What's up with agoga.com

[Skinny]

What is up with agoga.com?

Seriously, for some reason when I type in my favorite sites I stupidly forget the o in .com (I type pretty fast).

And most of the type I get agoga pages. They seem to reg tons of .cm (Cameroon) domains.

They own:
google.cm,
asmallorange.cm
techcrunch.cm
go2web20.cm
engadget.cm
dell.cm
sony.cm
microsoft.cm

and tons more

Most of these names are obviously trademarked.

These seem to be parked pages, but by agoga.com. They stick this lovely trademark contact form on the bottom of their pages.

Seriously, aren't these guys asking for trouble?

I mean there actions scream bad faith, and cybersquatting.

Am I missing something?

Skinny

 

[alanchau]

They have an agreement with the .cm operators where all .cm domains are redirected to agoga.com and they probably receive a share of the revenue generated.

 

[Skinny]

Okay, this seems to make sense.

But what about the legality of doing this.

Can't google, microsoft, etc. sue agoga.com?

Skinny

 

[lzy]

I don't think so, since they do not own the domain names? And the respective companies did not register them?

 

[Skinny]

I see what you mean.

So then this is kind of a loophole isn't it?

Is this something that will be 'plugged' in the future?

Skinny

 

[alanchau]

The .cm ccTLD is not open for the public to register.

I think a while back, trademarked .cm domains would not resolve to agoga.com, but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

 

[AzN]

I see a registrar claiming to be able to register .CM but not sure. Their fee is $250, which is too much to try :p

 

[lzy]

http://www.iana.org/root-whois/cm.htm

the url listed there for url registration comes up with an error. haha