Australian Govt pays $201,000 for domain

[Garry Anderson]

"Its maddness! Barcelona.com was 'taken' away!????"

"The WIPO decision was reversed in court."

Luckily the legal owner it was 'stolen' from had the money and courage to take them on.

[DaddyHalbucks]

Garry Anderson wrote:

Seems they do not like TourismAustralia.AU or .COM.AU etc. - maybe because .COM is more marketable.
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Yes, indeed. It's why .REG will never work.

[Garry Anderson]

Garry Anderson wrote: "Seems they do not like TourismAustralia.AU or .COM.AU etc. - maybe because .COM is more marketable."

Daddy Halbucks replied: "Yes, indeed. It's why .REG will never work."

Sorry Daddy - you display your ignorance.

Please do not take that as insult - we are all ignorant of something.

.reg is intended primarily as a certificate of authentication - a secure form of the registered trademark symbol ®.

i.e. User can enter apple.com and is directed to apple.computer.us.reg

No 'consumer confusion' there.

.reg also gives increased functionality as a directory system.

[Honan]

"TourismAustralia.AU" ?????

Never heard of xxxxxx.au before

[Garry Anderson]

AnyWeb> Never heard of xxxxxx.au before

It was just general statement that they could use many different domain names - even create another SLD specifically for tourism if they wanted.

Like Dan rightly pointed out - "site should properly be under .gov.au".

However - it is my belief that .COM is more marketable in this respect.

Even the UK government sometimes does not use .gov.uk.

[RMF]

Wow thats crazy. I wonder if people will start approaching the government to see if they want to buy domains.

RMF

[lilian]

I don't see why they would need another name when they own Australia.com

Totally aggree.

why not they usev subdomains of Australia.com?

[Banned: legal]

You said John

The WIPO decision was reversed in court.

What court reversed the decision?

Is it your contention that IP decisions by WIPO an International Organisation are overruled by decisions of common and inferior courts say in the USA or the UK?

I would think registrars would heed WIPO over any local court since Icaan suggests UDRP's go through WIPO.

How can a local court decision say in the USA have any bearing on any registrar that is outside the USA?

Or did you mean perhaps this decision was overturned within WIPO by another panel or say more judges?

[dtobias]

I don't remember the exact wording, but doesn't the UDRP explicitly state that decisions of courts with jurisdiction over the matters involved in a given case take precedence over UDRP panels?

[Banned: legal]

Say owner is in UK, the registrar is in France and the complainant is in the USA.

What court would have jurisdiction?

It's tough enough getting a court to decide jurisdiction within the USA since people can live in different states and different districts in Federal cases.

That's why a group like the WIPO is needed, it is an 'International' group or panel or jurisdiction or whatever you want to call it.

So what 'court' is able to overturn a WIPO decision?

[Domagon]

Hoping the U.S. government follows their lead ... National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) uses drugabuse.GOV ... and well my one company owns drugabuse.COM ... now how many folks out there own a .COM domain name identical, except for the extension, to a .GOV ? ... very few I bet!

So in a nutshell, the recent sale of tourismaustralia.com could be only the beginning ... many governments already spend many millions, or in the case of the U.S. govt many billions, on advertising ... domain names are merely an extension of that, yet cost considerably *less* than many other forms of advertising, such as national prime-time television ads, etc.

Lately, I've noticed governments putting much more money into their websites and the promotion of them, including the domain names.

And this is not just my imagination ... NIDA for many years merely utilized drugabuse.GOV as an alias so to speak to http://www.nida.nih.gov/ , but recently I see NIDA is *actively* utilizing http://drugabuse.GOV - and they're going all out with subdomains too!

For the longest time many folks thought I was crazy asking 6-figures for drugabuse.COM ... now the $770,000 USD ask price seems about right - if anything it may be too low...

If any folks here from the U.S. govt, in particular NIDA, reads this site - or happen to stumnle across this message in Google, etc ... remember the ask price for http://drugabuse.COM is for a limited time only ... and lastly, I've sold MILLIONS of dollars worth of domains, so yes the ask price is reasonable ... let's do business.

Ron Bennett

[dtobias]

I hope the U.S. government doesn't waste any of the taxpayers' money buying inappropriate .com domains for its sites... .gov is perfectly logical.

[Domagon]

Speaking of taxpayer money ... the $770K would merely be a tax-refund for the excessively high taxes I've paid previously - I'd just be getting my money back ... LOL!

Seriously, considering how much the U.S. government spends on advertising ... for example, the Office of National Drug Control Policy alone, even with the buy 1 get 1 free deal they get, still ends up spending upwards of hundreds of millions yearly on advertising - bulk of it 30 second national TV ads. $770K is little money compared to that ... and drugabuse.COM will last a lot longer than 30 seconds d

Ron

[dtobias]

If I were in charge, I'd abolish the Office of National Drug Control Policy anyway, since as a Libertarian I wouldn't have a "national drug control policy"... consenting adults would be free to decide for themselves what substances to put in their own bodies, and any remaining regulation that is needed (e.g., regarding children, driving while intoxicated, and so on) would be at the state and local level in accordance with the Constitutional separation of powers.

[DaddyHalbucks]

dtobias wrote:

If I were in charge, I'd abolish the Office of National Drug Control Policy anyway, since as a Libertarian I wouldn't have a "national drug control policy"... consenting adults would be free to decide for themselves what substances to put in their own bodies, and any remaining regulation that is needed (e.g., regarding children, driving while intoxicated, and so on) would be at the state and local level in accordance with the Constitutional separation of powers.
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That seems drastic.

Would our society really be better off by allowing adults to use drugs?

How has Amsterdam, Holland fared?

.dtobias wrote:

I hope the U.S. government doesn't waste any of the taxpayers' money buying inappropriate .com domains for its sites... .gov is perfectly logical.
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.GOV may be logical, but heavy type-in traffic shows that web surfers prefer .COM.