Google Cracks Down on Stolen Content

Tired of seeing scraped sited do better in the SERPs than your home grown content farm? Google announced this week the maturity of new algorithmic analysis of sites to provide search clients with site sources and results closer to the source of such content. Industry uproar over Xrumer, scrapebox, and other scraping tools has pre-empted this change. Web spam is a sore point to many webmasters who write or source their own original content, only to see it scraped to all points of the compass, largely without credit or permission.

The content farming done by many unscrupulous (black hat) webmasters channels stolen content to keyword rich portals, betting that the Google algorithm will pick up on their site first. No More! Administrators of websites with coded or script dynamic content fulfilled by other sources should evaluate any change in the SERPS for their web site and make changes accordingly. By submitting to Google (and other web directories directly) confusion about source origins can disappear.

Women Com in GE/ NBC Legal Dispute

Sometimes big dollar domain sales go wrong. Witness the legal issues between NBC Universal, the seller of both Women.com and Women.net from NBC and iVillage to Ben Padnos. The ex parte motions read like civil matters gone amok, except that a huge amount of clicks are at stake. Benjamin Padnos of Done Ventures bought the names on Sedo. This happened May 24th of 2010.

But minus amenable settlement of the deal he had tried filing a restraining order on NBC Universal, to cease them from using the names online. NBC, one of the biggest names and companies in entertainment with an ambitious online campaign for programming and marketing, evidently wants to keep them. How did things go so wrong? NBC claims Jeff Zucker countermanded the sale after Sedo informed the principal contacts at NBC the names were sold.

With control of the actual name(s) staying with NBC, every day that goes by is a win for the Peacock, and a loss for the Sedo buyer. Question: Are sellers and Jeff Zucker not bound by Sedo Terms of Service? The poor domain buyer thought he could actually fork over a million bucks and actually get two domain names. Per the filed legal text, NBC currently points the names to iVillage for traffic.

This legal hootenanny comes after receipt of an email every domainer dreams of getting:  ”Alan and Ben, Congratulations!  The offer for Women.com has been accepted!” Sedo’s reply email indicates that NBC/GE would be creating a Bill of Sale for the $ 1 million sale.  ” The legal case will determine much for the future pathway of online legal binding sales.Furthermore, do GE/NBC stockholders know they just lost a cool million?

Female audiences for online female products and women’s sites for everything from makeup to venture capital funding is a titanic market. Hence GE and NBC Universal’s interest in keeping the name. Parent company GE is based in New York, although key NBC Universal offices are in Burbank and Los Angeles, California. Domainers should bookmark their legal case watching to make sure their next big dream bid goes through.

Internet ID Bill Looms In USA

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently underway, paving further inroads against privacy and online security. The age old question is rearing its ugly head online. Who will watch the watchers? The bill, now being  being drafted by the cyber-division of the Obama administration and will be released by President  Obama in a few months. Obama’s falling domestic approval has been motivating his administration toward bold action wherever possible, and the “1984″ themed ideas about RFID tags to open our email may be coming true.

How does this touch on domainers? Users will have to think twice before visiting a site they may not want to be tracked and recognized by. And what about the huge population of immigrant Americans with no citizenship, will their web use be the hidden tumbleweed sweeping across the information superhighway? How this will affect online end user traffic is unclear. But if the U. S. government can’t control the type of secure documentation that Wikileaks now publishes online, should they be running any bureau of identity and security for Web use?

An Internet ID means that possibly bandwidth will be stalled unless you punch in the right number?  Domainers may want to call their local ICANN representative concerning their feelings about the online privacy, which at the current time is not governable by law or security, as Wikileaks and Namepros-type  privacy history-broaching activity. The methodology behind this kind of government effort is far from proven, and it should be before the law is enacted.

