Domains & DNS: May 2007 Archives

I mentioned that I was having issues with content theft the other day, however I did not want to name names until I had received some form of response from the perpetrator. After 5 days I have finally received a reply from them and I am now more than happy to name and shame. As regular readers to this blog may know I also maintain several other blogs on specific themes. One of them is ISquattedYour.EU, which deals primarily with domain industry related content. I am involved with several registries (we're an accredited registrar for several) and keep an eye on movements at ICANN, so it was only natural that the financial issues that may impact on the .travel registry would catch my eye. On that basis I wrote a short article on this on the I Squatted blog: Tralliance in Trouble - .travel could die Which was published on 20th May 2007. Two days later DomainNews.com published an article entitled "Is the .travel Registry broke?" which bears more than a passing similarity to my article, as it's basically a direct rip of mine. I had been in contact with the editor of DomainNews.com previously and had explicitly told him that I did not grant them permission to republish my articles:

With regard to my blog posts I have no issue with you referencing me, or quoting me, however I do not grant anyone permission to republish my posts in their entirety

(email 3rd April 2007) They replied:

I will respect your wishes not to copy entire posts from your site of course.

Yet, when I became aware of their recent infringement of my copyright it took them 5 days to reply and the reply that I got was hardly satisfactory:

Actually I did not get that article from your site... someone else must have copied it and posted it on their site where I got it from.

(email May 30th 2007) Interesting. So basically they don't admit to ripping the content from my site, but from someone else's? And where is the reference to the source in the republished article? Could anyone be expected to believe that anyone other than DomainNews wrote the article? Have a look at a screenshot to see what I mean (sorry if it's a bit big): To add insult to injury the ripped off article is now being cited as the source by several other sites that cover the domain name industry. Of course their attitude does make you wonder how much of their content is their own and how much they have been blatantly stealing from other blogs and websites. Their attitude to copyright is laughable:

Many sites do not put copyrights on their publications and I was unaware that this article had a copyright.

(email May 30th 2007) So what are you meant to do? Put a great big "hands off" on all your content? Since when do you have to do this with original works? I am not a lawyer and would not pretend to be one, however my understanding of copyright and fair use is quite clear on this point. My interpretation would also seem to fit with that of professional journalists, such as the comments on my previous post on this subject by ENN's Ralph Averbuch and The Sunday Business Post's Adrian Weckler. Copyright theft is wrong. There's no two ways about it. And what makes it even more annoying is when you know that other people are profiting from your work (ie. selling advertising on their site based on your content!) While this may not be as abhorrent as the recent case of a 14 year old's photo ending up on the cover of an adult DVD, it's still morally indefensible.

Next week will see the official launch of Enum in Ireland. So what exactly is enum?

ENUM unifies traditional telephony and next-generation IP networks, and provides a critical framework for mapping and processing diverse network addresses. It transforms the telephone number—the most basic and commonly-used communications address—into a universal identifier that can be used across many different devices and applications (voice, fax, mobile, email, text messaging, location-based services and the Internet).

See enum.org Over the past couple of years there have been trials in many countries, including Ireland, with some countries taking the service to a commercial level. In the UK for example Nominet will be involved, while here in Ireland IENum LTD won the bid. So what's happening next week? It's the official launch. The registry will start accepting applications from companies that wish to become accredited as tier 2 registrars and offer enum services to their clientele. (Disclosure - I sit on the policy advisory board for Enum353)

Following on from a recent discussion on the Enterprise Ireland e-Business mailing list about hosting and domains I offered to draw up a comparison list. The list, which is available here, is of the top 10 or so companies as listed by WebHosting.info. The pricing listed is for the following items:

• IE domain registration
- there maybe a lower cost for a transfer, but this is ignored
• .com registration
• .co.uk registration
• .eu registration
• entry level hosting plan
- basically the cheapest on they offer

The list is split into those with servers in Ireland and those without. I may do another more detailed breakdown of these, but the work I did this weekend is just a starting point. EDIT: Actually including the link might help! EDIT 2: At Keith's suggestion the columns are now sortable and a bit of CSS magic makes this all the more obvious. Thanks to Keith for the code (and links)

The winter ICANN meeting is being held in Los Angeles, California from 29th October to 2nd November. It will probably be in the Marriot Marina del Rey, though I the exact location doesn't seem to have been announced as yet. I'm praying that there's a discount rate for the hotel, as the list price is rather high!

Since I can't be in two places at once I wasn't able to attend DomainFest in Amsterdam this week, which is a pity, as the live domain auction produced a very interesting result. The domain poker.de was sold for a staggering 695,000 Euro! That's the highest price ever paid for a ccTLD domain (on the record).

From time to time I like to give away stuff. Some people probably think this is a little mental :) I don't really mind .... Anyhow .... Today's little offer.. To celebrate our introduction of a nice new web frontend to MS SQL 2005 (see here ) we're giving away a couple of ASP.net hosting plans with MS SQL 2005 support. First 3 people who contact me via email (michele@blacknight.ie NOT my personal address please) will get one of these: Asp.net Standard Hosting Plan I'll even throw in a free domain (com/net/org/info/biz/mobi/eu/at/co.uk) EDIT: All gone now. For those of you who missed the freebie use the coupon code "blog07" to get a 20% discount on the same hosting package. The coupon will be valid for the next 24 hours

Eircom have dropped their pricing on domain names. While this is currently appearing on the Eircom.net business site as a "sale", there is no indication of the duration. Their price on .ie domains drops from €99 to €67, which puts them almost €3 below both Novara and Hosting365, while their pricing on .com domains (€10) comes in slightly above that offered by some of the larger hosting providers. It's an interesting move, as they seem to be offering a form of online order form as well (although it doesn't display properly in Firefox). It's a pity they didn't test the site on Firefox! Compare what you see if you use Internet Explorer: with what I normally see: Kind of hard to read, wouldn't you say?

ICANN is currently seeking several candidates to fill roles on its various boards and committees:

• 3 seats on the ICANN Board of Directors
• 2 members to Generic Names Supporting Organization Council (GNSO)
• 3 members of the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC)
• 1 Country Code Names Support Organization Council (ccNSO) member

ICANN have extended the deadline for statements of interest to May 18th. Full details on the various positions and what they involve may be found on the ICANN site

Nominet's AGM takes place today. All members can attend and if you can't make it in person it will be webcast (which is how I intend to follow it).