A Plethora of Candidates for
1999 Cyberserk Award
By Ellen Rony, co-author of The Domain Name Handbook
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tiburon, CA (January 6) - The authors of The Domain
Name Handbook <http://wwww.domainhandbook.com> are pleased to announce
their selection for the 1999 Cyberserk Award. This award is bestowed
annually upon a company, organization, institution or individual deemed
unclear on the concept of the domain name system. The winner is picked by a
two-person jury--siblings Ellen Rony of Tiburon, California and Peter Rony
of Blacksburg, Virginia--who approach the task with special seriousness. It
is their belief that highlighting the activities of cyberserkers will
provide an educational reality check. The prior award winners were the
Prema Toy Company (1998) and Procter and Gamble (1997)
<http://www.domainhandbook.com/awards.html>.
In 1999, the jurors found no dearth of candidates qualifying for the
dubious distinction. With Internet traffic doubling every 100 days, domain
names took on greater ubiquity in 1999. Dot COM addresses were plastered
brazenly across billboards, store fronts, bus panels, t-shirts and even
individual fruit. They were featured in television commercials, magazine
ads, packaging labels and an increasing number of syndicated cartoons.
Domain names became valuable corporate assets and the shorthand to an
unprecedented repository of information. The surging demand for .COM names,
coupled with the uniqueness requirement, raised the price bar on stellar
dot COMs. A few near-million dollar milestones were reported during the
year: $1.035 million for WALLSTREET.COM at auction in April, $0.5
million-plus for COMPUTER.COM in May, and $0.823456 million for DRUGS.COM
auctioned in August. But these daunting sums paled next to the new record
price paid late in November for BUSINESS.COM. eCompanies, a venture led by
EarthLink Network founder Sky Dayton and former Disney Internet executive
Jake Winebaum, bought the domain name for a staggering $7.5 million, up
from $150,000 in June of 1997, when the BUSINESS.COM domain last changed
hands. The high-priced resales did not go unnoticed by cyberspeculators and
fed a domain name profiteering frenzy. Registrations were running about
10,000 per day by year's end. A bowl of sour cherries to all those who
collect domain names solely for the stunning return on investment.
Concern that domain names would become a battle cry for customer and
employee complaints, corporations preemptively added ridiculing
registrations to their own holdings. Procter & Gamble, our original
Cyberserk Award winner, began marketing a new product, Febreze, that
neutralizes pet odor. The corporation was so worried that it would become
the target of animal rights activists who believe the product is dangerous
to pets, that it registered: FEBREZEKILLSPETS.COM, FEBREZEKILLSDOGS.COM,
FEBREZEKILLSBIRDS.COM, FEBREZESUCKS.COM, and IHATEPROCTERANDGAMBLE.COM.
While we weren't ready to declare P&G a two-time winner, the corporation
earned a scent-free pewter pelt for sniffing out potential criticism in
this manner.
Registration paranoia also struck the campaign of Republican Presidential
candidate George W. Bush. Unhappy with the satirical and potentially
damaging profile posted at GWBUSH.COM, his campaign advisor registered 260
Bush-related domains, including some decidedly denigrating
ones--BUSHSUCKS.NET, BUSHSUX.ORG, and BUSHBLOWS.COM--suggesting that he
thought his job was to silence both satire and criticism. A Texas-sized
copy of the U.S. Constitution goes to those on the Bush team who rallied
for "limits to freedom" because of the website brouhaha.
"Domania" grabbed headlines throughout the year. A market enthralled by
the Internet racked up huge gains for IPOs with .COM appended to their
business name. MARKETWATCH.COM increased 509% in value from the issue
price and the first day's close while THESTREET.COM, a financial news
Internet site, soared from $19 to $60 on its first day of trading. At
least 100 Internet-related companies announced name changes in 1999, and
more than half of these included the addition of .COM to the corporate
moniker. After the on-line technical book retailer Computer Literacy
switched to the off-beat name, FATBRAIN.COM, its stock jumped 36 percent in
one day, adding more than $100 million to the company's market cap. A set
of rose colored glasses to all the optimistic investors who redefined
market fundamentals in 1999..
A GPS chip goes to Network Solutions, Inc. for acts which reveal more
hubris than cyberserkery. On the eve of the introduction of competition
into the domain name registrar business, NSI folded the InterNIC website
into its own "to help customers more easily find the information, services
and tools they need." In this streamlining process, the world's largest
registry rendered thousands of links stranded in cyberspace.
