PocketBook sues for PocketBook.com domain name

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by shalym

Except again, the company that owns the domain is not a "speculator". They sell software called Pocketbook that is used to "manage and share financial goals"

Shari

Not sure if you should buy software, or mortgage leads from that matter, from FTB suspended accounting shop. Domain speculators usually run multiple hustles at the same time, so this isn't really surprising. The reason I know they're in domain squatting is simply list of domains under their name:

trafficrevenue.com
nvsp.com (National Voters Service Portal, yes the traffic is huge)

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ezdiy

Not sure if you should buy software, or mortgage leads from that matter, from FTB suspended accounting shop. Domain speculators usually run multiple hustles at the same time, so this isn't really surprising. The reason I know they're in domain squatting is simply list of domains under their name:

trafficrevenue.com
nvsp.com (National Voters Service Portal, yes the traffic is huge)

How long of a list and where would I find it? Not arguing, just curious.

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by rcentros

How long of a list and where would I find it? Not arguing, just curious.

You can get few hits just with plain google "Registrant: SiteTools, Inc", more results (that people are generally not allowed to post publicly) on domaintools.

If they're like most speculators, they just hold on relatively few (10-50), but fairly high impact domains. You buy those for $1-5k a pop, sit on it few years, and wait for a corporate fool you can ask for hundred grand. Half will just drop the cash on you, the other half will threat to sue you, so you ask something reasonable 5-10k.

This gal most likely counts on that pocketbook doesn't really have the weight with sue option and if I were in their shoes, I'd do the same. It's a dickwaving stalemate that sometimes happens in domain biz.

I just find it hilarious that people are taking sides in this, as both parties are ruthlessly amoral, yet the outside moral stances add an intriguing flavor to it :>

[shalym]

Originally Posted by ezdiy

Not sure if you should buy software, or mortgage leads from that matter, from FTB suspended accounting shop. Domain speculators usually run multiple hustles at the same time, so this isn't really surprising. The reason I know they're in domain squatting is simply list of domains under their name:

trafficrevenue.com
nvsp.com (National Voters Service Portal, yes the traffic is huge)

Not sure about "FTB suspended", but I promise you that just because they have those domains listed under their name it doesn't necessarily mean that they are squatters. (I'm not saying that they aren't, I'm just saying that the evidence isn't there for me)

One of my clients is an entrepreneur who is currently running 3 different businesses under her name, and has, in the past, run many others. Every time she starts a new business, she will buy every possible variant of the domain name that she (or I) can think of. As a result, she currently owns about 30 domains that have the word "yoga" in them, about 100 that have the word "leopard" in them, many more with the word "spice" in them. Along with other variants from past businesses, she has hundreds of domains registered. She is not "squatting". She has never sold a domain name, although she has had offers on a few, and I don't think she would refuse to sell one that she wasn't using at the time. She definitely wouldn't just give one away, and if a business tried to sue her for one, she would fight to the bitter end.

So again...maybe don't judge a book (or pocketbook.com) by it's cover.

Shari

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by shalym

"yoga" in them, about 100 that have the word "leopard" in them,

It's not about owning domain names in and itself, but a pattern of owning squatted domain names, domains that are closely tied to "domain biz", spammy advertising, affiliate programs, all that junk.

As for FTB suspension, I'm not really keen on posting this directly as some people may consider it doxing or what not, so:
https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/ and C2935548

There's no successor agent. Anyone playing shell game in CA knows what this means :>

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ezdiy

There's no successor agent. Anyone playing shell game in CA knows what this means :>

Information below means nothing. I was confusing registrar of pocketbook.com with its owner. That's why I've greyed it out.

I don't know what that means, but I've learned enough to know that TurnCommerce isn't some little company in Santa Monica.

TurnCommerce is one of the largest domain name owners in the world, with over a million domain names. NameBright.com is a registrar that they created and own. It looks they also work with (or worked with) Sea Wasp, LLC (doing business as Fabulous.com) who owns some 350,000 domain names.

Here's a trade article for "domainers" or "domain investors" (which looks like nice terms for domain name trolls) about TurnCommerce starting NameBright.com.

https://domainnamewire.com/2013/10/1...ain-registrar/

Team at TurnCommerce unveils new domain name registrar with tools for domainers.

What would happen if a large domain name investor created a domain registrar from the bottom up?

The result would look like NameBright.com.

NameBright.com is a new domain name registrar created by the team at TurnCommerce, one of the largest domain portfolio holders with over 1 million domain names. The registrar has the potential to attract some of the top domain investors that require tools such as account delegation and portfolio management, as well as smaller domain investors looking for a simple user interface and low pricing. ...

I now hope PocketBook wins this lawsuit, but I seriously doubt they will, considering who they're up against.

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I don't know what that means, but I've learned enough to know that TurnCommerce isn't some little company in Santa Monica.

They're unrelated, the registrar is the middleman that makes pretty sure they *don't* get entangled in legal stuff domain squatting entails. The way this system works is that individual people like sitetools flip domains through speculation friendly registrars.

TrueCommerce operates on volume. This is the guys you buy dropped domains from for $1-5k (being registrar they auto-reg anything that has at least some rank). It's then the individual speculator, effectively acting as a pawn (and in this case, even having actual shell company) who faces the distraught buyers.

