domain

Cat ladies take over the Australian Christian Lobby domain

If you're going to have a Web presence, sometimes it pays to make sure any domain name associated with the name of your organization is accounted for. The Australian Christian Lobby operates out of the acl.org.au domain name, after moving from australianchristianlobby.org.au. But the australianchristianlobby.org domain has been quietly occupied, seemingly kept in reserve -- until a relaunch on Sunday.

Three Melbourne feminists -- Hilary Bowman-Smart, Genevieve Stewart, and Jessica Alice -- snapped up the domain when it became available, turning it into a website for the group, called Australian Cat Ladies, stating that there has been a case of mistaken identity between the two groups. "Please note, it is very important that you do not confuse "Cat-Holics" with "Catholics," the site reads. … Read more

Pinterest goes to battle over Amazon domain play

Here's one that can't come as a surprise to the legal team at Amazon.com: Pinterest is fighting Amazon's bid to win the contract to control the .pin generic top-level-domain, or gTLD.

Among the reasons for Pinterest's objections: Domain names on .pin -- clothes.pin, say, or whatever Amazon has in mind -- would cause confusion and violate the trademarks that Pinterest holds on the term "pin." Those trademarks include "the standalone PIN trademark and a family of PIN-formative marks, including Pinterest, PIN It, P, and others," according to the complaint -- … Read more

Lawyer offers popefrancis.com to pope

If the media is to believed, the new Pope Francis is an extremely modest man.

Eschewing the life of palaces in Argentina, he lived modestly and even cooked for himself.

Such frugality, reticence, and identification with the poor of the world isn't often associated with lawyers.

Yet one member of Chicago's legal faith is offering up an act of generosity akin to just chatting with Mary Magdalene.… Read more

Pope Francis spurs hundreds of domain name registrations

Shortly after the smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel turned from black to white and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was deemed the world's new Roman Catholic leader, hundreds of people took to the Web to register domain names with the new pope's title.

Web hosting and domain registration site GoDaddy told CNET that it racked up more than 100 domain registrations within the first 10 minutes of the announcement. By the first hour, 479 new domains were registered. And, as of this writing, 647 domain names have been registered at GoDaddy.

"The election of Pope Francis is … Read more

Google might open up certain top-level domains to the public

Google appears eager to let other organizations use certain top-level domains that it wants to acquire and manage.

Last June, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Named and Numbers (ICANN) revealed which companies and organizations had applied for their own generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The effort is part of a move to foster competition on the Internet by allowing companies to use a greater variety of TLDs beyond just .com.

Google applied for 101 of the 1,900 available gTLDs, looking to score such obvious ones as .google, .chrome, .gmail, .goog, and .youtube. But along with those gTLDs were ones that … Read more

Book publishers blast Amazon's plan to control domain names

Amazon's effort to control dozens of new generic top-level Internet domain names is drawing fire from a pair of publishing industry groups.

The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers oppose the Internet retail giant's plan to control so-called generic top-level domains (gTLD) that end in suffixes .book, .author, and .read, arguing that such influence would be anti-competitive.

"Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anticompetitive, allowing already dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power," Authors Guild President Scott Turow wrote to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, … Read more

How the Copyright Alert System works

It's legal to share CNET Update:

If you use a peer-to-peer network like BitTorrent, then pay attention to today's Update video. I offer a quick explanation of what Internet service providers will be doing to discourage customers from sharing copyright-protected music, movies and television shows.

Also in Tuesday's tech roundup:

- Apps and websites are now letting users sign in with a Google+ account, as well as share activity with circles.

- Get ready to be annoyed by hundreds of new Internet domain extensions, like .cadillac, .vegas and .app.

- The Guardian reports that all games on … Read more

ICANN allows hundreds of new Internet domain suffixes

Goodbye ".com," and hello ".cadillac," ".vegas," and ".music." The world of Internet suffixes is about to go through a major growth spurt.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, announced today that hundreds of new Web address suffixes will roll out this year, according to the Associated Press. This will be the largest growth of Internet addresses since the 1980s.

The Web has become saturated with ".com" addresses, which has made people and businesses petition ICANN for new names.

Foreign languages will be the first to get new … Read more

Apple's AppStore.com makes stealth Super Bowl debut

Apple may not have its own Super Bowl ad today, but the company quietly launched a new product effort during someone else's ad spot.

At the end of the commercial for the upcoming "Star Trek: Into Darkness" film, Paramount flashed a quick promotion for its iOS app, complete with an AppStore.com link that takes people right to it. In function it's identical to what Apple already uses through its iTunes links, but this one's designed so that people can quickly type it into a mobile device or remember it for later.

Whatever's after … Read more

Feds kick off Cyber Monday counterfeit crackdown

In honor of Cyber Monday, the feds cracked down on Web sites allegedly selling counterfeit goods. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it joined forces with international law enforcement authorities to nab 132 domain names that were supposedly hawking bogus sports jerseys, DVD sets, jewelry, and clothing.

"Our partnerships enable us to go after criminals who are duping unsuspecting shoppers all over the world," Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton said in a statement. "This is not an American problem, it is a global one and it is a … Read more