:2, Interesting)
At the moment, XboxOne.com isn't being used for anything, so it's in effect a squat.
You mean they don't have an active website. That doesn't mean the domain name isn't being used for anything. It has A and MX records. Even scanning the ports on the A records and finding nothing doesn't mean it's not being used. It may not respond to any except certain IP addresses.
Now I agree it's likely it's not being used for anything, but as the registrant of several domains which do not have websites associated with them (but DO have email and other services) I call nonsense (if not straight up libel)
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You mean they don't have an active website. That doesn't mean the domain name isn't being used for anything. It has A and MX records.
Even if they have other hidden uses; under the anti cybersquatting rules, they will most likely lose the dispute BECAUSE of the website with just ads on it; which is treated similarly as making an offer to sell the domain for more than they paid.
The web page with only ads is likely to result in Microsoft winning the UDRP dispute.
If there was no web page with only ad
Re:How do you know? (Score:5, Interesting)
Be careful, though. Part of what you see for a given domain name depends on your ISP. For instance, if you're on Cox's cable Internet service and try going to "nonexistent.silverglass.org" (a name which definitively does not exist in the zonefile), you'll get a Web site filled with ads. A Web site I never created and have no part of. If you look at the URL bar, you'll see that Cox has resolved that name (that should've gotten an NXDOMAIN result) to the IP address of one of their servers and redirected you to one of their Web sites. Cox at least does a redirect, some ISPs simply serve up the page as if it came from the server name you used leaving you no clue that the domain owner isn't the one running that site.
It looks from my side like the site's just parked at GoDaddy, and what you're getting is the generic site GoDaddy serves up to every parked domain. The only ad is the button GoDaddy puts there to see about buying the domain, which is there whether the domain owner is interested in selling or not.
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Be careful, though. Part of what you see for a given domain name depends on your ISP.
Not at all. The contents of a DNS response are dependant upon the response from the authoritative DNS servers, and I run my own recursive DNS servers, so I can be sure there is no funny business going on from my ISP.
I'll grant you that COX users might see something different, but it's not supposed to; and it's just that COX has broken their DNS servers, probably by inserting a Paxfire/Xerocole/Glog or Infoblox unit
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Even if you run your own DNS servers, it's easy for an ISP to force you to go through theirs. On Linux it only takes a couple of iptables rules to redirect all traffic to destination port 53, TCP as well as UDP, to a specific IP address. It's the same trick used to force all HTTP traffic through a proxy, or block outbound SMTP except through the ISP's servers.
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P.S. Even if traffic redirection is successful it won't work. A query by an authoritative DNS server looks different from a query made by a DNS resolver; namely, Recursion Allowed (RA) is false, and bit5 AA (authoritative answer) must be set in the response.
You really think the developers of NXDomain interceptors bothered to lookup the nuanced details of an Authoritative VS Recursive queryier?
Redirecting traffic would just make all lookups fail.
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Seconded. For nearly a decade I had a domain that had no Web sites in it and in fact no e-mail service (no MX records). But it was very definitely in use. I used it to hold A records for hosts I needed convenient names for that didn't have names of their own (or not names I could resolve from my home network anyway). It was especially convenient for dynamic names, where the IP address changed regularly but I still needed a way to access the machine remotely. And most of those machines would look dead to any
Look at the site (Score:2)
...it's not even in use. It's just the godaddy placeholder.
Normally, I tend to side with the 'little guy' like MikeRoweSoft - he was actually USING the domain.
In this case, the guy's just squatting. Give him some token fund for "good guess what we'd call it" like $1000 and give MS the domain.
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Offer him a free PS4.
domain name speculating (Score:5, Interesting)
People buy real estate all the time in the hopes that it gains in value...why should domain names be treated specially?
Playing with fire, even if legit ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if the registration was legitimate, they still used a Microsoft trademark as a portion of the domain name. That is going to cause problems for the domain's owner even if the trademark XBox One didn't exist at the time of registration.
For what it's worth, I pulled up on archive.org and it was some sort of xbox fan site in the past. Depending upon the trail of registrations since then, it is doubtful that a domain squatter owns it.
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Even if the registration was legitimate, they still used a Microsoft trademark as a portion of the domain name. That is going to cause problems for the domain's owner even if the trademark XBox One didn't exist at the time of registration.
For what it's worth, I pulled up on archive.org and it was some sort of xbox fan site in the past. Depending upon the trail of registrations since then, it is doubtful that a domain squatter owns it.
So if I used the name Dellve Consulting then Dell should sue me ?
HighLatitude.com ?
XPSThree.com ? (Dell or Sony, take your pick)
A trademark is specific and for good reason. If Microsoft fucked up and didn't arrange the domain ahead of time it's their own fault and they'll have to pay, one way or the other.
