Mudge

Like naming your child, choosing your domain name is a decision which you have to take carefully. If you choose poorly it can haunt your company or you and your family for the rest of your life.

Once you've printed up your stationery and your business cards and told the world what your web address is there's no going back.

Consider then Powergen Italia whose web address is, understandably - yet unfortunately - http://www.powergenitalia.com

Now read it again. Power genitalia, eh? That's quite a bold claim.

Powergen should possibly reconsider that one - in this instance the cost or re-printing the stationery is one worth incurring.

Until this came along the Round-Up's favourite URL had been Liverpool-based fixtures company http://www.knobsandknockers.co.uk which - as its name suggests (honestly it does) - sells door knobs and knockers (cue raised eyebrow).

Another domain name making the news over the past week has been Sex.com which was at the centre of a six-year custody battle between its rightful owner and a cyber squatter who stole it and developed a porn empire on the back of it.

Stephen Cohen acquired the site from its original owner Gary Kremen by writing to registrar VeriSign and asking them to sign it over to him.

Hardly subtle, or the devious workings of a criminal mind, you may think, but amazingly VeriSign complied with his wishes without asking Kremen whether he had authorised the transfer and switched Sex.com over to Cohen.

Understandably Kremen was pretty miffed at this, and his miffed-ness was doubtless not eased when he discovered Cohen was making in excess of $500,000 per month in ad sales alone on the website.

Incredibly it then took Kremen six years of legal wrangling to get his domain returned to him - during which time Cohen amassed a huge personal fortune through the site and upped sticks and left for sunnier climes. He is now holed up, presumably in some style, in Mexico where he is a (very rich) fugitive from the law. As such there is very little chance he will ever cough up the $65m in damages he has been ordered to pay.

So Kremen has his website back - but he'd be forgiven for feeling he's still had a rough deal. He may have more luck suing VeriSign for their utter incompetence.


source Silicon News

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