Dan & Pat flesh out more of the “why” of so much needing to be involved with the “how-to” of getting a mechanism in place that is scalable in addressing the issue and that ensures they don’t lose millions a year defending their position, or that’s not truly fair to “the little guy”. Although with domain cybersquatting have you seen what it takes to bring a dispute?

Several different “approved” companies, depending on where in the world it takes place or the type of TLD. Up to $3000 or more in filing fees depending on if you want one arbiter or a panel of arbiters. Countless pages of rules and supplements to rules… so “the little guy” would be near helpless to fight.

And I bet some “little guy” who happens to have the family name “Hyundai” would also face the same hurdles in a Twitter squatting dispute, with or without Twitter having such a clear-cut procedure.

Sure, I agree that it makes sense to get a mechanism in place before going commercial. Yet can they do so at this point in their life cycle? Do they have the funds to justify it right now? Or have they even weighed the risk-cost-benefits even?

Or are they already working on it and not saying so for some internal corporate reason we aren’t aware of? That’s typical of most companies that work internally on a project but don’t announce any details until it’s close to or already at the launch point. And given the legal ramifications of this particular issue, I’d be willing to bet that if they ARE already working on it, they’d probably be advised by lawyers NOT to discuss that fact.

So maybe we’re all discussing something that’s already in the works. No way to tell at this juncture.
.-= Alan Bleiweiss´s last blog ..Six Rules for Custom eCommerce SEO =-.

I think we can agreed they cybersquatting is opportunistic and should be stamped out but if both the individual in a dispute have a valid claim then the size or reputation of one of them shouldn’t be the deciding issue.

This is more than a philosophical debate for me. My twitter handle is my initials. My initials are also the brand name of a line of skater shoes. Should I lose the user name I have held for two years because that shoe company needs to protect its brand image? Why? It’s my name, too.

I say no. They can do as Hyundai has done, and go with something like @XXXshoes.

(Hyundai really should have picked @hyundaimotors, which was available until April of this year (not by them, I’ll assume), and left the poor fella at @hyundai the hell alone.)

Given that Twitter is not, yet, in fact, a profitable company, I can’t see how they’d hire entire teams of people to address this specific issue. While Twitter might get away with shutting down patently abusive accounts at this point, I’d bet that they couldn’t scale this up without running into trouble.

There would have to be serious legal procedures established, and that legal process would have to be followed precisely in every situation, given how it involves taking something away from someone who would otherwise be free to have access to the service. That process alone might cost tens or hundreds of thousands to implement (given how lawyers need to write legal procedure and have to do that in conference with other lawyers, look up case-law, review other policies and procedures from companies where there might be similar situations, and on the list of steps goes…).

Case in point, domain cybersquatting- you can’t just contact the registrar or ICANN directly, and say – “Hey, we own that brand, turn it over…” You actually have to go through an “approved dispute resolution provider”.

So I’m betting that the cost-exposure ratio at this point is too high for Biz and Ev to justify the expense.
.-= Alan Bleiweiss´s last blog ..Six Rules for Custom eCommerce SEO =-.