While I was out…
It’s hard to blog on while over the ocean. Here’s some stuff I missed.
I just returned from an eleven day vacation in Australia (more on that later). It’s good to be back, especially following trying to blog from a time zone 15 hours from my usual.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s really hard to keep up with all the latest news while on the road. Especially when you’re on a 15 hour flight. Here are two particularly interesting news stories from the past couple days while I was up in the air:
Citi vs. City: Citigroup is suddenly arguing that “citi” isn’t confusing with “city”. The firm filed a comment in the fresh top level domain process arguing that its name shouldn’t be in contention with applicants for .city.
As Kevin Murphy points out, this is the opposite of the argument the firm has made ahead of when filing UDRP cases, in which it argued that domain names counting “city” were confusingly similar to its Citi marks.
A few observations:
1. Firms often make arguments to meet their immediate needs, only to have them backfire later.
2. One of the supposed benefits of .brand top level domains such as .citi is that consumers will know they are on a legitimate site when they see the top level domain. I think this is giving the consumer too much credit. If users didn’t realize they were on a non-Citi domain when they visited CityCard.com, how would they notice if they are on a .city domain instead of .citi?
3. That stated, I think both .citi and .city ought to be granted as fresh TLDs.
Manwin vs. ICANN: a court has denied motions to dismiss Manwin’s case against ICANN and ICM Registry over .xxx. Let the games continue…