Registrars Not Spammer Responsible

Ah, those Californians.  Plaintiff Daniel L Balsam had won a $1.125 million default judgment against a spammer after receiving over 1,000 pieces of pornographic spam. But now a California appeals court has ruled against that verdict. Balsam, unable to recover the money,  found that the spammer had hidden his identity behind Tucows’ Whois privacy. Balsam then sued the registrar for the cash instead.

Balsam did his homework and argued that he was a 3rd party beneficiary according to the ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement. Tucows and all  registrars must operate according to these terms. has the door been opened for spammers everywhere providing they purchase domains with Privacy options and conduct business until found out?

Judge Margaret McKeown of the ninth circuit Court of Appeals opined that while Tucows the “registrar” is bound by the RAA, Tucows the “registrant” is not. In English: Even under the Privacy service, Balsam (and others) cannot expect registrars to be liable for their clients’ spamming. Tucows (naturally) was not pleased and suggested that ICANN become involved, since their  interpretation of the RAA could lead to “frivolous and vexatious lawsuits”.

No Case for Cloud Computing?

How can cloud computing increase SEO results? The cloud computing advertising and promotion campaigns have taken root in industry and programming. Why is their an antidote to more hardware that does not build on database driven and query based sites? How does a self service manager in cloud computing programming save time and money? The proponents of cloud computing welcome new members on the bandwagon but when the hayride is over what value is left?

Software as a service is a nice concept, but how many independent web entrepreneurs can make the connection between a need and a want? Is there a model online for bringing an app to market? I would like to see a development timeframe for beta or commercial launch. Talking about functionality to host a Application Programming interface is all very well, but API design is beyond most people. Why go to the extra effort of managing data applications and creating more layers of programming?

In my mind software must provide some kind of functionality. Business needs to ask cost qualifying questions before plunging entire corporations into a productivity deficit. That is the whole reason behind the app. But so many apps are really just programming portals between devices and the connectivity qualifiers for each. Shouldn’t there be a distinguishing term for an app that is really just an interface translator and one that is a standalone software experience? To me, the case for cloud computing does not yet validate the additional security risks, IT costs, or time and programming resources required to build it.

Cloud computing seems dated. It seems built on assumptions that entire groups of people will be administrating skills to tasks in exactly the same with huge amounts of predictability. I find that Internet users I know and love do anything but that. Cloud computing is one of those ideas that harnesses the income estimations and desires of big business but leaves users wondering what they are supposed to do to make it work. In my opinion, if you can make your business frontend work with existing database management tools ad transactional security. there is nothing to fix.

Did you ever wonder what the first registered domain was? Here is a list of the “First 100″ registered domains.

to Dmoz or not to Dmoz?

To DMOZ, or not to DMOZ-That is the question. Friends, Domainers, name-countrymen, lend me your bandwidth. The topic at hand is the much-ballyhooed DMOZ directory inclusion which has come under speculation by many domainers of late as to relevancy and utility.

Domainers worldwide are looking to find a level playing field. Yet long term domain owners want historic DMOZ values when it can help them market a name sale. Is it fair to webmasters and domainers that the inclusion of Adsense or Google (or any ads) is a mystery factor that is a variable for each application?

Long before Google flexed its monopolistic muscles, the DMOZ set the standard for relatable, categorically indexed links in the big-brutha of all directories. Yet today even many former editors debate the relevancy of the DMOZ. The foul whiff of corruption taints the purity of the DMOZ resource.

Many newb and career domainers offer differing opinions. Some domainers barely know what it is, while others dismiss it as a one-shot task amid a laundry list of other, value-establishing domain activities like link building, blogging, community hosting, social networking, article posting, and advertising.

This has become a philosophical topic in the realm of domain name buying and selling. Insofar as many domain name estimators use the DMOZ inclusion as a factorial in the valuation, the cementing of its value is of interest to all. Furthermore, the possibility of obtaining paid DMOZ link attainders by committing e-commerce with DMOZ editors has reared its ugly head.

