1st Naughty America, Now Nasty Dollars...
 

So am I the only one that got a slap from Nasty Dollars about giving trademarked domains back?

No you're not the only one, my friends had the same problem...

Trademarked domains. I guess it would be something like a tradedmarked marque in front of a restaraunt. It would be like someone taking a "McDonalds" sign and changing it a little bit and putting it on their restaraunt. I can see why Naughty America and Nasty Dollars would want to take domains that mention their companies somehow. I did not have this problem with my domains.

I have many companies that have actually ASKED ME to make similar sites on their own trademarked domains. Sucks when someone wants to take them back.. Ohh well.. There will always be hahaha!

And Swankdollars

As long as you're promoting them purely on the site I wouldn't think it would be an issue. Times are changing.

Yes I agree.

At one time many programs didnt mind you having thier name in your domain as long as you promoted them . I had a few like this not to cybersquat but it simply makes the surfer not feel he has gone to a different site.....but recently as adult gets harder to make $$$$ changes ranging from this domain issue to major webmaster general terms are getting hit...most times its not in the favour of the webmaster.

who? :1orglaugh

was it a personal email to you with the domain(s) in question listed, or a general one?

What I don't understand is why are these companies wasting the time of their lawyers attacking their affiliates?!

Why don't they team up and concentrate on attacking those that steal their content and post it for free... erm....ILLEGAL TUBES????!

not only you, i know at least 4 other webmasters myself included ;)

Personal...

i think i am also the one who had to receive this email, but i asked twice via email to get my old not working email replaced with working one but no reply, so if i havent received the email where is the problem? btw naughty america is exactly the same scheme, old not working email but nobody cared. now i cant wait to get some letter from lawyer

Winner winner, chicken dinner.

I know a few websites haave it in there TOS about making domains with their trademark, have not seen a lot do that though.

I got nailed too pretty hard...sure sucks ass for sure!

I just spoke with them and they told me this was on a case-by-case basis. For example, I did not receive any e-mails about this. Have you guys tried contacting them at all and speaking directly to see what can be done? I had a problem like this once in the past with another company and it ended up being a mistake that was all straightened out within a day or two.

Case by case basis, who said this? I was told any domain with ND sites needed to be transferred to them.

lets hear for some more

weeks of work, and pushing on them only nd sites. now that is a great kick to the ass

Ya me too, had a network of sites pushing awesome sales, sucks big time!

Matt told me this. Who told you all sites needed to be transferred?

Why would they try to shut the tubes down? They own most of them.

I did talk to them and I push them in a variety of ways, all making money... dating, tgp's, blogs, review sites, etc... I pleaded and they said, "Sorry, but we are doing this to everyone." Hence the post here...

I really think this will make people shy away from sending them traffic and affect them more in the long run. To piss on your loyal hard working affiliates just trying to make a buck get shafted now. I always thought being a webmaster working for a program was a you help me I help you deal and as long as it was all legit promotions and nothing shady or illegal all is well.

It's not fair to take domains and work, backlinks, site networking and trades long hours of work and time spent it really is a kick to the balls. So say you do give up domains.. take all your work down and links then they end up with a bunch of domains with nothing on them and if they wanted them in the first place they have plenty of money to buy all the domains they ever wanted to protect. It's greedy IMHO.

WHY ND? Are you not making enough money? You don't want to share anymore? Why the sudden change? I want to hear from Nasty Dollars why this is such a huge problem all the sudden. Give honest answers why you think your loyal hardworking affiliates who have made you millions should now have to give you domains because suddenly you change or enforce rules is what I am sure you will say that it's been in your TOS well no one would of ever done it if you put a stop to it first thing. Now after all the work is done you say wait a minute we changed our mind give em over. That is not right and I can't see how you can justify the attitude and change. If you didn't want people doing it should of stopped it years ago this is nothing new.

