Author: Laurent BECKER

Head of the Legal Advice Department - Nameshield group

COVID19.com – The domain name registered by a third party redirects to the website of the World Health Organization (WHO)

COVID19 domain name
Image source: geralt via Pixabay

“Domainers” are always a step ahead when it comes to taking advantage of a good or bad situation. For example, some will anticipate elections by registering the names of political figures, others by taking advantage of a sport or cultural event. Consequently, regarding domain names, there will be opportunities for speculative registrations.

In the case of “COVID19.com“, it seems clear that at the time of this domain name registration on February 11, 2020, the holder obviously wants to speculate on the “COVID 19” virus, a term that can generate multiple requests in any language. The name is available for sale for $10,000 USD.

However, instead of simply redirecting the domain name to commercial links, the holder chose to redirect this strategic name to the World Health Organization (WHO) website. Is this a citizen’s initiative? Unlikely, because given the current context, using such a name to make a direct profit through commercial links could lead to a violation of the Registrar’s registration conditions.

If the holder does not immediately benefit from this domain name, he will at least have the merit to draw our attention to him for the time of an article.

Does the GDPR negatively affect enforcement efforts?

Does the GDPR negatively affect enforcement efforts?
Image source: mohamed_hassan via Pixabay

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has without a doubt a negative impact on the enforcement efforts, according to the participants at the INTA 2019 annual meeting (International Trademark Association) in Boston.

Margaret Lia Milam, domain name strategy and management lead at Facebook warned that the platform’s scale makes it a “huge target for bad actors”.

Milam stated that because the site is working at such a scale, it cannot turn to lawyers for the “thousands” of requests it receives.

Statton Hammock of MarkMonitor said that MarkMonitor had suffered a loss of efficiency of 12% due to the GDPR. His team has “historically used WHOIS to protect IP rights” but because of the GDPR, all the data they have cached “become less and less useful with each passing day”.

Alex Deacon, founder of Cole Valley Consulting, echoed Milam and Hammock’s comments warning that the Spamhaus Project, an international organization aiming to track emails spammers, is struggling to manage its blacklist because of the GDPR.

Voice.com domain name sold for $30 million

Voice.com domain name sold for $30 million
Voice.com website

Block.one (EOS), the startup behind the EOS cryptocurrency acquires the voice.com domain name for the amount of $30 million.

This is how the Chief Marketing Officer of MicroStrategy explains this acquiring at a high price: “Block.one has made a smart strategic decision in choosing Voice.com to be the internet domain name for its new social media platform. The word “voice” is simple and universally understood. It’s also ubiquitous ― as a search term […]. An ultra-premium domain name like Voice.com can help a company achieve instant brand recognition, ignite a business, and massively accelerate value creation”.

It places this sale in the top 5 of the biggest domain names’ sales:

Lasvegas.com $90 million in 2005.

CarInsurance.com $49.7 million in 2010.

Insurance.com $35.6 million in 2010.

PrivateJet.com $30.18 million in 2012.

Voice.com $30 million in 2019.

After having raised more than $4 billion through a fundraising in cryptocurrencies (ICO), the startup Block.one plans to use the domain name with the aim to compete with the social media platform Facebook.

The social media platform VOICE is opened since June, 1st 2019.

At a keynote, EOS’ CEO Brendan Blumer and Dan Larimer Block.one’s CTO, presented VOICE as an absolute alternative to everything that represents Facebook.

“Our content. Our data. Our attention. These are all incredibly valuable things. But right now, it’s the platform, not the user that reaps the reward. By design, they run by auctioning our information to advertisers, pocketing the profit, and flooding our feeds with hidden agendas dictated by the highest bidder. Voice changes that.”

In order to differentiate from Facebook, VOICE will function on the following basis:

  • VOICE will operate on EOS blockchain, which is upgrading to a faster version 2 for the occasion;
  • An anti-bot policy and other trolls will be implemented, without more details disclosed on the technology approach;
  • The blockchain will be public;
  • The arbiter of what must be seen or not, will not be the algorithm but the consensus;
  • Regarding security, a partnership with Yubico, makers of the Yubikey was announced. EOS seems to aim for an integration with WebAuthn, a standard for authentication without password recently approved by the W3C.

In other words, EOS wants to propose a model opposite to Facebook: the control by everyone of their personal data and their possible monetization.