“Ben Cohen, former teenage dot-com millionaire, has given up his fight to regain the itunes.co.uk domain, according to .uk registry Nominet,” Matt Loney reports for ZDNet UK. “Nominet company solicitor Edward Phillips said on Monday that Cohen’s company, CyberBritain Group Ltd, has formally abandoned all further attempts to get the domain it once owned back from Apple.”
“Nominet awarded the itunes.co.uk domain to Apple in March this year. Apple had claimed that ownership of the domain should be transferred because it holds the iTunes trademark. Cohen told ZDNet UK’s sister site, silicon.com, in December 2004 that he had innocently registered iTunes.co.uk as part of a batch of domain names relating to music back in 2000 without any knowledge of Apple’s intentions to use it as a trademark,” Loney reports. “But the adjudicator presiding over the Nominet dispute resolution procedure, telecoms policy consultant Claire Milne, awarded the domain name to Apple because, she said, it was an ‘abusive registration.'”
Loney reports, “Nominet’s dispute resolution policy defines abusive registration as a domain name that takes unfair advantage of a company’s rights. In this case, Apple cited the fact that it had registered the iTunes trademark, together with CyberBritain’s offer to sell the domain for $50,000 (£29,000) just two days after Apple offered $5,000 for it, and CyberBritain’s redirection of the domain name to rival service Napster. Cohen’s response included the demand that the expert presiding over the dispute resolution procedure should not be an Apple Mac user ‘because in the view of the Respondent there is a ‘cult’ associated with the products of the Complainant, which attracts fanatical users.'”
Full article here.
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Why do Apple products attract fanatical users? For those in denial, it goes something like this: It must be a “cult;” it can’t be because Apple products are so much better and their users’ experiences are vastly superior or I’d feel threatened and stupid for having purchased this Dell running Windows XP along with a Dell DJ Ditty. Stupid Mac user cultists, have another sip of the Kool-Aid, you freaks! Okay, back to work: “Sorry for having to put you on hold, sir. So, what you’re gonna need to do is: erase, reformat, and install Windows XP from scratch. Repeat every 4-6 months, since a fresh malware-free Windows computing experience will rapidly degrade over time…”
Related articles:
iTunes UK domain name dispute continues – March 28, 2005
Apple wins iTunes cybersquatter fight; UK domain registrant considers appeal – March 15, 2005
‘Touchy feely’ Apple Computer in dispute over itunes.co.uk website domian name – December 07, 2004
Kool-aid good, fire bad.
Hey, I love MacDailyNews and check it all the time. But I hate PayPal. Can you set up your donation system to accept debit cards instead? How about $2 per month subscriptions? I know this is off topic, but thanks.
awww, cry baby! face it, you just got you ass handed to you on a platter. didnja know that you dont tug on Supermans’s cape??
That’s all surprisingly interesting. A has been dot com chump, trying to suck off the Apple tit as a cybersquatter, has the sheer unmitigated gall to claim that a person using a Mac can’t make an effective decision about his clearly low and pathetic use of Apple’s brand?
I’d have made him pay for Apple’s court fees as well.
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Hey, I got yer domains . . . I got yer domains right here.
IN MY PANTS!!!
Hey Ben, your mums calling.
Every pc user would become fanatical about their computer were they to switch to Mac. You can see it said by every switcher in every forum – I’ve switched and computing is now so pleasant I’m now a big Fan of Apple, the Mac etc. etc.
The idiots who put a negative connotation on being fanatical about Apple Macs are the ones still languishing in the deep, dark dungeons of Microsoft Windows…
My advice: COME OUT INTO THE SUNSHINE…
The idiot should have taken the $5,000.
I feel very very aroused
Apple should have offered the kid a brand-spanking new Power Mac G5.
he’s lucky he didn’t get bent over steve’s knee lol
Technically, the term “cult” refers to:
-an adulterated version of the true religion,
-adhered to by duped people who
-should challenge the doctrine of the cult they are following
-but don’t.
If the “true religion” in this case, is a user friendly and secure computing experience, then does this not make the cult, Windows?
Just asking
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