Again, here comes negative press for the domain industry, and it’s due to Kevin Ham. The Silicon Alley Insider reports on the Amazon.cm typo domain name which is being forwarded to eBay. The domain is apparently owned by a person or entity in Venezuela. It first forwards visitors to the domain iCarFinder.com, which then sends them to eBay via an affiliate link. According to the Silicon Alley Insider, eBay has already thrown the domain owner out of its affiliate program in November, but the domain still points to eBay, so not sure if that’s true. One would think the affiliate would stop sending traffic to eBay if it wasn’t making them money.
Any way, it’s up to Kevin Ham and Cameroon to stop the bad-faith use of .cm domain names. As posted on this blog already in 2007, monetizing the typo traffic originating from domain extension typos is not illegal as-is. I’ve already written more than once that you should differentiate between the monetization of a generic .cm domain and a TRADEMARK.CM domain (e.g. Amazon.cm; Google.cm). But knowing that Cameroon (owner of the .cm TLD) and Kevin Ham are making money from trademark-infringing typo traffic, I sure hope this practice will stop soon. For the record, I’ve been defending Dr. Ham in the past, because many uninitiated readers have attacked practically everything his company has been doing, but I’d like to clearly state that profiting from a trademark domain you do not rightfully own may not be tolerated. (On a related note, large corporations like Microsoft, Google and Verizon are monetizing typo traffic, too!)
To be fair, I believe Kevin Ham is not making money off Amazon.cm at this time, as it is not monetized through Agoga, but nobody knows for sure if his company not only participates in the parking revenues from the unused .cm domains but also from the registration fees collected by the Cameroon government. In any case, it would be the best to single out the obvious trademark infringements and not allow the registration of those .cm domains anymore. Otherwise, this will always fall back on everybody else in the domain industry.
It is my understanding that Kevin and his company are not the only ones using .CM domain names. Many other high profile/high traffic sites are being redirected to non-agoga pages. See Youtube.cm and Facebook.cm , microsoft.cm (DS lander), for other non-agoga examples.
Dom, I’d be very careful accusing Kevin of this specific act and laying any of this policing responsibility on his comapny. If another user registered this domain, it does not involve them at all. It is my understanding that they are doing the wild-carding only, not managing the registry. Am I wrong ?
Adam, thanks for your comment.
Actually, that’s exactly what I said:
“To be fair, I believe Kevin Ham is not making money off Amazon.cm at this time, as it is not monetized through Agoga…”
They’re making money through the wild-cards. I did *not* say they were making money from domain registrations, although I was asking if they were: Is Kevin’s company helping Cameroon with the registry, too? I don’t know if they are, so I simply asked that question because I’d be interested to learn more about this.
You’re correct in saying that there are many TM-infringing .cm domains registered that redirect to affiliate pages and other sites instead of Agoga. Reinvent/Agoga has nothing to do with that.
But there still is the wild-carding of TMs, which is unethical. I also mentioned in other articles, which I linked to in this post, that large corporations like Microsoft, Google and Verizon also make money off domain extension typos similar to the .CM wild-card. The fact that others are doing something unethical should not detract from the role Kevin’s company is playing in this game, though.
Again, I’m not making any false accusations. However, Kevin Ham has been a role model for many new domainers and he is one of the domain industry’s most prominent figures. The way “outsiders” see Kevin Ham and his activities is the same way they will view the domain industry as a whole.
Mike Berkens started accusing individual cybersquatters and typosquatters on his blog recently, but nobody has mentioned the big players so far. It’s fine if a generic .cm domain is monetized through wild-carding, but the practice of monetizing a TRADEMARK.CM domain name remains disputable. I know that it’s not illegal as long as the domain has not been registered, but it is still unethical and deserves discussion because Kevin Ham gets praise from most domain investors despite his involvement in something very close to typosquatting.
Let me also clarify that I did not intend to put the policing responsibility on his company. I’m rather suggesting the discussion of policies that will regulate the monetization of domain extension typos for the most obvious trademark infringements. This could possibly also stop MSFT, GOOG, Verizon, Dell, Sony, etc. who continue to redirect traffic from domain extension typos to their own pay-per-click search engines.
