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First example of .sucks cybersquatting?

Kevin Murphy, June 30, 2015, 09:36:07 (UTC), Domain Registries

The .sucks domain has been generally available for a little over a week now, and I’ve found what may be the first example of somebody attempting to sell one to a brand owner.
amherstcollege.sucks is one of only a handful on non-registry-owned .sucks domains to have a web site already indexed by Google.
The site solicits commentary about Amherst College — a liberal arts university in Massachusetts that owns a US trademark on “Amherst” — but does not yet publish any such criticism.
However, the phrases “AMHERSTCOLLEGE.SUCKS DOMAIN NAME + WEBSITE IS FOR SALE” and “IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING THIS DOMAIN AND WEBSITE CONTACT US” appear prominently on the bare-bones WordPress blog currently running at the site.
The Whois record shows “THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE” as the registrant organization.
Under the UDRP, offering a domain for sale is usually considered enough to meet the “bad faith” part of the three-prong cybersquatting test.
I doubt it’s the only example of a .sucks domain matching a brand currently listed for sale by a third-party registrant, but it is the first one showing up in Google.
It’s still early days; the other .sucks domains with sites and a Google presence are a mix of redirects, mirroring and placeholders.
Microsoft-owned microsoft.sucks is one of them. It redirects to a Bing search results page.
The $250-a-year .sucks gTLD, managed by Vox Populi registry, currently has fewer than 5,700 domains in its zone file. Growth has ground almost to a halt over the last few days.

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Comments (4)

  1. Jean Guillon says:
    June 30, 2015 at 11:20 am

    Thank you ICANN.

    Reply
    • Richard Funden says:
      June 30, 2015 at 1:50 pm

      What does ICANN have to do with this? .SUCKS is a string like any other. It met the eligibility requirements, it followed the rules for rights protection, so what is ICANN to do?
      If you have an issue with .sucks, take it up with .sucks.

      Reply
      • Jean Guillon says:
        June 30, 2015 at 2:56 pm

        I answer with 2 questions:
        1) Do you have a Trademark?
        2) If “yes”: what if a third party registered it in “.sucks” ?
        I have no issue with .sucks. I have one with ICANN letting Internet be more polluted.
        ICANN considers this as a simple process in front of which it is a matter of paying to fight infringement. It is not as simple as this for Trademarks not it helps the Internet to be a better one.

        Reply
  2. Siemen Roorda says:
    July 1, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    Interesting to see what the .sucks registry itself is going to do about it. They explicitly forbid parking pages: “8. As a Register Name Holder, you agree and understand that the registry operator can remove from the TLD zone file, and render inoperable, your domain name registration, including any associated website and email services, in the following circumstances: (a) Cyberbullying; (b) Pornography; and/or (c) Parked Pages.”
    See Registration T&C on https://www.registry.sucks/policies

    Reply

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