I'm not really all that sold or calling this system evil what not. It's exactly the same as flipping real estate. There are ways to do this ethically - ie not trying to extort too much when you're clearly squatting someones brand. Or you can be an ass about it, if you think you can get away with.

Ironically, it's the small guy who's often the ass - their opportunities are few and between so they think they've won the jackpot, and also have almost nothing to lose. If they know what they're doing, people like that are fairly rich, started multiple "Company, Inc" that all mysteriously went through bankruptcies each time there was trouble (US legal system is bollocks, but you can fast-track a lot of shit just by clever "accounting").

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ezdiy

They're unrelated, the registrar is the middleman that makes pretty sure they *don't* get entangled in legal stuff domain squatting entails. ...

I've got it now. Thanks. Sorry for my ignorance. So it's wound around back to what I originally believed — and PocketBook's UDRP action was against the registrar, not against the owner of the domain name. So all information about the registrar means nothing.

Now I'll step back out of this thread. I would still like to see PocketBook get the domain name (by paying for it).

Thanks for clearing this up.

[haertig]

I don't see why they can't do it like they do anti-scalping laws for sporting event tickets. You can sell the tickets you own, but not above the face value of the ticket.

You simply take profit out of selling a domain name. They should not be "an investment".

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by haertig

I don't see why they can't do it like they do anti-scalping laws for sporting event tickets. You can sell the tickets you own, but not above the face value of the ticket.

You simply take profit out of selling a domain name. They should not be "an investment".

Except if they are actually using the domaiin, it has more value than if its just parked. If pocketbook.com is driving sales to SiteTools' other sites then it has value to them beyond the yearly cost of domain registration. In you analogy, it would be more like having tickets to a football game you really wanted to see, but someone else wanted to see the game more and kept upping the offer to buy your tickets. The tickets have a worth to you beyond their original price.

[Quoth]

Except you never really own a domain, unlike buying a ticket. It's rented. Even if it's a name not used by anyone else and you forget to renew it can be lost forever unless it's a unique Trademark or company name.

Compared to anything else, it's broken. ICANN needs to be scrapped. Disputes need to be handled exactly as any other naming dispute for companies, businesses or trademarks.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

You're giving too much value to the internet.
Out in the real world it is the opinion of the courts that matters not random folk online.
That way lies cancel culture.

If that is where you're going, I'm not.
Later!
Good luck.

Oh, no. Not me. And I don't believe I'm giving "too much value" to the Internet. Ever paid any attention to what's happened to society, based pretty much entirely on smartphones+Twitter? That's not "on the Internet." That's people saying and doing real things, in the real world--based upon rumor, innuendo and inflammatory rhetoric on TWITTER.

But that's OT.

I see that nobody wants to explain to me why buying domains is somehow different than buying stamps or other collectibles, so I too shall be on my way.

@Quoth: I agree that the whole concept of ICANN is infuriating and it does not work well. Vis: domain names--they should operate like small businesses do or even big businesses with many offices; the owner owns the biz (domain) and pays to put that business in an office/suite (IP). That's it. Not this nonsense that you don't "own" the domain unless you pay someone else for the privilege of owning it, forever and in perpetuity. I mean...for those of us with Internet businesses, the idea that somehow, through inadvertence or nefariousness or stupidity (our own) we could wake up one day not owning our own business name's website is pretty appalling.

Hitch

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Compared to anything else, it's broken. ICANN needs to be scrapped. Disputes need to be handled exactly as any other naming dispute for companies, businesses or trademarks.

ICANN is a political body to essentially deal with the issue. The trilemma is between too rampant speculation (which would piss off ordinary people too much), expensive domains (less speculation, but pisses off people too) and mercentile controls which would restrict registration to "eligible" customers.

Again, the market parallels to real estate are so close I'm tempted to call domains "virtual estate".

ICANN is like mortgage underwriters in real estate ("The banks"). They do a meh job, and get a pile of cash for doing essentially nothing. They don't really have your best interest in mind either. But they're still politically controlled - if they over do their shit, things will change via political process, rather than money. Without them the system succumbs to a ruthless free market frontier, and most people are really not ready for unbridled libertarianism like that.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It's why Disney owns "Captain Marvel" while Warner only owns the original character of the same name: the creators stopped using it and others appropriated it. Marvel Comics was only the third and it took them something like 8 charscters before they found one that's stuck. For now.

Also, the creators of the Fawcett Captain Marvel stopped using “Captain Marvel” because National Comics Publications (aka DC) sued Fawcett Comics in 1951 because DC believed that every super-powered hero was an illegal copy of Superman. It was all very messy. As a result, Fawcett eventually settled out of court, closed its entire comics line, and laid off the artists and writers.

See more at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...lications,_Inc.

Years later (in the 1970s), DC bought up the rights to the Fawcett superheroes. Even though they’d sued them out of existence. But by then, Marvel had their Captain Marvel (the Jim Starlin version, not Carol Danvers). So the original Captain Marvel became Shazam. But he was still called Captain Marvel inside the issues of the 1970s comics. And the Jim Starlin version endured until dying from cancer in an iconic graphic novel in the 1980s.

There was also a lesser-known Captain Marvel from a smaller company in 1966 that lasted either five or six issues. And speculation that Marvel bought the rights to the name from that company.

In the DC revivals of the Shazam comics, they stopped calling the dude Captain Marvel inside the issues.