This has been happening far too long. When I read this article back in 2007 I new it was bad news for all of us. 2 years later and it is still happening.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/
http://www.GeneralMotors.cm
http://www.VirginMobile.cm
http://www.Pepsi.cm
http://www.CocaCola.cm
http://www.AmericanExpress.cm
http://www.MacDonalds.cm
etc..etc..try just about any trademarked name.
while it looks like some of the pages just resolve to a blank agoga.com page it is still going to agoga.com
If this type of “domaining” continues we will all suffer the consequences. IMO.
Develop your generics, drop trademarks.
“while it looks like some of the pages just resolve to a blank agoga.com page it is still going to agoga.com”
Actually, I think this is good, because this way the typo traffic isn’t monetized through Agoga *and* the traffic is not sent to any other paid search page. I don’t know why the domains you mentioned point to a blank Agoga.com page, perhaps they have started to stop monetizing traffic from obvious trademark domains. That would be a very good thing, in my opinion.
Yes, if they have started to stop monetizing them it would be a good start. An even better idea would be to forward the trademark traffic to the proper company as a “gift”. This might help clean up the image that has been tarnished with the activities to date. Again no disrespect to Dr. Ham as it was a brilliant move from a technical point of view, but it’s bad business in the long run.
Best Regards to everyone that has invested in this amazing field!
I think sending the traffic to the trademark owner would be pushing it too far. This is a business, after all, and the trademark owners can still register their trademark under .cm if they want. But sending the traffic to them without having them register the domain would be the same as giving the domain away for free.
Ok, maybe that’s a little excessive but so is hijacking the traffic and redirecting it to agoga sites. Maybe a simple landing page mentioning the domain is available to register to the trademark holders only. Proof of trademark required. At least this would be better than what has gone on to date.
(All registrar companies should be selling trademarked names and typos to only trademark holders.)
Hopefully this year domainers and registrars will start to better police themselves before someone from outside our industry does it for us. When regulators move in from outside of the industry they usually take a carpet bomb approach to regulations. This would be bad.
Thanks again Dominik for the forum, yours is one of the best!!
Cheers!
Kevin Ham got balls…..
He has one of the best domain portfolio’s in the world… It is pretty clean if compared to some of the other major domain holders out there…. But no, he decides to go after the .CM contract — does he really need all this additional money? I doubt it… We’ll see if it backfires on him sooner than later.
He has been running the operation of agoga.com for a while now….
Double standards… You think?!
Still, he is to be admired… Kevin — my domainer hero
Best,
Mike
Not impressed <— Little birdie told me that all the tm/abuse complaints that come in daily when it comes to the .cm wildcards issues get put in a special folder…
The “trash” folder :p
It gets there promptly
!!
Mike
wannadevelop-
If that’s the case then the people putting the complaints into the “circular file” are as much a part of the problem as agoga.
As mentioned before, if we don’t regulate ourselves properly someone else will and we (domain investors) will get screwed.
More and more traditional companies are realizing they missed the boat on many premium internet domains and with agoga feeding them ammunition we will get blown out of the water.
Please Dr. Ham (Reinvent.com), fix the problem before someone from outside our industry does. Please focus on your premium domains, drop agoga’s questionable practices.
Cheers!
You can’t trademark the word Amazon. The name existed way before the company ever did and is a geographic location. If he was using their logo on the domain, then that is a whole different animal.
George, it depends on what the domain name is used for. In this case, it had been forwarded to an eBay affiliate site. eBay is a competitor of Amazon. Therefore, the domain was used in bad faith.
They sell everything. Who wouldn’t be their competitors?
Then not impressed:
“If this type of “domaining” continues we will all suffer the consequences. IMO.”
What about all the businesses MacDonalds has put out of business?
Go look and see if you can kind a ma and pa burger joint. These are monopolies and they all work together to eliminate fair competition and you guys are defending them.
http://johnsonandjohnson.cm – ppc, making any money?
http://sony.cm – don’t think sony owns this one??
http://homedepot.cm – links to non-homedepot sites. ouch.
http://honda.cm – sex links, nice. used car sites. maybe honda’s moving into a new industry. same for toyota.cm bad, bad.
Thanks again agoga for taking a pro-active approach to promoting useful, non-trademark infringing sites. Thanks for putting all generic domain investors in the same light as .cm . This extension needs to be cleaned up by our industry before as mentioned someone from outside our industry does and we all suffer more damage.