What is fair game in the domaining world?

In the early days of domaining some of the players got involved in dodgy practices such as buying up famous company names and ransoming them to the actual firm, often violating trademark rights and forcing sales by putting objectionable material under the domain name causing the firm public embarrassment if they didn't pay up. Words such as cybersquatting and typosquatting were coined to describe such practices. These dodgy players earned the domaining industry as a whole a bad image despite the perfectly legal and acceptable approach taken by other domainers, and it is still fairly common for the media to erroneously refer to domain investing as cybersquatting despite there being no "squatting" (trademark violation) involved in the majority of domain investors' portfolios.

Fortunetly the "dark side" of domaining is generally on the decline. Serious domainers concentrate on generic, non-trademarked names which don't affect the intellectual property rights of other companies. Systems have also been put in place to help companies suffering trademark violations to find quick and relatively cheap solutions to stop the trademark infringement. Companies should be aware however that trademarks are generally not all-encompassing - other parties may also have a legitimate interest in the same trademarks. The best solution for companies is to buy domains for as many of their trademarked words as possible.

So what is fair game in the domaining world?

Generally acceptable:

• registering generic (dictionary word) domain names since they either can't be trademarked or can only be trademarked for very specific uses
• registering typos of generic words
• advertising generic domain names for sale
• parking generic domains and earning income from advertising

Generally not acceptable:

• registering trademarked terms where the registration could be deemed unfair (e.g. trademark infringement or cybersquatting)
• registering typos of trademarked terms and using the domains in an unfair way (typosquatting)
• using unfair tactics to intimidate businesses into buying domains (e.g. linking companies with objectionable material)
• registering and using inflammatory names
• deceiving advertisers through click fraud or certain other practices
• registering domains for the purpose of spamming or conducting illegal activities

Domain parking companies and advertising middlemen generally have a set of terms and conditons which further restrict the use of domain names. For instance it is generally not permissable to drive traffic to parked domains (e.g. no advertising, SEO, link building, etc.) Parked domains should receive all visitors through natural type-ins or pre-existing links.