Ron Jackson’s latest newsletter is out at DNjournal and it’s always a good one. This one in particular piqued my interest as it referenced some fairly glaring inequities.
Quote: Just this week (on Thursday, April 26), the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) held a briefing in Washington, D.C. titled "Internet Click Fraud Tricks: Domain Name Tasting, Joy Riding, Parking, Kiting and Other Dirty Tricks". You read that right. They erroneously labeled the perfectly legitimate practice of parking domains as a "dirty trick". Unfortunately, many people in the audience and lawmakers on Capitol Hill will assume those speaking at the briefing knew what they were talking about and will tar generic domain owners with the same brush they use on typosquatters.
Whether its intentional or not, intimating that all business people are universally corrupt or neer-do-wells is just not a good way to make friends and reach your desired outcome.. I see it akin to labeling every stock trader, broker and clearinghouse as an "inside trader". While it’s well known, that Verizon is suing some of the newer name aggregators who have hastily cobbled together scores of smaller "problem portfolios" and not hastily enough deleted the problem names within those sets, DNjournal points out:
“The filing of a lawsuit against anyone does not make false allegations about generic domain monetization activities, such as domain parking, acceptable…Verizon has been sued (and lost) many times because of their own business practices. They had to pay WorldCom $169 million in 2003 and last year they were sued by two public interest attorneys for $5 billion for alleged wholesale violations of privacy laws”
Well said, and thanks to DNJournal for that data-point which I was honestly not aware of. Interesting info on the Registerfly mess and lopsided zero.us case in this newsletter as well.