Branding, domain names et al.

[Eric Scheid]

Jan Whitaker <jwhit@primenet.com> wrote on 20/10/98 7:03 AM:
>Equivalent would be booboo.com.au v booboo.com v booboo.edu.au v
>booboo.se.  These are all discrete names, nothing to do with finding the
>right computer in the database of IP lookup tables.  So just like people
>or fish food, why can't there be other uses of the words?  

because they want to own the word, in toto, for "branding" purposes. I 
surmise it's an after-effect of our 'sound-bite' generation - a single 
word is all that matters, we don't have '15 minutes of fame' to explain 
the context.

>Perhaps the answer is because the guys with the big bucks say so.

Sadly so ... the makers of the tv show Gumby took a kid to court because 
his father registered a domain name after his nickname: pokey.org. 
Thankfully, the guys with the big bucks didn't win this time.

The same couldn't be said for the owners of a certain music store in the 
USA, which was established and trading for many many years ... they had 
to hand-over ownership of soundgarden.com.

e.