No love for .XYZ from Verisign.
The news of Verisign filing a lawsuit against the .XYZ registry is quite shocking.
Not because of the variety of allegations included, but because Verisign – a behemoth of massive proportions – actually feels threatened by a gTLD registry.
The fact is, that there are no good .com domains available to register – at registration fees, not aftermarket prices.
What’s so ‘disparaging’ about that statement presented in the XYZ video below?
Want any color, shape, number, LLL acronym, animal, country, language etc. in .com ?
Long gone.
Comparing the size of the XYZ registry to Verisign is like comparing a tick against an elephant.
Guess who is bigger: 785,000 .XYZ domains, versus more than 120 million .com domains.
It makes no sense.
And yet, XYZ seems to have been “stinging” Verisign apparently, with its range of creative commercials and videos, along with public campaigns – hence the lawsuit.
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All .xyz registrants should be sent to Mars on a reality show
While it is not “impossible” to find a .com domain this ad is not ‘disparaging’.
There are tens of ads like these (and a lot worse) in the US.
Kosta – This one comes to mind 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
Lanham Act prohibits FALSE or MISLEADING advertising.
Lawsuit focuses on:
– “it is ‘impossible’ for customers to find the domain name that they want using .COM”: IMHO this is FALSE;
– .xyz is using artificially inflated (fake) registration numbers from robo-reg and other tricks: this is MISLEADING and DECEIVING consumers.
Nothing new or original in this ad.
It’s not a question of size, DG, it’s the law … even if some people don’t like it, try to skirt it or have a “weird” idea…
Andrea – I want a domain that’s already registered, and so do thousands and millions of others. That’s not false at all.
I’m sure the numbers aren’t kosher but the focus is the ad; there’s nothing there that brings the supposed qualities of .com down. Lack of availability of a product equals open roads for competition.
The lawyers will have a field day on this one.
DG, maybe you should stop playing with words, twisting my words for your perusal, because it doesn’t work with me, and reading the complaint.
Talk is cheap, while I prefer to stick to the facts.
Talking about “misleading” things, the title of your post is misleading, since the focus of the lawsuit is on “false” and “misleading” and not on “disparaging”.
Maybe sometimes you should be less biased in your views …
Andrea – Which part of my “biased” post did you not understand?
As I explained in private, the XYZ video is well within the free speech rights, and it contains facts: .com is aged, and the domains people want are not available.
The ‘disparaging’ part comes from the very article that broke the news: http://domainincite.com/18023-verisign-sues-xyz-and-negari-for-false-advertising
I asked for people to vote on that very reference. I don’t focus on the cooking of XYZ numbers, the roboregistrations, or Negari’s hairstyle.
To respond in kind, maybe sometimes you should be more open-minded in your views.
We’re looking at 2 distinct issues here.
#1.
The commercial is 100% fine. Entirely within XYZ’s rights to use hyperbole as part of free speech. Nobody who hears that it’s “impossible” to find a good .COM will interpret that literally. What XYZ means (and what viewers will understand them to mean) is that it’s really hard to find a great .COM that remains available to hand-register.
Are the good .COMs all taken? No. I can go out and hand-register good .COM domains tomorrow, and people do so every day. But it is challenging to come up with a fresh, unique, quality name idea that nobody else has already thought up and bought the rights to. Brainstorming requires creativity, research, and patience.
Many people do give up in frustration. They tend to settle for lower quality domains, whether in .COM or in other TLDs. Frequently they don’t realize how many good domains are available to purchase through the aftermarket. XYZ oversimplifies this, as advertisers usually oversimplify things in their own favor.
But back to the ad … It invites a disparaging comparison between .COM and a beat-up car that barely runs. False, of course. But that’s fine. It’s no different from the false comparison in this ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st_GI73-aVE
Likewise, if Match.com ran an ad showing women complaining that it’s “impossible” to find a good partner in real life, nobody would sue the online dating company for false advertising. Hyperbole isn’t meant to be taken literally.
#2
Verisign’s complaint against the car commercial deserves to be thrown out. But Verisign’s other complaints against XYZ look 100% legitimate to me. So don’t be distracted by the car ad. It’s padding for the lawsuit. The real issues are very serious.
Verisign points out how Daniel Negari invokes high registration numbers to sell .XYZ to naïve consumers, even though he surely knows these registrations are (to a significant degree) fake. Verisign calls that deceptive advertising, and I agree with them 100%. Anyone who bought a .XYZ believing in these numbers was cheated.
Verisign also points out that XYZ has been citing reputable organizations like NPR and VentureBeat as if they had endorsed .XYZ as the new .COM. Yet actual quotes make this look like a lie. Verisign calls this deceptive advertising, and I agree with them 100%. Anyone who bought a .XYZ believing in endorsements XYZ implies it received (but never received) was cheated.
.XYZ deserves to be sued for these reasons. Registrants weren’t going to file a class action lawsuit; but we ought, at least, to support Verisign when it stands up for consumers’ rights. Companies should not and are not permitted to knowingly make deceptive claims. Yet XYZ and Negari have (it seems to me) been engaging in a pattern of flagrant deceit – first, by leveraging robo-registrations as if they represented evidence of market demand and, second, by attributing endorsements that never happened to the likes of National Public Radio.
I support XYZ’s right to make corny car commercials. That’s free speech. As for the rest, I’m glad Verisign is attaching some consequences to XYZ’s behavior – behavior that is widely regarded within the domain industry as deceitful.
Andrea has a point. The ad doesn’t say “nearly impossible” which is a matter of opinion. It says “impossible”. This is not a matter of how the uesr interprets it, it’s a matter of the wording used in the ad. Facts are facts. Impossible means 0% chance of possibility, not 1%.
Honestly Verisign does have a great point. I however don’t think this lawsuit will come to an end any time soon.