Paid link directories are all over the internet and dozens if not hundreds arise daily. Just as many erode due to lack of interest, poor SEO ranking, little or no active promotion or marketing, and/or failure of hosting or webmaster resources. It seems DMOZ may be in Wiki development stages, where free unpaid editors and contributors have moved on in bulk.

Since the model of the DMOZ assumes the same level of attention to contemporary applications as historic inclusions, do today’s rejections operate on the same benchmarks as yesterday’s DMOZ inclusions? is the archived out of SEO relevancy? And do domain estimation sites and evaluators for domain name resale amounts take that into account?

These are hard-hitting question that will hopefully be answered either by policy changes in SEO and page ranking sites or implied in the continued inclusion of archival DMOZ listings when traffic, density, and SEO value are measured up for a domain name evaluation and resale value estimates.

Verisign Raising Rates

Causing a ruffle in the domainer feathers this week was the news that Verisign was originating an across the board name registration/renewal hike. This price increase comes not at a bad time in the economy, but at a questionable time for lower end domainers struggling to retain the bulk of the names in their portfolios.

Verisign resellers (known or unknown registry holders) and tier priced administrators of select name and TLD portfolio based holdings are concerned. Industry watchers speculate that intrinsic and value based domain registration prices may eventuate. Will other resellers be affected? How will price controls for domains fluctuate in future?

Domainers are considering how the pricing will affect the domaining market as a whole. Challenges to the Verisign price monopoly are rife. Reaction to the news ranges from letting domains drop to bulk renewal before the price goes up officially. Critics demand justification for this rise in price, virtual expenses being what they are.

Goose?… Golden Egg? …Bueller?

Triple X Adult TLD to Realize?

The triple X adult domain top level domain may be coming to the Web, industry watchers report. The domainers watching this industry quake wonder if the adult online industry, mostly composed of fee-paid video and image services related to pornography, can be a reasonable addition to Internet commerce as such. The lines are being drawn on both sides of the TLD divide.

Those watching the ICANN approval for XXX tld domains are agog after the early days of non-proliferation of web suffixes denoting non-general acceptable matter. While adult sites are a reality and a great commerce builder garnering record traffic and income in every demo, the fact remains they are not welcomed by every hosting company or router online.

Sexually explicit site masters and name owners would be expected to flock to the dot-triple-x tld. Yet the domains in existence now for adult and porn names would putatively lose value and legacy traffic. Not all webmasters are ready to give this up and conjoin their fray to a limited dot tld. Security   software makers and parental control mechanisms for computer devices would be affected.

The opposite side of the coin, the dot-kids suffix, was never approved by ICANN because it was deemed to difficult to patrol and protect. Can ICANN recover some of its lost luster as the Internet regulator? Or will ICANN critics finally have something solid to bring to bear in challenging the agency’s management and ongoing oversight of domain name and web issues? Time will tell.

Ticketed TN Man buys Local PD Domain

They don’t mess around with domains lightly in Bluff City, Tennessee. Brian McCrary of Tennessee got a $90 ticket for speeding and when he went to the police website and saw the pending renewal notice, he floored his credit card and nabbed the domain when it dropped. The new site, online now at BluffCitypd.com, details speed trap camera information in that locale.

Talk about a speed trap on the information superhighway! McCrary got the perfect revenge. Suspecting he had been the victim of a speed trap, he initially approached the police website to complain. McCrary works for an ISP and ramped to Godaddy for a $80 pickup of the renewal status drop.

The story is attracting both domainer amusement and cynicism from Bluff City residents. Word is that until reporters started asking questions the police department didn’t even know their domain had expired. The uniques McCrary is now pulling in may top 90K. Police allege the site is merely revenge for the ticket and that aggressive ticketing has cut down on motor vehicle accidents.

Evidently the Godaddy domain expiration notification emails went to the account that had been allegedly hacked and closed or shut off. This story is a lesson to all sloppy webmasters who ignore their domaining responsibilities. In the year 2010, with the internet part of the everyday life of citizens worldwide, having a tech guy “out sick” is no excuse.

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