Three Questions for CADNA
Three questions for The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA).
A little over a month ago CADNA issued its first press release and disclosed its members. CADNA’s members are Fortune 500 firms who want to fight against the unsavory practices of typosquatting and cybersquatting. One of their goals is to stop domain tasting (registering domains only to return them within 5 days for a full refund).
Fair enough. I’m a levelheaded guy who doesn’t believe in cybersquatting these big brands and want the tasting loophole to be closed.
But I have a few questions for CADNA. I talked to a CADNA representative on the phone, who promised to have someone call me back. No callback. So I contacted CADNA again a few weeks later. No response.
Since CADNA will not respond in person to my request, I figured I’d lay out my questions here and let CADNA respond on its own time:
1. Does it create any consternation having Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) involved with your group? Through a partnership with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Dell typosquats on all of your other members’ trademarks using a tools called “Browser Address Error Redirector”. (Google has a similar deal with computer manufacturer Gateway). Type Verizzzzon.com into your browser and Dell gets paid when someone clicks on the links.
2. I don’t like domain tasting, and neither do you. But your press release states that there are over 1M kited sites registered daily, resulting in $100M-$125M in revenue per year to “criminals” and “profiteers”. Can you justify that revenue number? Also, is taking advantage of a loophole really “criminal” behavior?
3. You say that cybersquatting is costing brand owners worldwide well over $1B every year. This is based on diverted sales, loss of trust and goodwill, and increased enforcement expense. These are fuzzy things to measure, especially the loss of trust and goodwill. And I know a lot of people (and lawyers) who would like to figure out how to measure losses from diverted sales. How did you come up with this number.
So there you have it. Three simple questions. I think it’s reasonable to ask people to back up their numbers and talk regarding their members’ activities as it relates to what they’re campaigning against.
CADNA, I’m awaiting your response.
