Goodies to Go ™
October 23, 2000– Newsletter #103

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

Did you hear…

If you like to surf fast, go to an airport lounge soon.
Three major airlines are working to set up wireless, high-
speed access for their customers.

I grabbed Netscape 6.0 when it first came out. I was not
bowled over, but then, I’m rather hard to impress. Have you
bopped into Netscape’s home page, Netscape.com, lately? If
not, take a look. It’s got the same feel as the browser. If
you like, you can get Communicator 4.75. The pop-up windows
wouldn’t stop asking me to download it.

Vote early and vote often! If that sounds familiar to you,
then you must have some connection to Chicago. Well, that old
saying has gone cyber. A site, Voteauction.com, is causing a
stir by allowing people to write in and bid for votes.
Although it is meant to be humorous, the Board of Elections
has sent a letter to federal officials to get the site shut
down.

E-commerce isn’t as advanced as they would like us to believe.
The newest brilliant idea in Web commerce is to start sending
out catalogs. I don’t mean cyber catalogs, mind you–I mean
honest-to-goodness printed catalogs on glossy paper. Look
for one coming unsolicited to a mailbox near you. Is that
technically spam?

Now onto today’s topic…

Have you ever gone to Budwesier.com? How about Netcsape.com?
How about Yyahoo.com?

Those of you who take joy in finding my weekly misspellings
and letting me know about it may feel as if you’re going to
have an e-mail field day. Not so fast. The Web addresses above
are misspelled on purpose. They’re typos for the sake of typos.

One of the things I love most about writing this newsletter
are the new words that people make up to describe cyber-events.
If you’re a fan too, here’s another one to add to the list:

Typosquatters!

You’ve heard of cybersquatters. Those are people that buy
domain names that are similar to an established company name
with the intention of selling the name back to the company
for a profit. (Yes, there are some that want them because
they are fans, or for other legitimate reasons, but they make
up the minority.) Lately there have been numerous lawsuits by
major corporations to get the names back. Some win, and some
lose. Sorry, Sting.

A typosquatter is a company that buys up domains that are
close misspellings of actual domains. The idea is to take
advantage of poor typists and spellers to direct traffic to
another site. I’ve probably made a mint for these guys.

Before you tell me that only nasty sites are pulling this
kind of trick, how about this one? For a short while, if
you misspelled the Washington Post URL as Washingtonpos.com
(without the “T”), you were sent to a page belonging to the
New York Times.

There’s a court case pending right now brought by Microsoft
against three Los Angeles residents, Zvieli Fisher, Ed
Fisher, and M. Zvieli, for buying up domains close to
Microsoft’s. The domains in question are: misrosoft.com
and mnsbc.com.

So who’s doing this? I found four names of companies that
are buying up thousands of these misspellings: Powerclick
Inc., Global Net 2000 Inc., Data Art Corp. and Stoneybrook
Investments.

The companies make their money through page views and
advertising. The usual deal is a couple of pennies for a
page view, and then more on top of that for any advertising
that might be on the page. Users usually catch their mistakes
pretty quickly and leave, but not always. Sites that pay for
the misspelling traffic have been known to do well in more
than just the revenues from advertising and page views.
People come by mistake and stay because what they like what
they find.

So where does this leave us? You’re probably familiar with
the more traditional cybersquatting laws, under which those
who buy domains identical to the names of companies or
people can lose those domains under trademark law. So…
this falls under that law also, right?

Wrong.

Here’s the hitch. If you wanted to trademark the name
MacDonald’s, the U.S. government would most likely turn you
down because it is too close to McDonald’s. There could be
consumer confusion. However, the laws set down by Network
Solutions Incorporated (NSI) state that only exact copies
of domains can be seen as confusing: for example, Madonna.com
and MadonnaInc.com. Thus, I could go and get MacDonalds.com
if I wanted.

In fact…someone already has.

To further the conundrum, a related legal precedent has
already been set. A relative of typosquatting has already
occurred in the realm of telephone numbers…and the phone-
number squatter won the case! A company called 800Reservations
Inc. created the phone number 800-H0TELL. The “O” is actually
a zero.

Well!

Holiday Inn had a toll-free number that went 800-HOLIDAY. If
you look at a telephone keypad, you’ll see that it’s fairly
easy to misdial the 800-HOLIDAY number and get 800-H0TELL.
It is so easy, in fact, that 800Reservations Inc. was making
money. Holiday Inn wasn’t fond of that, so they sued.

No go. The courts ruled that the phone -number squatter had
not used Holiday Inn’s trademark and that no one could be
held responsible for misdialing on the part of the American
public.

My guess is that the courts will rule in favor of the
typosquatters as well. I can understand getting upset over
someone buying your domain and adding a nasty word to the
end, but can you really claim ownership of close misspellings
of your trademark? One might argue yes, because the user’s
original intention was to go to your site and therefore his
or her mistake was a loss for you.

If that thinking were to prevail, I wonder if end users
could use it to their advantage. Could they ask for time
back from a cellular phone company if they misdial the
wrong number, because their original intention was to call
someone else? What about those who pay for time online?
Could any time spent in a typosquatter’s site be considered
lost time that didn’t have to be paid for, since the user’s
original intention was to go to another site?

Of course not…on both counts.

In this case, the typosqautters have the domains by the tail
and the tiger is leading them right to a huge mass of
customers. I don’t think there’s anything that the courts
can do except…

…force domains to pay to teach Internet users better
typing skills?

That would shut down any lawsuits pretty quick, don’t you
think?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that…thank you so much for reading.

***Thanks to the University at Buffalo School of Law
Computers and Law Web site for the Holiday Inn story:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/Complaw/***

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: The first toilet ever seen on television was
on “Leave It To Beaver”. The Cleavers were just as happy as
you.