Friday, June 02, 2006

Dotster Named in Massive Cybersquatting Suit

Declan McCullagh writes on C|Net News:

A new federal lawsuit charges that Dotster, one of the largest domain name registrars, has unlawfully participated in a massive cybersquatting campaign targeting companies such as Cingular, Disney, Ikea, Google, Neiman Marcus, Playboy and Verizon.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday by high-end retailers Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, alleges that Dotster abused its status as a registrar by "checking out" hundreds of domain names that closely resemble the correct ones--and then keeping only the ones that were visited by Web users who couldn't spell very well.

The misspelled domain name NeimuMarcus.com, when visited by CNET News.com on Thursday evening, included code in its Web page that references Dotster and its subsidiary RevenueDirect.com--and featured advertisements for Neiman Marcus rivals such as Bloomingdales and JCrew. By early Friday, however, that Web site and dozens more had been taken offline.

More here.

posted by Fergie @ 6/02/2006 02:09:00 PM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home