Registering a domain name with malicious intent or in bad faith is popularly called Cybersquatting in WWW. This is usually done for monetary reasons whereby one books a domain similar to a registered trademark or copyright of any known company and then tries to sell it to the concerned company at an exorbitant price. For example, if one registers a domain nike.net and then attempts to sell it back to Nike, it is cybersquatting. It will be in addition a violation of law if he/she puts up a website on nike.net describing Nike products and services in bad taste. On the other hand, if someone own a company trademark like Nike Foods and host a food website on nike.net, there is no cybersquatting or violation of law. So, it is the intention and not just the name which amounts to cybersquatting. Cybersquatting was made illegal by the passage of a federal law in 1999 known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. The law became necessary because numerous large companies were forced to pay large sums to buy their domain names from third parties. These companies included such notables as Panasonic, Fry’s Electronics, Hertz and Avon.

Cybersquatting is quite common specially against the popular brands but most of the time, the victim company doesn’t know about it. How do you know if a company is a victim of cybersquatting? Type in a name that is a trademark or copyright like Sakshay preceded by “www” and following by “.com”, “.net” or “.org”. If you get a valid web site which looks like it is related in some way to the domain name, then there is no cybersquatting in effect (although this could be a simple trademark violation). However, if you get one of the following results, then this could be a cybersquatter.

- Can’t find server

- under construction

- page with no relationship to domain name

Of course there could be a reasonable explanation for each of these results, so they do not always mean there is cybersquatting occurring. It’s a good idea to contact the domain name owner before taking any legal action to find out what’s going on.

Since there can be many reasons both in favor and against cybersquatting in any specific case, how can one prove someone is cybersquatting?

- The domain name registrants intention was to profit from your domain name in bad faith

- Your trademark was in effect and widely known at the time the domain name was registered

- The domain name is identical to your trademark

- And you have actually registered the trademark

How do you know there is a bad faith intent? Well, there is probably no bad faith intent if one of the following is true:

- domain name is the same as the person’s name or nickname or company providing services or products in different domain.

- They are actually selling or intend on selling something on their web site - They have registered the domain prior to your trademark registration and have been using the domain name for some purpose or other.

- Does the web site owner actually have a legitimate use of the domain name? This would be, for example, true for a company named “Nike Foods”. They would have a legitimate reason for owning the “Nike” domain name.

Some clues that cybersquatting is occurring include:

- The domain name owner has put up a web site which in some way harms your company. For example, if you had somehow purchased “TATA.ORG” and created a web site about how inferior are TATA products, you are cybersquatting.

- If the domain name owner never legitimately used the domain name and simply offered to sell it to you, he is cybersquatting. If a person buys up a lot of names and has sold them over and over, there is a pattern of cybersquatting.

- If the domain name is the same as a very famous trademark, then it has a greater likelihood of being considered cybersquatting.

What can happen if someone is found guilty of cybersquatting is they can be ordered to hand over the domain name. In addition, if the domain was purchased after 1999, they can be ordered to pay monetary damages.

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It is annoying to find that you have a great idea for a site but when you start searching for a domain name to match you find every possible combination has been registered. Don’t worry all is not lost there are still the expired domains to check.

Not everybody reregisters their domain names. For whatever reason, financial or otherwise good domain names come back onto the market. These are expired domains and you can get your hands on them.

The first stage of an expired domain goes through is the registrar hold. This is a period of up to 45 days where the registrar may pay the renewal fee for the domain in the hope that the expired domains owner registers the domain name again. The registrar may wait the full 45 days or decide to let the registry know sooner that the domain fee has not been paid. This means the name goes into the redemption period.

The expired domain is now in the redemption period which lasts for 30 days. The domain is now back in the hands of the registrar as the original owner has not paid the renewal fee. For the original owner of the expired domain to get their domain name back they are likely going to have to pay a hefty fee to the registrar.

The domain is now in pending delete which is the final status. This means that expired domain is back on the market. On the 6th day on pending delete the domain name is now available to everyone.

The expired domain is back on the market. Now is your chance to grab the domain you are after. I will talk about the best way to increase your chances of this in my next article at Name search domain.

Allan is the webmaster at NameSearchDomain.com where you canfind out all about Domain names.

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Getting Traffic to Your Web Site and to Your Bed and Breakfast is 2 Faces of the Selfsame Mint

Getting traffic to your web site or to your motel demands great expertise and lots of optimisation both for your web site and for your motel. The optimization for your web site will go via a well known SEO Supporter and the optimization for your bed and breakfast is by and large finished by the hotel itself, a working case of a Purple Cow in hotels is the Fox Hotel in Copenhagen, which had a total redesign by creative people and was the home of the launching of the recent VW Fox in Denmark.

The starting affair to do is to get a great address, for your site this means finding a good PHP hosting company and a nice domain name, for your bed and breakfast, this implies having a prominent address in the town where your motel is located, desirable in the real center of the city.

Holding a strong address for your hotel lands lots of visitants just by itself. For your website this is not so easy, you demand featured rankings in search engines and to get these you will need to do search engine optimization. A decently optimized website will land you scores of visitors to your website, visitors who are possible clients at your hotel.

SEO in the traveling industry is really hard and you will demand the greatest SEO Company to do the preparation and effectuation of all chores involved in the action. You must also be conscious that SEO demands time, so patience is a merit.

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Ever wonder why DNS systems came into existence? Efficiency. Every computer has a distinct IP address, and the Internet needed an elite method for obtaining these addresses and for managing the system as a whole. Enter ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number manages the DNS root of the Internet domain namespace. ICANN’s role is to manage the assignment of identifiers, ensuring that all users have unique names.

The DNS system is run by a series of servers called DNS servers. ICANN manages the root DNS domains, under which are the top-level domains.
It also manages:

Organizational domains
Geographical domains
Reverse domains

Beneath the top-level domains are other naming authorities such as Nominet, the UK’s naming authority.

How does a DNS Query work?

The process occurs in two parts. Firstly, a name query begins at a client computer and is passed to DNS client service for resolution. When the query cannot be resolved locally, DNS servers are queried.

For example, when a web browser calls the fully qualified domain name www.discountdomainsuk.com, the request is passed on to the DNS client service to resolve the name by using locally cached information. If the query is held in the cache, then the process is complete.

If, however, the query cannot be answered locally, the DNS client service uses a server list (ordered in sequence) to query external DNS servers. When a DNS server receives a query, it first checks to see if it is authoritive for that domain name. If it is authoritive, it resolves the name, and the process is complete.

If the DNS server is unable to resolve the query, it in turns queries other DNS servers, using a process known as recursion. DNS servers make use of root hints to assist in locating DNS servers, which are able to provide the required result. In this way, DNS queries are minimised and the Internet is able to operate quickly and effectively.

A typical query may run as follows:

Client contacts Nameserver A looking for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A checks its cache, but can’t answer, so it queries a server authoritive for the Internet root.

The root server responds with a referral to a server authoritive for the .com domains. NameserverA queries the the .com server and gets referred to the server authoritive for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A queries this server and gets the IP address for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A replies to the client with the IP address.

Queries can return answers that are authoritive, positive, negative or referral in nature. In the event of a negative answer, another DNS server is queried.

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Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd - A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on clare@discountdomainsuk.com.
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