Domain name "little guys" fight back
Ajax.org, a nonprofit Web site, is organizing a federation of small domain name holders to stand up to wealthy trademark owners.
The alliance is being proposed by Ajax.org, a Web site that successfully rebuffed demands by Colgate-Palmolive to give up the rights to its domain name. As previously reported, Colgate-Palmolive dropped its demands after news and advocacy site Slashdot.org organized a public campaign that generated 1,300 signatures for a protest petition in just 24 hours.
"When the Netizens of slashdot.org came to our rescue with a conscientious outpouring of letters and feedback, we were saved," Ajax.org wrote in announcing the proposed alliance, dubbed Domain Defense Advocate. "Since the letter-writing campaign was so successful in the case of ajax.org's domain defense, we imagine that it can be equally successful in other cases."
Two recent fights, however, show that wealthy trademark owners are not invincible, especially when the legal battles they wage result in bad public relations. In addition to Colgate-Palmolive dropping its demands that Ajax.org surrender its name, for example, Archie Comics recently dropped its campaign to confiscate the rights to Veronica.org, a Web site set up by a Los Angeles man to celebrate the birth of his 2-year-old daughter, Veronica, in 1997.