Archive: August, 2010

ICANN is searching for applicants from the Internet user community to occupy a seat on their Board of

Directors.
They hope to fill this position with those who may be interested in helping to develop policy, and are able to

serve on ICANN’s Board of Directors.

If you are reading this, you may qualify. Here are the requirements: you must be an Internet user who does

not represent a particular government, corporate or non-profit entity.

You will be the voice for the average everyday Internet user and try to represent the view of individuals who

often simply feel they don’t have a voice in policy formation.

You should have a broad international perspective and a background in Internet users’ interests, consumer

policy and/or civil society worldwide.

If you are interested, you can obtain more information by writing ICANN’s Board Candidate Evaluation

Committee at BCEC-Request@icann.org. The deadline to apply for the “At-Large Board seat” is September 6,

2010.

Just think, soon after taking your new position at ICANN, you may have to help out the US Government.

The White House has asked ICANN (and other entities) for a meeting to discuss illegal online pharmacies.

In an arbitration battle this week, Take-Two Interactive lost its fight for Bioshock.com to professional domain name purchaser, Name Administration Inc.

Name Administration is a Cayman Islands based company, that makes money from trading in and displaying advertisements on its massive network of domain names.

Normally, this type of business is not the expected winner in an escalation case.

Consider that Bioshock.com was acquired by Name Administration in December 2004. Coincidentally, this acquisition ocurred a shortly after rumors of Bioshock the game began circulating in October of that year. 

Name Administration made sure to note that the term Bioshock is wanted by more entities than Take-Two; Johnson & Johnson applied for the name at one point for their skin cleanser, and some companies nutritional products.

Perhaps most confusing is that Take-Two holds the trade mark registration for the Bioshock, but it was filed almost a year after the actual domain name was registered.

This fact assured that the TM could not serve as prior trade mark right to the domain name in this case.
Factor in that earlier this year, Take-Two’s lawyers acted to have the website transferred away from Name Administration. 

Algorithms are in the news this week and as far as that goes, this year.

In a surprising change, Yahoo and Bing are partnering up to take on Google.
Bing, to those who remember, used to be called “Live Search” and as part of the new deal is now going to power Yahoo searches.

Yahoo and Microsoft have been conspiring to take more of the market that Google has seemingly dominated  in recent memory.

This new partner ship between the two search engines, is projected to capture 31 percent of the market share, while Google maintains an approximate 85 percent share.

Despite this change in services, Yahoo insists that search functionality will not change.

For example, webmasters will still be able to use the “Build your Own Search Service”, Yahoo! Query Language, and Site Explorer.

In a less popular change, developers will now have to pay for utilizing the tools which used to be for free.

This deal only covers the search results portion of Yahoo services; other services will not be affected by the change except one; The only real casualty will be Yahoo SearchMonkey.

The Internet has become a battleground lately; instead of fighting over adult content, trademark rights,

search results and market share, the fighting is over the very speed at which you can receive any data.

Recently, Google and Verizon have made a compromise over net neutrality and the eventual rules to follow.

This “regulation” over the way online traffic is handled has divided the internet. Despite the compact made

between Google and Verizon, Facebook, Ebay, Skype and Amazon, have spoken out against the pact, and

stated their unwillingness to accept these new rules.

As part of the new pact, Verizon acknowledged it is prepared to accept restrictions if they would have the freedom to charge Internet companies a surcharge to have their services carried on a new faster channel that would run parallel to the existing Internet.

As a compromise, they would insist upon no restrictions on their ability to block or slow services on their mobile network.

Google however lost some former allies in the longtime campaign for net neutrality.

Google, along with a collection of public interest groups, are part of the Open Internet Coalition.