It's really sad how adult biz is going these days, I guess it boils down to less money and more greed for the bigger piece of the pie because there is not enough to share anymore. So Please Nasty Dollars explain why it's such a bad thing if people promote your sites with domains that pre sell your sites to make you money and the webmaster who put his time and money into it also. It's a bad move and I think everyone should not give in and let them waste money with their lawyers if they want to play this game. Of course they are not going to payout people or play hardball too but that will only create more animosity towards them and less people will be willing to send them traffic. So ND go ahead and be mean and NASTY it will cost you in the long run maybe not with all affiliate's but a good amount that do send you traffic and sales.

One last thing, if they want them. pay up make a offer for each domain and it's worth, traffic, keywords, backlinks.. etc.. that's the only way I see this being a fair deal. Like I said before ND should of said NO period years ago not now just change after people have invested in a lot of domains and work. bullshit I think. end of rant

If you have trademarked your site you MUST protect your trademark. Otherwise you lose it. That includes domains. Sucks for those of you who promote in that manner. If they did not go after those domains their trademark can be challenged because they are not actively protecting it. It's strictly business.

You will have to give up a big bunch of your .in-domains.

You will have to give up a big bunch of your domains

Robbie then they should of done it years ago. You don't find it strange now after how many webmaster and domains it suddenly being enforced a problem? I understand their side fine.. but why let webmasters do it for years then suddenly pull the plug? No one cares to buy any of your trademarks so I can see why you side with them. lol

You will have to give up a big bunch of your domains.

Polish arisocrat will have to give up an even bigger bunch of domains..

And I will probably have to give up most of all :( Damnnnnnnnnn

I will answer my own question because there was no money in it for them years ago when maybe there was less than 50 domains if that with their trademark in them. it's strictly greed not protecting shit.. if you want to lie to yourself be my guest but anyone with a clue knows the real reasoning behind this move.

Would have been nice to have been told this 8 years ago when I was registering 50+ domains specifically to promote them.

Doing this now is really bad form. :disgust

Which email address did it come from V Rocks? I set up most of their promo emails etc to go directly into my spam folder.

I would think that they either didn't have their stuff trademarked at the time and/or didn't fully understand the laws. I can tell you this much...since piracy has all but destroyed the business, myself and many others started learning a lot more about copyright and trademarks.

It's just my opinion but I don't think that NA or ND has any "evil" intentions. I think that they are doing what things that they SHOULD have done long ago but didn't worry about. Now that all this thieving and piracy has taken place, everybody is starting to dot their "i"s and cross their "t"s getting ready for what's coming.

Unfortunately it means policing the trademark.

Either that, or they are all just evil monsters who waited patiently for webmasters to build an empire that they could then ransack.

No matter what any of us believe...bottom line is this: the days of squatting domains that are trademarked without the trademark owner coming after you are over. As I said earlier...that's a blow for folks who have made a living off of that type of promotion.

Can someone please be so kind and post the actual email?

read what you are typing, domains that promote their sites arent hurting them one bit. they are making them sales. you are off base man. it's the people stealing their content or promoting other sites with their trademarks who should be shit canned. not the honest hard working webmasters who are doing legit work for their program.

You make no sense saying this piracy issue. nothing is being stolen. you argument does not hold any water at all. if we where talking about domains with tubes with their content on them then you would have a point but that is not the case.

well if they wanted the domains so bad they should of registered them ages ago they knew before anyone else what their site names would be and what domains they where using for their sites. they had the money for reg fees. it's bullshit

so since they didn't do anything about their content being stolen the honest webmasters who put hard work promoting them and building up backlinks and traffic to their sites should be punished for it. that seems real fair.

blame it on the tubes. thats the normal status quo if there is any issue. just like it was a rogue ex employee. this biz can make you sick at times.

if they want to spend money on lawyers going after domains why don't they spend money and energy going after people stealing their content and the tubes? because they know who the easier target is and they will blackball them and hold over their head payments if they don't give up their shit. it's a fucked situation and anyone who says diff is an idiot.

a tube owner who has their content isnt promoting them anyways so they can't do shit except spend a bunch of money on lawyers and maybe not accomplish anything. this way they can win no matter what. I was born at night but not last night.