Both dot and COM were prominent imagemakers in 1999. NSI branded itself as
"the dot com people", and Sun Systems advertised itself as "the dot in dot
COM". An Oregon hamlet whose economy needed a boost was the first to
append .COM to its name. Halfway, founded in the early 1880s near the Idaho
border, adopted the name HALF.COM, hoping the newfound attention would
bring the town of 365 residents out of its slump. Mitch Maddox, 26, also
traded in his name in an effort to prove how wired the world has become,
Now legally called DotComGuy, he moved into an empty Dallas home at the end
of 1999, equipped only with a laptop computer. For the next twelve months,
he plans to rely solely on the Internet for his survival, ordering food,
furniture and clothing online. The stunt seems strangely reminiscent of
the movie dud, Bio-dome, and rates high on our in-house cyberserk meter.
We believe the experience will be its own reward.
Many notable domain name disputes grabbed headlines and navigated through
the court system. An applicant for SHITAKEMUSHROOMS.COM was denied the
registration because it contained four letters that NSI considered obscene.
Archie Comic Publications, with a cartoon character called Veronica and a
domain at VERONICA.COM, sent a cease and desist letter to a man who
established a non-commercial site at VERONICA.ORG in honor of his infant
daughter. Did these attorneys learn nothing from our 1998 Cyberserk
winner, the Prema Toy Company, which tried the same maneuver with POKEY.ORG?
In a lawsuit over the addition of an "s" to a trademark owner's domain
name, a U.S. District Judge ordered NSI to de-register WORLDSPORTS.COM and
barred it from permitting the registration of any similar word, name or
term by any party other than plaintiff. We award a gallon of glue to the
magistrate to make the slope of his opinion less slippery. At least his
ruling was reversed on appeal
Policy wonks and lawmakers also hammered away at the ongoing
trademark/domain name battles. ICANN, led by ten unelected and
unaccountable individuals, adopted a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution
Policy for its new .COM, .NET and .ORG registrars. It would be hard to
overlook this document when considering candidates for the 1999 Cyberserk
Award. While the ICANN Board resolved to define and minimize reverse
domain name hijacking, it sidestepped any meaningful sanctions against
trademark owners who drag legitimate domain name registrants through
ICANN's mandatory administrative proceedings. Yes, there are some bad
actors in the domain name game, but ICANN's one-sided, anti-competitive and
intrusive UDRP earns it the 1999 title as First Runner-Up. We award that
body, whose authority and legitimacy remain questionable, a moral compass
to help ICANN find its way through the intellectual property thicket.
In our opinion, the most significant event of the year in the area of
domain names occurred not in the courts and not even within ICANN but in
the U.S. Congress. The Trademark Cyberpiracy Prevention Act, a.k.a.
Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, was signed into law by
President Clinton on November 29. It protects businesses from those who
register company trademarks and "confusingly similar" names as Internet
addresses in bad faith and then later try to sell them for a profit. This
contentious piece of legislation won passage by attaching it as a rider to
an omnibus bill on federal spending.
Adoption of the Anticybersquatting Act followed fierce lobbying by
political figures and celebrities, who complained that their names were
being used by unaffiliated parties to direct people to pornography online.
However, the legislation permits a civil action by trademark holders
against a domain registrant on the basis of the name registration alone,
without regard to the goods or services offered by the party. Trademark
holders support the law as a response to the piracy of business, product
and celebrity names that have significant commercial value. The new
"confusingly similar" standard offers a much broader protective umbrella
over such names.
Another view--ours and that of many others--is that the legislation is an
attempt to structure law to favor a particular business model, while
setting aside many consumer and civil rights concerns. The
Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, despite all the fashionable
buzzwords in its title, codifies a trademark agenda in cyberspace. It
grants all trademark holders vast new rights at the expense of fair use and
free expression. For this reason, we bestow the 1999 Cyberserk Award upon
this piece of legislation, which we believe furthers the vision that the
Internet's primary purpose is as a commercial medium and trademark owner's
playground, rather than a global communication commons.
It would be premature to claim the domain name industry came of age in
1999. Cyberserkery was in evidence throughout the year, and progress seemed
a series of fits and starts. This, of course, is in the nature of any new
medium or activity. We encourage the Internet community to collect
nominations for the next Cyberserk Awards throughout the year. But 1999's
awardees may be a hard act to follow.
###
Copyright (c) 2000 Ellen Rony
Permission to reprint is granted so long as the copyright information is
retained.
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Ellen Rony ____ The Domain Name Handbook
Co-author ^..^ )6 http://www.domainhandbook.com
+1 (415) 435-5010 (oo) -^--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
W W
DOT COM is the Pig Latin of the Information Age
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