To get domain name Esty.com in cybersquatting complaint — Etsy fails

Panel makes the right decision but I understand why Etsy was upset.

Homemade goods and crafts site Etsy.com has lost a dispute it filed with the National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name Esty.com.

The case was doomed since the owner of the domain, PortMedia Holdings, registered it four years ahead of Etsy started.

In ordinary circumstances, I would give Etsy grief for filing the case given that the domain was registered ahead of the firm existed. But, although the panel made the right decision since of the dates, I understand why Etsy was upset regarding this particular domain name.

As I wrote last month, Esty.com was parked and some of the traffic was sent to zero click landers with scams on them. Etsy listed a number of scam pages that the domain was forwarding to.

If you’re running a firm and a lot of people intending to visit your site end up on a page that states their computer is infected with malware or they are tricked into downloading toolbars, you’d be very upset.

In this case the domain name owner stated it was unaware of the zero click landers and fixed the problem as soon as the case was filed. This is believable; I suspect many domain owners aren’t aware of what parking firms are doing with their domain traffic.

I urge all domain name owners to ask their parking providers if they serve zero click and if there’s an option to turn it off. While zero click makes a lot of sense in theory, it seems that providers haven’t found a way to prevent scammers from using their services.

Jason Schaeffer and Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com represented the domain name owner.