MySpace stripped of myspace.co.uk
Posted on May 3rd, 2008 by Jack in Industry News
Some of you may know that MySpace won the domain myspace.co.uk that was registered by a UK ISP 6 years before the myspace.com was released. Well there is good news… article from register.com
"An independent appeals panel has overturned a heavily-criticised decision to hand control of the myspace.co.uk domain to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Interactive Media.
Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service (DRS), had ruled in favour of MySpace in January, despite the domain having been registered by a small British ISP six years before the US social network was founded
Barring any possible further High Court action by MySpace accusing TWS of "passing off", the judgement, released on Thursday last week and passed to The Register today, means control of the address remains with Stockport’s Total Web Solutions (TWS).
TWS managing director Paul Fallon said: "We refused to be bullied by one of the largest media organisations in the world. This has been a very stressful case for a legitimate medium sized ISP to have to take on – but we had to defend our reputation and to stand up for what was right."
A MySpace representative did not return a call requesting comment.
TWS originally registered myspace.co.uk in August 1997 to provide its clients with a cheap and easy-to-use homepage and email address in the early days of the web. It also registered bigspace.co.uk for the same purpose. 18 TWS customers still use @myspace.co.uk email addresses.
As domains and web design became cheaper, the services became redundant, and the domain was "parked" in or before July 2004 with Sedo, a company that targets advertising links on unused domains. The following year, with the explosion of popularity of social networking, and MySpace in particular, the Sedo algorithm began serving TWS’ domain with ads for services such as "MySpace Friend Adder".
The panel rejected MySpace’s claim that it had rights to the domain because it is wholly descriptive of its business. The appeal then turned on two key issues to determine whether TWS’ registration and use of myspace.co.uk was "abusive"."
Later on:
"The judgement said: "The registration of domain names is still a first-come, first-served system and the panel is reluctant to place any duty on a registrant, who has merely had the good fortune (or maybe ill-fortune) to register a domain in good faith, which subsequently, through no fault of his own, provided he does nothing to actively exploit his position [appeals panel emphasis].""
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