MySpace.com, the world’s most obnoxious social network, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation won a ruling today to have the domain name myspace.co.uk turned over to them, even though the uk domain was registered in 1997, six year before Myspace was founded. The ruling (pdf) was made by independent expert Antony Gold as part of the arbitration process run by the .uk domain registry, Nominet.

Total Web Solutions (TWS) of Stockport had registered myspace.co.uk in 1997 and used the address to offer mini websites to subscribers and email services. It said that though it no longer offers the mini websites it still provides email services to 18 subscribers at the address. As part of the judgment against TWS, was the fact the domain appears to be parked yet derives income from PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisments displayed to visitors of the page. When contacted by Myspace, TWS had sought up to £220,000 in return for the domain, however, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, being the devouring corporation that it is refused topay TWS for the transfer of the domain and elected to take TWS to court regarding the matter.

TWS claims that it had used the myspace.co.uk page for advertising previous to the News Corp acquisition. “The Respondent has not done anything other than to continue the uses or its domain name myspace.co.uk which it commenced in July 2004 or earlier, before it knew of the Complainant and before it acquired any rights in the descriptive name “MySpace” in the UK. Though TWS recognised that the nature of the advertising changed, it said it did not control the advertisments displayed on the site and that it should not be punished for the popularity of MySpace. Gold said that it was not relevant that TWS did not select specific adverts, that it owned the pages displayed and must be responsible for them and the income it gained from association with MySpace.

“This advantage and the use made of the Domain Name by the Respondent is unfair,” he ruled. “The income the Respondent is deriving from its pay per click links at the site of the Domain Name derives in part as a consequence of it being able to trade off the reputation of the Complainant. Accordingly the Domain Name in the hands of the Respondent is an Abusive Registration.”

This case is unprecedented in that it shows sufficient evidence that (in the UK at least), registration of a domain name does not constitute a copyright or informal trademark based on conception date. Although common sense would dictate that TWS should essentially own the informal trademarks to the term “MySpace”, it just goes to show how a corporation like News Corp can bully anybody around. The fact that News Corp refused to pony up a measley £220,000 for the co.uk domain name is ridiculous considering how much money the corporate giant rakes in with their sensationalistic news networks. Shame on MySpace and News Corp for trampling on entrepeneurs and shame on the people who ruled in favor of MySpace on this judgement.

It’s no suprise the market’s are down again today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 237 points or -1.83%, but the real news is the closing price of Google Inc., you know, the one with the company motto “Do no Evil”…

Well, you can pretty much expect the market will continue sliding downward for the rest of this week. There might be some slightly positive days on Wednesday or Thursday, but the trading pattern that’s exhibiting itself and the current economic situations in the US forecast a dismal week on Wall Street.

In a war over gas prices, the seemingly petty back-and-forth bickering between two rival gas station owners in Detroit, Michigan ended in tragedy as one of the men shot and killed the other over the lowering of prices by 3 cents.

A fatal bullet to BP station owner Jawad Bazzi’s head was the end result of Bazzi walking across the street with a couple of employees to confront the Marathon owner, Hussah Masboath, and his posse regarding Masboath dropping his price from $2.93 from $2.96 per gallon.

The two groups of Middle Eastern men argued in Arabic, then began throwing punches. One of Bazzi’s employees hit a Marathon employee with a baseball bat, severely injuring him. That’s when the Marathon owner grabbed his handgun and fired three or four times hitting Jawad Bazzi, 45, of Dearborn Heights was shot in the head.

Sgt. Eren Stephens Bell, a spokeswoman for the Detroit police told reporters that the shooter and Marathon owner, Hussah Masboath was taken into police custody. Additionally Bell said that charges had not yet been filed against the alleged gunman.

Following the “Gas War” shooting, Masboath’s Marathon station was closed by law enforcement but the dead man Bazzi’s family and employees took advantage of losing their competition and hiked prices 13 cents per gallon to $3.09.

I’ve finally figured out where all the scammers go to create those fake names you see in their whois domain registration details. Here’s a site that will generate fake name and address in a variety of countries, languages and in male or female gender (great for all those cross dressing scammers like Jack Cobb and Lee Smith). Not only that, it will generate fake social security number for US residents, or Visa number for Non-US, it even generates a mother’s maiden name !!! Check it out, it’s pretty funny…

Fake Name Generator

I chose to be a male, of Slovenian heritage living in Denmark and this is what it gave me…

I’ve always dreamed of being a French female living in Switzerland, don’t ask me why, it’s just a little fantasy but the amazing Fake Name Generator gave me the identity I’ve always imagined.

Too cool !!!! Have fun with it !!!

Normally when you think about casino crybabies, you think of the stupid people who are conned out of their hard earned cash by the flickering lights of the slot machines, but this time it’s Caesars Casino that’s the one weeping and wailing like little babies who have had their bottle taken away.

A faulty slot machine at Caesars Indiana credited gamblers $10 for each dollar they spent because the software wasn’t designed for US Currency, and more than two dozen people who played the machine before one gambler alerted the casino walked away with almost half a million dollars.

Caesars claims to have lost $487,000 on the machine during that time and they’re pushing prosecutors to consider criminal charges against the casino gamblers who won big on that particular slot machine. The irony of it all is that if a slot machine jams or malfunctions and casino patrons lose money, they are expected to just walk away, but when the shoe is on the other foot the casino is behaving like a bigger loser than they already are.