DOMAIN NAME DISPUTES FAIL TO CLARIFY CYBER COPYRIGHT LAW
Another dispute involving competing claims to a domain name and threatened legal action has come and gone, but Internet marketers still do not have legal precedent to guide the use of copyright names in domain names.

Earlier this year online toy merchant eToys.com relented on its effort to get an arts group to stop using the domain "etoy." eToys was initially granted a temporary injunction preventing use of the domain name, saying the similar name caused confusion in the marketplace (see Dec 1999 vol3). The toy seller's turnaround followed a barrage of electronic protest to its website.

Now the mere threat of a similar electronic protest has apparently caused another company to back off its campaign to usurp a website's domain name. Autodesk, maker of a product called 3D Studio, demanded that The3DStudio.com relinquish its domain name, because of the similarity of the name to Autodesk's product. The3DStudio.com is a forum offering free graphics.

Then a group called RTMark told Autodesk it would sponsor an electronic protest similar to the one that targeted eToys. RTMark is an activist group that says it works to "publicize the widespread corporate abuse of democratic institutions like courts and elections." According to RTMark, Autodesk dropped its demand for the domain name soon after RTMark made the threat.

"Now if they jump like that BEFORE being threatened, we'll have achieved something nice," says RTMark spokesperson Ernest Lucha. But Lucha says that goal is still far away. "So many companies are still behaving like thugs on the Web. The HMO Health Net is trying to destroy http://www.HealthNet.org, founded in 1993 by a Nobel-winning cardiologist to connect doctors in the developing world, and Leonardo Finance is suing the 30-year-old art magazine, Leonardo, for its name."

For its part, RTMark appears prepared to rally Internet users to protest corporations that try to extend their copyright protection onto the Internet. And scant legal precedent exists to help companies figure out what recourse they have against domain names that may infringe upon their copyrights.

ECOMMERCE SNAFUS
Ecommerce technical glitches have been getting high-profile media coverage recently. In this edition of WebPromote Weekly, B.L. Ochman argues that more are on the way, because many online merchants have failed to adequately prepare for their success. And in the article "Get the Idea? How to Generate Marketing Ideas," Shannon Kinnard offers some practical guidance on how to come up with winning Internet marketing ideas.

Imagine this scenario: While ordering vitamins at drugemporium.com, you register for the site, put in your shipping and payment information, and press "Express Checkout." Up comes an order not for your vitamins, but for the products ordered by Ester Levitts in Kentucky. Her Discover card number and expiration date are shown, along with her name, address and ordered items.

Think it's unlikely? Think again. It happened to restaurant broker Ray Tekosky of New York City on Jan. 28. Tekosky downloaded the errant order page and faxed it to me. I faxed it to a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. The next issue of the Journal reported that drugemporium.com had to close down the site for an afternoon while it tended to database problems.

AN ANOMOLY OR JUST THE BEGINNING?
What happened to drugemporium.com? Something that will happen again, maybe in a much bigger way, maybe on your site.

We're still in the early stages of ecommerce. The apparent ease with which hackers recently disabled some of the biggest sites on the Internet makes clear that even the top Internet architects can't predict what might go wrong, let alone know how to counteract problems immediately. There may very well be much bigger mistakes on a much larger scale. Who's to say it couldn't happen with a bank? (When it does Lord, won't you please let some stray millions appear in my account?)

'DONATE THE EXCESS TO CHARITY'
Tekosky is not some ecommerce-basher. He buys online all the time. He bought his Palm Pilot, his printer, many books, vitamins and other goods on the Internet. And he's not the only one who's having trouble with online buying.

Consider the plight of Web developer Ira Wexler and his wife, Barry, who are acquaintances of mine. They thought they found a great deal for dog food at petopia.com. All they had to do was pay in advance to lock in a great price for six 40-pound bags of dry dog food for their yellow Labrador puppy. One 40-pound bag would be sent every 8 weeks. They would pay for the first three bags and get the next three free.

Great idea, until the second 40-pound bag arrived only one week after the first, and then a third 40-pound bag arrived a few days later. The Wexlers now have 120 pounds of dry dog food crammed into a closet in their small New York apartment. Duncan, their puppy, sits hopefully in front of the closet door for hours on end, dreaming of the contents. Petopia.com thoughtfully told them that they could donate their excess to charity.

An email to Petopia went unanswered. The first phone call netted no result. Finally someone emailed to say that the remaining three bags in their order have been placed on hold until April first--April Fool's Day.

FAILURE TO PLAN FOR SUCCESS
What's going on? It would seem that drugemporium.com has a problem with its secure server and petopia.com has a problem with its shipping procedures. Actually it's a good bet that they both had the same problem--they skimped on the back ends of their sites in a rush to get online. My company and many others do a good trade in redoing websites that were skimped on the first time around.