Robbie,

I ususally agree with 99.9 percent of your views and comments but I find it hard to in this instance.

Your comment "I would think that they either didn't have their stuff trademarked at the time and/or didn't fully understand the laws."

"If you have trademarked your site you MUST protect your trademark"

Most of these corps have had registered trademarks for years and good lawyers so they fully understand the value and importance of such ..they are not just now waking up to the facts.

It looks like many trademark holders (both mainstream and adult) simply ignored people registering them and sat back and watched webmasters build those domains into something of value ..( they can of course see how much value from the webmaster stats ) ...now they are mature $$$ earning domains its time for them to say " Hey those contain our trademark we want them for free...hand them over".

Yes its business and tough times ....so I agree they can now call in what may have been a master plan over many years of sitting and waiting .....and yes they have every right ......just sucks for those affiliates involved even if it is actually you could say thier own fault...

Bottom line is due to piracy and theft the adult industry has reached the "every man for himself " stage I think.

it's ruthless and nasty they knew what sites and domains they had in the works long before any affiliate knew. either reg every domain u want then or simply never let any webmaster reg a domain with any of your site name in it from the beginning. that's the only fair and just way. I wish more people had the balls to stand up against em and say get your lawyers and show that they did nothing for years and now suddenly they send out an email saying hand em over.. I think a fair judge would see the shadiness in this.

im still surprised they dont have anyone for in-house SEO, it probably hurts money-wise when you manage to rank 1st position in google for their websites ;-)

I wasn't saying THIS is a piracy issue. I was saying that NOW that piracy has done all this damage...many companies for the first time ever had to bring in their lawyers to begin trying to understand the DMCA laws.

Trust me, this was never much concern in the old days.

We mostly all had lawyers to fight the govt. I certainly didn't understand the importance of trademark and what it will mean when all of this piracy is finally laid to rest by new laws that will catch up with technology.

That's all I'm saying. We now all have lawyers telling us to actively protect trademarked domains. That was never the case before. In the past we only were concerned with staying out of jail. lol

I hope that makes more sense. I can't speak for NA or ND. I'm only giving you an educated guess based on what I've been instructed to do by attorneys about my trademarks and what the importance of a properly maintained trademark is going to mean in the future in the battle against piracy.

I wasn't meaning to infer that current affiliates who are domain squatting were responsible for anything like that at all. And I sympathize with their plight. But as I said, it's business. I'm just glad I always built my own sites (tgps) and never promoted using that method.

I will take a total guess here but would imagine having thousands of webmasters covering the top rankings and paying them a commission is cheaper,faster and more cost effective overall....hence thats why the affiliate model grew so big as it did or programs would have simply done everything inhouse.

There was nothing in their affiliate T&C's when I signed up to their program in 2002 that said I couldn't register domains containing their site names, every smart affiliate knew the value of that back in the day. It's still important to this day of course on some search engines.

It seems unjust that they are now retroactively trying to impose this new ruling. If they want some of my "choice" domains now, I'll ask for some reasonable compensation, or they can send me some legal documents and I'll take down links to their sites from every site I have them on, stop promoting them, and urge everyone else to do the same.

Program owners should remember the value of affiliates, without us, your brands may never have taken off, you may have only made a tenth of your total sales. To fuck us over is a daft business practice.

:2 cents: there was nothing in tos when i signed up. now, after weeks of hard seo work and stable serps, they want took my hard work and all my possitions and my knowhow? thank you for all the nice money you made me, nastydollars, but this is a big hard fuck off to your hard working affiliates

It sure sucks ass doing something for over 3 years, buying domains, building sites, links, traffic, etc then all of the sudden they pull the plug on you. Sure would have been a lot cooler if they just said no more site names in domains from this day forward...

same here too...

I am sorry about this issue,

so thats why I am always developing the generic domain names to avoid this situations.

Sucks big time