YaSexHoo ......

[pam]

http://www.yasexhoo.com/godaddy.html

Seems like he's losing the domain in a few days yet has to pay for the privilege.

[FineE]

GoDaddy has an interesting provision in thier legal agreement to charge a domain holder $29.00 for the "processing of an ICANN UDRP dispute". But what happens if the domain holder does not pay?

[Garry Anderson]

FineE> "GoDaddy has an interesting provision in thier legal agreement to charge a domain holder $29.00 for the "processing of an ICANN UDRP dispute". But what happens if the domain holder does not pay?"

What happens if the claim was spurious overreach?

[namedropper]

Seems like he's losing the domain in a few days yet has to pay for the privilege.

Works for me. Complaining about a $29 fee when he could have had a $100,000 cybersquatting fee (assuming he's in the U.S.) is pretty silly.

And, heck, if this sort of thing became standard, maybe there'd be less cybersquatters out there. This whole "I don't care if it's a TM violation, I'll just ask for $1,000 or less to sell it to them so it's more cost effective for them to pay me than it is to take me to court or UDRP, and UDRP doesn't cost me anything" sentiment I see all too often ought to be stomped out, and perhaps this is one way to help do it.

[pam]

What's the difference between this and Yowho?

I don't know if YaSexHoo is cybersquatting ..... isn't that registering a domain for the sole purpose of blackmail?

YaSexHoo seems to be a viable website that's functioning ......

[namedropper]

I don't know if YaSexHoo is cybersquatting ..... isn't that registering a domain for the sole purpose of blackmail?

YaSexHoo seems to be a viable website that's functioning ......

YaSexHoo is an obvious case of trademark infringement and cybersquatting. The guy copied Yahoo's logo, put the word Sex in the middle of it (and a naked woman above it), and is using it as a search engine.

If he's trying to come up with a logo and name that everyone in the world is going to know is copied from Yahoo!, then it's an obvious case of cybersquatting. Whether he is overtly blackmailing the company or not (and, heck, having your trademark so clumsily associated with porn is basically blackmail as it is) isn't relevant.

Here's a reference for the US law:
http://www.gigalaw.com/library/antic...-11-29-p3.html

Here's a reference for the UDRP policy:
http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm

Either one pretty clearly shows that YaSexHoo was obviously cybersquatting to an extreme degree.

[jberryhill]

"I don't know if YaSexHoo is cybersquatting ..... isn't that registering a domain for the sole purpose of blackmail?"

There is no single definition of "cybersquatting". The UDRP defines "abusive registration" as:

----------
(1) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and

(2) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and

(3) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

where several examples of "bad faith" are:

(i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or

(ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or

(iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or

(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.

-----------------------

One would imagine that Yahoo is claiming that circumstance (iv) is present, since the web site in question is a search service and copies the look and feel of aspects of the Yahoo web site. While condition (2) on legitimate rights includes a bona fide offering of goods or services using the domain name, among other things, panels have consistently found that an infringing use does not qualify as a "bona fide" use. Here, it is clear that the registrant is familiar with Yahoo! and deliberately used a variation of their name (given the similarity of the logo, etc.).

The "difference" between this and yowho.com is that Yahoo! is complaining about this one. They are entitled to set their own enforcement priorities, and I would not imagine this dispute coming out differently from, for example, yahomo.com.

"Someone else is doing the same thing" is not a defense.

As far as the administrative fee assessed by GoDaddy, it is in their domain name registration contract. If you have a problem with them doing that, then don't register domain names with GoDaddy. The merits of the complaint are irrelevant to their ability to charge an administrative fee. It takes staff time to deal with UDRP procedure well beyond the couple of dollars they make over the wholesale cost of registering a domain name. I'm surprised that more registrars haven't done something like this to recover the cost of dealing with UDRP proceedings.

[Ovicide]

What's the difference between this and Yowho?

The web page at:
http://69.42.66.79/

implies he's being shut down because he's Black.

[namedropper]

The web page at:
http://69.42.66.79/

implies he's being shut down because he's Black.

It's all too easy for some people to make up ridiculous excuses instead of admitting that what they did was wrong.

In this case the guy claims that because Google lets Booble stay up, that it's supposedly a race thing, but we know from the thread in the Adult discussion area here that Google is *not* letting Booble stay up and is trying to shut it down.

It's pretty pathetic for people to pull out the race card like this when it has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

[namedropper]

The "difference" between this and yowho.com is that Yahoo! is complaining about this one. They are entitled to set their own enforcement priorities, and I would not imagine this dispute coming out differently from, for example, yahomo.com.

A very good point, but also note that there are other more obvious differences too. YowHo.com consists of actual generic slang terms which describe the focus of that porn site, while YaSexHoo.com is just Yahoo with the word Sex tossed in the middle. YowHo's logo is also completely different from Yahoo's, while YaSexHoo's is obviously totally ripping off Yahoo's logo.

YowHo certainly has much stronger legs to stand on. I'm not sure it's totally in the clear, but it's up to Yahoo to decide what they want to do about it, if anything.

[jberryhill]

"implies he's being shut down because he's Black."

That's absurd. How would anyone even know that?

Seth Warshavsky, who was running yahomo.com, is definitely not black. He's hard to see, now that he's rumored to be hiding out in southeast asia to avoid a raft of subpoenae, but black he's not.

http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/deci...2000-1595.html