Police have confirmed that a man at the centre of an investigation into the website TV-Links.co.uk was arrested under section 92 of the Trade Mark Act, "on suspicion of supplying property with a registered trademark, without permission".

TV-Links.co.uk was a website that contained a list of television programs , and links to video streaming sites such as Youtube and GoogleVideo (much the same place!). One clicking on the link a user would be able to watch a low quality version of the TV show.

Why is this of concern to domainers? Well, if the arrest and charge are seen through and result in conviction it could put all forms of internet use at thread. Domainers often are the ones with generic domain names with several parties owning the term in various TM classes, likewise they often create alot of unique ‘mashed up’ content. Hopefully every page we have been putting up has been checked for copyright issues!

As one person put it "If this site is illegal then any site that displays links that features trademarked names (by anyone other than the trademark holder) is surely also illegal?" Theoretically this could result in affiliate websites, ppc campaigns and all form of contact with trademarked terms and images causing potential issues.

In an interesting NamePros thread the CEO of NameCheap states they do not sell any customer search data, and thus any leaks would have to be coming from ‘upstream’ ie. Verisign.

Richard Kirkendall states "There are rumors that this information is being obtained at and sold directly at the verisign registry which bypasses all and any registrars." This rings true when reputable companies such as Fabulous have recently started to see their name appear in accusations of data logging.

If Kikendall’s hints are to be believed it does seem that there is no way to look up a .com domain without someone somewhere snooping on it.

Also - Apologies in the lack of updates in the last week or so, this is just a blip!

Back in December 2006 Jordan Holt, a well known .UK dropcatcher, posted on Acorndomains explaining a large flaw in the way Sedo handles login information. A day later a Sedo representative replied saying that they were aware of it and that:

"We will be switching to Cookie sessions in the near future to do away with this problem, as we certainly want to make sure our system is as secure as possible. Again, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Tech’s working on the solution right now."

Nine months later a similar theme emerges in another thread, where Sedo’s use of session data in URL’s is called into question. Sedo again post a reply mentioning it is being passed to their technical team, and that the techies reply is ‘read our terms and FAQ - dont copy and paste urls!’.

A fix has been promised inside the next few weeks, however we will no doubt be revisiting this in the new year. Which year we do not know…

The registration of mcallen.com has become quite popular on various domain forums due to its amazing WHOIS information:

   Domain Name: mcallen.com

      Created on…………..: Sun, Jan 01, 1950
      Expires on…………..: Tue, Apr 13, 2010
      Record last updated on..: Fri, Mar 23, 2007

Obviously this is an error, however it needs seeing to be believed!

Over on the esteemed A4U forums a representative of Laura Ashley has discovered that an affiliate has registered a typo of their domain name (missing an ‘a’) and is profiting by routing the traffic generated through their affiliate program. The annoyed affiliate manager wants the domain ‘back’ and wants to keep the traffic.

User ‘drivetowin’ makes an interesting point saying:

I’m sorry but I have no sympathy in this situation, for a company the size of Laura Ashley the cost of a domain name is neither here or there and to not register all reasonable mispellings is either naive or incompetent.

There was a case (Tesco v Elogicom) where direct names such as tescodiet.co.uk were being used in a similar manner (ie. feed through to affiliate program) which ended up in favour of Tesco. Elogicom ended up paying costs and did not see the £26,000 ‘earnt’ via the domains.

The Phone4u.co.uk case is a closer example, where passing off and infringement was claimed against the owner from PhoneS4u.co.uk , a combination of domain names where the ‘typo’ genre could be applied.

So in summary - affiliates are slowly waking up to the cash that is going through typo domains and either the domainer will end up forking out for legal fees/settlements or will be found to be in the right and can command a sum from the company involved. Who in turn, perhaps should be sending out P45’s to their IT staff who have completely missed the domain boat

After looking at two weeks days worth of dropcatching data we decided to see who were the currently active catchers, and if there is anything worth catching in .uk . A representative data sample was used and straightforwardly placed into a graph displaying the percentages:

The 29 other tags each registered under 1% of domains.

