I know it is very difficult to police such a vast “pool” and I’m not suggesting it is necessarily worthwhile or even your business to do so…just that we all must view our public-facing communications from the eyes of the other side and do our best not to give them ammunition they can use against us.

You raise an interesting question about domain availability alert lists. Our systems are geared to the specific requests of our customers. We don’t make any value judgments about domains nor do we assess the potential for typosquatting. That is a matter for our customers to decide. As you point out in your blog, it would be a difficult filter to implement in the drop itself but you should understand that Pool.com focuses our acquisition engines on domains that have been back-ordered by customers.

You rightly point out that the definitions of ““typosquatting” (and “cybersquatting”) are legally murky.” More importantly, it is very possible that similar intellectual property is in fact shared by multiple people in which case it is up to the UDRP process to arbitrate who has the more qualified claim. I am reminded of the famous case where Microsoft sued a young Canadian teen whose full name was “confusingly similar” (Mike Rowesoft) to their trademark. I’m sure many such cases exist particularly when you consider the community that the internet now serves. I could also site a number of examples of some of our compatriots in the business of hosting PPC sites who rarely disallow domains to be hosted as suspected typosquatting properties unless they get a specific complaint from a rights holder.

In the past, we have investigated the possibility of filtering specific domain strings as a service to rights holders to prevent domains from re-entering the market. But few, if any, are willing to commit financial resources to the process. And again, occasionally there are domain purchasers that are very willing to defend their claim to a domain that others may assert as being “typosquatting.” Ultimately, it really is the choice of customers.

By the way, thanks also for the positive remarks about the format of our emails; we welcome your ongoing comments and suggestions. As a minimum you’ll see a small change in our emails reflecting Frank’s suggestion.

Richard Schreier
CEO, Pool.com