Saturday, November 26, 2005
It looks like the long saga of the iTunes.co.uk domain is now over, as the owner has stopped trying to contest the ruling which handed it over to Apple. Neither side comes out looking that pretty in this battle. Ben Cohen registered the domain long before Apple announced their own iTunes product -- so it's not as if he were a typical cybersquatter. However, once they were offering iTunes, he used the domain to try to sell iPods and credits to iTunes, before pointing it to Napster's site. Doing that could certainly cause plenty of confusion -- and left him open to trademark violations. However, it's still not clear why he then had the domain taken from him as he had registered it completely legally. He could have gotten in trouble for the trademark violation, but why does that mean he should lose the domain completely? The registrar Nominet says he deserved to lose the domain because he took "unfair advantage" of Apple by asking for $50,000 to turn over the domain when they offered him $5,000. Isn't that just called negotiating? It's hard to see how that's taking "unfair advantage." If he had registered the domain after Apple announced iTunes, that would be one thing, but since he got it before, he should have every right to negotiate what he thinks is a fair price. He should be stopped from posting confusing content (trademark violation), but that doesn't mean the domain deserves to be just taken from him.