The BOWLER tag is associated with the Caught.co.uk domain dropcatching service, and thus they cannot be seen as ‘personal’ registrations. FASTHOSTS and 123-REG are both public facing domain providers, so it would be fair to say that these names are ‘manually’ dropcaught ie. by domainers without DAC access or the like.

It was a struggle to find ‘top’ registrations in the data sample but the following caught the eye :

fad.co.uk
entitlement.co.uk
den.co.uk
hoops.co.uk
tgm.co.uk

With the average reseller price of decent three letter .co.uks being £750 upwards it seems there is still a healthy profit from pure catching. Likewise there were quite a few double word descriptive names that would be excellent investments, or instant resale oppertunities. One other did stand out ‘SickBastard.co.uk’ , which makes us wonder if there was a particular reason for that catch.

Our data is not comprehensive as it is near impossible to have full lists of what is dropping and who got what. Opinions on what is ‘worth catching’ is our own, and as usual one persons junk can be anothers prime domain. This is not meant to be a scientific study, just indicative of what is going on at the coal face of .uk catching.

We hope to have more indepth information in the coming weeks.

.Mobi owners often point to the future of handheld devices as examples of the growing market and need for their ‘lite’ versions of the web. The Register is reporting that Motorola (not a ’sponsor’ of mobi) has teamed up with a company called MicroVision to put laser projectors into their mobile phones.

Practical use of this will be to project videos, websites or any other media content outside of the mobile, thus taking the small form factor of the mobile smaller with its capabilities bigger. Similar ideas have been trialed before with projection keyboards and AV-out socket in mobiles and associated devices.

The good news keeps on coming with news that Yahoo are following Vodaphone’s lead (a .mobi ‘backer’) by offering up Novarra’s mobile-optimising technology on their OneSearch (mobile.yahoo.com) portal. This technology deduces which device is being used and re-jigs pages on the fly, quite like the current google system.

David Brayshaw over at DomainFocus is holding the first ever .UK live domain auction, with Sedo running the auction action. Our picks of the names to be auctioned in the hour (scheduled!) long auction are as follows:

Temp.co.uk
Food.co.uk
Fly.co.uk
Sport.co.uk
Drink.co.uk
Phones.co.uk

Last years event was under the banner of ‘DomainChannel’ and was held at the Park Plaza Hotel in London, this year things have gone upmarket with the event rebranded as DomainFocus and being held at the Savoy. DomainFocus is also holding events around the globe plus regular smaller networking sessions.

Hopefully the September event in London will result in some top public sales, as often large sales occur in .UK however are never listed out in the open.

Domains such as Sport.co.uk probably will have reserves in the low £xxx,xxx which if there are motivated buyers, either corperate or domainers could see total sales hit the million pound mark. On the flip side it could be an event that attracts smaller portfolio owners with the big boys staying clear resulting in a large amount of passes. Here is to hoping Sedo promote the names in the right areas and get a few USA based buyers over and into the auction room!

We have recently been asking UK domainers a series of quick questions:

1 - What is your domaining Golden Rule?
2 - What is your main motivation for domaining?
3 - What is your main domain related focus for the next 12-18 months?
4 - What area would you definitely avoid in domain names?
5 - What has been your most memorable (funny, sad, mad profits etc!) domain related incident?

Over the coming weeks we will be publishing their responses, and inviting you to post your own answers as a comment. The answers will be published anonymously however it could be possible to figure out who is replying due to domains quoted

Answer 1:

1. If your heart says yes and your brain says no - reg it anyway!

2. Continuing hope that one day I might find that special domain that everyone else missed

3. Development of every domain in some way so potential buyers can find & realise its end value easier.

4. Sex, Porn & Phamacuticles related. I used to do a lot in this, and there is big buck rewards - however it is something you have to be very careful about especially if it could upset your relationship with some of your clients if they found out. Also competition is massive.

5. Memorable = picking up insane.co.uk on e-bay when the owner could’nt give it away & seeing domains like connected.co.uk go for 80k!