Who knew the name would be Xbox one anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
I for one, wouldn't have guessed it'd be Xbox One, especially not 2 years ago. I Microsoft really wants this name, it's not difficult for them to pony up the dough. Even at 1.000.000$, for MS this would have been a good deal. Going the lawsuit way for someone as powerful as MS, is stupid, they're most likely just going to have haters against them etc.
On the other hand, I don't side with Cybersquatters or people who just purchase 10000 random domain names just because they want to prey on any-company-dot-com, but business is business, if you don't make it your own - it'll be someone else. That's the hard facts of life.
No, he didn't (Score:3)
Trademark law is on MS's side, they'll win this. If the guy is lucky, it'll be in ICANN's arbitration and he'll just lose the name. If he's unlucky, it'll go to US courts as a trademark issue and he may owe MS lawyer fees when he loses (which he will).
This stuff isn't a case of "First guy to grab it gets to extort whatever they want." Trademark law doesn't work that way. If someone has a legit trademark on something they defend, they are going to get it.
So if you register a generic name that a company wants
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Xbox ONE
Not Xbox
Eg. Nintendo Fan Club
It's very difficult for Nintendo to sue them for the name, or take over the domain in such a case.
It's not illegal to be a fan of a brand, nor is it illegal to start a sub-branch company (3rd party if you like) based on a brand.
Well, it might be in the USA, but not here.
Start covering the number line . . . (Score:3)
I just bought xboxminusone.com -- wonder if they'll want that, too?
If Ron Paul can't get his then Microsoft can't (Score:2)
my opinion similar situation to ronpaul.com, it was registered long before he retired and wanted his domain. He lost when he tried to take the legit established route to acquire the domain.
Microsoft should also lose this case.
But it won't Microsoft will of course win cause Corporations rule the world
How is that even allowed to happen? (Score:3, Interesting)
The guy registered a domain name *2* years ago, probably even before MS would look for a name for their upcoming console. This is just another (yet) case of a big company using its legal weight against the small people.
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So? He can do whatever he pleases with it as far as I'm concerned. If Microsoft doesn't like it, maybe they should pay up.
XboxOne.com was up 11 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
It's probably worth noting, XboxOne.com is way older than 2011, it's been around since the original xbox was released http://web.archive.org/web/20021115163519/http://www.xboxone.com/ [archive.org]
Looks like it lapsed though (Score:5, Informative)
It was a fan site, they went down, squatter registered it, and now here we are.
Perfect Solution (Score:3)
WHOIS and Google reveal ... (Score:4, Informative)
WHOIS and Google reveal that he owns a total of 5 domains. Sure, he isn't doing anything with them, but he isn't some faceless "domain squatting corporation" either.
The guy seems to have been the director of a bunch of companies, so he probably understands business. I don't blame him for trying to capitalize on his good fortune. Microsoft will try to use their army of lawyers to either get the domain for free or at a value far below what it is worth to them. I hope he stands up for himself and hires a good lawyer, rather than settling for a derisory sum.
Gateway 2000 (Score:3)
Better register the common name too (Score:3)
I just hope they remember to also register the new console's unofficial name:
xbone.com
Vista.com wasn't for Vista (Score:3)
When Vista was released I tried Vista.com and it was a very established data business, totally unrelated
to Microsoft. MS walked all over this domain name, I thought ah these poor people. I checked on the site
from time to time, the business model changed over the years to one of working with computer hardware.
Never once did they have a redirect to Microsoft due those coming to the wrong site which impressed me
as them never letting MS change their operation - yet vista.com does redirects to vistaprint.com now.
This XboxOne is MS's fault for not checking first before committing, get over it MS you failed again.
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If you had a sensible naming scheme, this kind of shit wouldn't happen. Either make a unique name, or go the tried an tested 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., method. Xbox -> Xbox 360 -> Xbox One -> Xbox e^(i*pi) is starting to piss people off.
Whew. That was a close one. I have a y=1/(1+e^(-wx)) tatoo (well, the equivalent anyway). I hope to hell they don't use that naming scheme, I'm not ready to upgrade to the next chassis series just yet...
Completely offtopic, but you tickled my curiousity (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't that the solution to the equation commonly used to model depletion of a finite resource ( say oil reserves )?
dQ(t)/Q(t)=Q(t)*(1-Q(t))
Or put another way, the rate with which you can deplete a resource is proportional to how much resource you have got times how much resource is left, where unity is all of it.
(The derivative of the depletion curve is the depletion rate curve and looks a lot like a gaussian bell curve, extending from negative infinity to positive infinity, peaking a
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And in reality, no one alive would have thought "XBox One" would follow the Xbox360, if given a set of about 16 reasonable choices.
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Stop being logical.
Next you'll be telling me there's a .US tld.
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Educated people wouldn't use GoDaddy anyway.