I recently had the uninvited\u00a0opportunity\u00a0to defend my domain name, metaxa.net, and I am writing this post because it may be useful to others who find themselves in such a\u00a0position. The good news: You do not need to be a lawyer to do it yourself and the arbitration system works reasonably well. The bad news: You need to do a bit of reading and writing.<\/p>\n
I registered and own metaxa.net since 1999. Back then it\u00a0was essential\u00a0to own a domain name since, at\u00a0that time, there were no services to upload and share your photos, no easy ways to have email addresses for you or your family members, and the only clouds around were still up in the sky unable to store any files you may need while away from your office.<\/p>\n
As the Web services expanded to cover\u00a0everything under the sun, the above uses became secondary, and\u00a0I started utilizing\u00a0the domain name for other reasons. In 2004 I had started a line of research to discover how Web Spammers succeeded in\u00a0gaming search engines and\u00a0place their bogus postings in the top-10 page of relevant search results. Back then it was thought that the “PageRank” algorithm was like “42”: the answer to everything (related to the Web). We now\u00a0know that search engines can be\u00a0gamed, and that they spend considerable resources to avoid Web Spam.<\/p>\n
[Side note: My research led me to discover the reasons that\u00a0search engines can be gamed — \u00a0pretty much for the same reasons we, humans, can be fooled. Web Spammers were using techniques very similar to the propagandistic techniques that politicians, advertisers and financial criminals are using to persuade us to vote for something, buy something or invest in something. I presented my work initially at AIRWeb 2005 (Web Spam, Progaganda and Trust<\/a>) but if you are interested to read more\u00a0you should check\u00a0the journal version (Web Spam, Social Propaganda and the Evolution of Search Engine Rankings<\/a>).]<\/p>\n Anyway, to implement a\u00a0technique of discovering Web Spam sites I needed a method to evaluate similarity between Web site contents. It helped to have\u00a0a Web site containing\u00a0text that is unbiased towards a particular theme or product. Since there was nothing available online, I uploaded onto my own site a large collection of Associated Press news that were used by the TREC<\/a> community. If you visited the top directory of metaxa.net you would be surprised to find huge files containing\u00a0old news. But it was very unlikely that you would visit it. I did\u00a0not include metaxa.net in any search engine listing, so it would never appear in your search results. Though I never planned to use metaxa.net as text repository, over the years it proved very useful. Many of my students used it to run their research projects, and after graduation some of them ended up working at Microsoft Bing and Google Search, fighting Web Spam on a regular\u00a0basis.<\/p>\n I continued to own the domain name paying the fees on time, so it was\u00a0a complete surprise when I received a letter in early April about\u00a0a dispute filed with the\u00a0World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)<\/a>\u00a0by Remy-Cointreau Luxemburg, the well known liqueur producing company. They wanted to take over my domain name! Remy-Cointreau had bought a well-known Greek Spirits company, METAXA, and over the years they had\u00a0started buying every domain name that contained\u00a0the string “metaxa” \u00a0(including “metaxaswineestate”!) Given my research, I knew exactly why they were doing that: They wanted to\u00a0“persuade” the search engines that any search of the term “metaxa” should lead to their official site only! They knew how to fool\u00a0PageRank and were doing it legally too. Now they wanted to fool WIPO’s arbitrators. In fact, as they claimed in the Complaint they served me,<\/p>\n “<\/span>Indeed, the term METAXA\u00ae is only known in relation to the Complainant. It has no meaning whatsoever in English or in any other language. A Google search on the term METAXA\u00ae displays several results, all of them being related to the Complainant<\/span>“<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wow. Three lies in three\u00a0sentences. Anyone who knows just a bit of modern Greek history or checks Wikipedia<\/a> knows that\u00a0the name Metaxas is not that rare. (In Greek, the female version of a name, or a reference to the family name itself, does not include\u00a0the final “s”.) One can Google translate metaxa to see that it means “raw silk” and “silk trader” in Greek, depending on the intonation. And the first page of Google search results does\u00a0not constitute a proof of\u00a0unique association. (Yet, even their own submitted screenshot included other METAXA<\/a> references!) \u00a0And these were not the only “inaccurate claims” or logical fallacies\u00a0in the Complaint. There were\u00a0about\u00a0a dozen of them. You can see a more detailed list (though not exhaustive) in\u00a0my Response to their Complaint<\/a>.<\/p>\n I was doubly stunned. Using such claims\u00a0were ridiculing the\u00a0WIPO<\/a>, the body that they were asking to support\u00a0them. How can they be so arrogant insulting WIPO’s arbitrators’ intelligence? Wouldn’t they expect that the Responder\u00a0would point out their lies?<\/p>\n Probably not. My guess is that\u00a0they expected that nobody would respond to their Complaint and they would\u00a0win an uncontested case. You see, when a couple years ago we changed the domain record hosting company, the WHOIS information was not updated correctly, and it showed that the administrator\u00a0was to be reached at … nocontactsfound@secureserver.net. Seems reasonable\u00a0to expect that whoever owned the domain would not be reached, and so they could snatch it\u00a0without contest.\u00a0It would cost them a few thousand dollars, but for a company with deep pockets, that would not be a problem.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for them, due to a billing inquiry, I did get\u00a0informed. Legalese\u00a0never being part of my tongues,\u00a0I turned to the wonderful Berkman community for advice. And the advice poured in immediately. Several Berkmanites, and primarily Prof. Jacques de Werra<\/a><\/strong> of the University of Geneva and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center this academic year, suggested literature, gave me references to other relevant\u00a0cases, recommended experts in the field, offered advice on my options. They even pointed out to other unfair activities that the company was involved in the past. In particular,\u00a0a song written for the company’s ad campaign was stolen from Berkmanite musician Erin McKeown – you can read all about it at TechDirt Case study\u00a0A Perspective On The Complexities Of Copyright And Creativity From A Victim Of Infringement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Onto the technical part. It turns out that one\u00a0can defeat a\u00a0Complaint by\u00a0<\/span>convincing the arbitrators that any<\/strong> of these elements are not<\/strong> present<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n The detailed policy and rules (called a UDRP<\/a>,\u00a0Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) are listed here:<\/span> In my case, the\u00a0first element\u00a0could not be countered: There were good reasons why my domain name was identical to theirs. But I could convince the arbitrators that the Complaint was wrong for both the second and the third element. That I have legitimate rights, was straight forward: I had to just point out the lies\u00a0within\u00a0their claims.\u00a0But you need to provide a complete counter argument. It is not enough to point out a lie and expect that the arbitrators will go looking for its validity. You have to provide it yourself. With screenshots, excerpts, clear arguments. And you better be exhaustive in your arguments because you may only get one shot. For example, even though I was quite sure that I could nullify the second element, I should better also nullify the third one, just in case. For the third element, I had to go digging for references and receipts showing that I was always the owner of the account and had used it in good faith. Showing “good faith” was important, as this is a main\u00a0reason why UDRPs exist: to curb the efforts of cyber-squatters who buy domain names only to sell them to the higher bidder of competing companies.<\/p>\n While I was at it, I wanted to point out that the Complaint itself was not filed in good faith. Remy-Cointreau really did not really have a case. Only through the dozen of lies in the filing they could put a case together.\u00a0I would love to get the arbitrators acknowledge the Company’s filing with bad faith. There are no\u00a0penalties associated with such an acknowledgement, but future arbitrators may take it into account in the future.<\/p>\n\n
http:\/\/www.icann.org\/en\/help\/dndr\/udrp<\/a><\/p>\n