Companies that sell online need to seek out the expertise of ecommerce integrators to design and implement an intelligent infrastructure for their sites. The days of having a brother-in-law who "knows a lot about the Net" design a site have gone the way of the dinosaur. As the ecommerce stakes get higher each day, so too must the budgets for back-end systems.

Instead of planning for success, a lot of companies throw up a site and figure they'll beef up the back end once the money starts rolling in. But sometimes the money comes a lot faster than anyone planned. Encyclopedia Britannica's online debut was an example of failure to plan for success. When they started to give away the information online that millions had been buying for decades, their site was overwhelmed with visitors. Why should that have been a surprise?

We are likely to continue to live with a variety of snafus caused by poor planning. The way your site can avoid these problems? Plan for success. Build a system set to grow with your business. Or your customers could end up paying the price later. Like Ester in Kentucky. And Duncan in New York City.

By B.L.Ochman, What's Next Online, BLOchman@whatsnextonline.com, 212-385-2200. What's Next Online builds global traffic and sales for Internet businesses. Sign up to receive marketing techniques at http://www.whatsnextonline.com

Successful marketing campaigns start with great ideas. But how do you get one of these great ideas? You cultivate the creative tendencies we’re all born with, says to Jordan Ayan, author of "Aha! Ten Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas." Ayan says you can cultivate these tendencies by staying "plugged in" and by using tools such as play and humor.

STAYING PLUGGED IN
Knowledge is the genesis of creativity, and good ideas require a dedication to reading industry and business news. "Nobody can read enough," says Chip Cipcic, principal for Internet promotions agency dotsgood. Cipcic cites Industry Standard, I-sales, CNET, WIRED and WebPromote Weekly as a few of the many resources he monitors regularly.

Author Ayan agrees that knowledge is a building block to creativity. Greater exposure to different ideas and tools "opens you to new possibilities and vistas, and they expand your horizons so you can make connections--the essential ingredients in the creative process," Ayan writes.

PLAYING AROUND
Cipic and his business partner also use play to get ideas to flow. They brainstorm with games like "add on," in which they have a free flow of ideas, trying to one-up each other.

For example, the agency developed an idea for the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association's membership growth program. "We started with a sort of boring, intrusive proposition: Refer all your friends to join an interactive marketing organization," says Cipcic. After brainstorming around many themes, they came up with "Refer Madness." dotsgood developed the theme into a range of promotion elements, including a full-blown website promotion and a viral HTML email referral marketing program. AiMA members laugh at--and remember--the play on words used in the copy and visuals.

LAUGHING TO THE IDEA BANK
Such a sense of humor is important to creativity. "Ever tried to be real serious and come up with good ideas?" asks Cipci. "It's a tough row to hoe because it's too analytical and left-brained. Humor brings out the fun and the intuitive, and that's good when creating ideas. Plus, on the receiving end, nothing cuts the clutter for an ad or promotional idea like humor," he says.

SELECTING THE CREAM OF THE CROP
dotsgood carefully records all the ideas that come out of brainstorming sessions. Then they cull the best few ideas, representing different approaches, out of the 30 to 40 different ideas that they typically generate. The client only sees a few ideas developed and cost-estimated.

Testing can also help you choose the best ideas. Scott May, a senior manager of direct marketing at the ISP Earthlink, says the company's free webcam promotion for new customers was chosen after it was tested against several other offers, including radios and portable TVs.

"We have an idea of what our customers will like, but to understand what is most compelling, we test out our ideas," he says. His advice is for businesses to test any idea, not by relying on third-party research, but by going straight to your consumers.

Though you may come up with many good ideas, testing their effectiveness will ensure you get the cream of the crop. "We’re all in business to sell," Cipci says. "A good idea amuses and intrigues to give marketers the chance to convince, but it must lead to action by consumers."

DOUBLECLICK BOWS TO PRESSURE, ADDS OPT-OUT OPTION
Responding to consumer and legislative pressure, banner ad serving network Doubleclick announced last week that it will let consumers opt out of its tracking.

DoubleClick's new policy follows the uproar that developed after publicity about the company's matching of online data with real-world consumer data. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the DoubleClick's tracking. And Sen. Robert Torricelli announced legislation that would ban gathering personal information via the Internet without consumer permission, according to USA Today.

In response to the brouhaha, DoubleClick is launching an Internet privacy education campaign that will serve up 50 million banner ads pointing consumers to the DoubleClick site – http://www.privacychoices.org, where they can learn about online privacy and opt out of DoubleClick's tracking system.

DoubleClick's opt-out plan is inadequate, says Jason Catlett, a privacy advocate and president of Junkbusters. "This really bypasses the main point, which is assent of the user is not being obtained," he told USA Today.