Jimmy Chung and Firestorm cards. Dodgy practices?
Joe Mac
surprised that a little short guy has no qualms about pissing off 2 rather
fat, angry and at times short tempered people. Tim Hall can certainly vouch
for this having threatened to kill Chad after a vodka fuelled blast of
courage and getting his head smashed in with a German bed lamp, and promptly
running crying to WotC to get him the sack.
Anyway I digress...
Last year Jimmy Chung aka 'Firestorm Cards' thought it would be a good and
ethical way of drumming up business for his site by registering
www.cuttingedgecards.co.uk and pointing it at his website. Obviously the
intent was that our customers might accidentally type this in instead of
www.cutting-edge-cards.com to get to our site. After a few legal threats he
pointed it a coincidentally named "cutting edge cards" seller of cigarette
cards who had no idea of the new web address he had been "given". This was
within a few weeks of trying it on so I didn't think any more of it except
what a twat he was.
However not long after that I was checking our standings for key words on
google when guess what! If you go to google and type "cutting edge cards"
as the three search words, who appears on the site as a "sponsored" site but
www.firestormcards.co.uk !! This has been going on since the start of the
year and continues to be the case.
Jimmy can I suggest you either
a) get a life and stop living off our coat tails. If your site's that great
surely it will attract people itself. Stop being a parasite and trying to
leech our custom. OR
b) admit that you're smalltime and need to resort to pathetic means to get
people to your "e-shop" OR
c) try using words like "donkey" "britney"and "ringtones" in your
sponsorship, it'll get you a lot more hits!
To everyone else you may like to have a little giggle (literally) at Jimmy's
expense by typing in cutting edge cards in google and then clicking on his
sponsored link. This will cost him a bit of money which though not a lot,
may well begin to add up after a siginificant number of click-thru's
Many thanks!
Joe
Cutting Edge Cards (proud sponsors of Firestorm Cards)
mgreen02
> Tim Hall can certainly vouch
> for this having threatened to kill Chad after a vodka fuelled blast of
> courage and getting his head smashed in with a German bed lamp, and promptly
> running crying to WotC to get him the sack.
>
> Anyway I digress...
>
looking for, not Tim Hall (who left WotC for entirely different and
unrelated reasons).
Not that going anywhere near events surrounding that night in Mainz
will ever give anyone any joy.
GreenO, WotC UK historian.
Wdyw
(do a search on deja.com for those that missed it last year)
You would certainly want to avoid a cutting edge with that practice.
Adam Reynolds
is nothing to stop him from pointing the domain directly at his own
site (which is what he should be doing).
I was talking to Jimmy about this on Saturday at the Welsh Nats (I was
running a stall there) and I did go home and buy collectandplay.co.uk
because I couldn't trust him/other 'dodgy' people not to do it in the
future :)
However what he's doing isn't going to make him a lot of friends, well
none from cutting edge anyway. It is a dastardly deed and totally
dispicable but unfotunately ain't illegal.
From a cold hard business view point, kudos to him.
Personally I'm trying to give people a reason to use my site other
than to buy cards. The deckbuilder, what would you build, and email
draft system really do make the site a useful MTG tool.
You will notice that the Wizards limited forums are full of threads
about the CnP draft system. The odd email thanking me for the site
also helps, although I prefer it when they gimme cold hard cash :)
Haven't bothered with articles, but think StarCity and others kinda
have this covered and really only works if you have a good resource of
recognised playas.
As to what to do about your situation. Offer a reasonable amount
(probably through gritted teeth) for the domain and hire yourself a
good search engine placement 'officer'.
Adam
www.collectandplay.com/drafts - Free Drafts by Email System
www.collectandplay.com - Card prices that track ebay with free p+p.
Yup, we're cheap and nasty :P
Granty
> (probably through gritted teeth) for the domain and hire yourself a
> good search engine placement 'officer'.
If I was a card salesman on the net I would google bomb. It cant be
hard to tap the huge magic playing blog resource that is available to
rocket your site right up the top page of google.
Still Im not so it doesnt matter
GRANTY FOR ENGLISH NATIONAL CHAMPION!!!!!
>
Joe Mac
ran crying not Chad!
Anyway what ARE you doing still lurking on here Matt? We thought you'd
managed to break free of this place, which has become particularly tedious
partly thanks to the unofficial group police but also partly because little
controversial gets said other than "yo momma so fat" type posts. Hows
Alice?
Joe
xxx
"mgreen02" <mgre...@bcuc.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:a346f9cb.0406...@posting.google.com...
Joe Mac
> However what he's doing isn't going to make him a lot of friends, well
> none from cutting edge anyway. It is a dastardly deed and totally
> dispicable but unfotunately ain't illegal.
Actually it is. Check
http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm
And the part where it says
a. Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory
administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a "complainant")
asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of
Procedure, that
(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or
service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain
name; and
(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
And also that it goes on to say that court proceedings are possible if the
dispute resolution fails.
Jimmy is "firestorm" not "cutting edge cards", it's clearly confusingly
similar to ours and was being used in bad faith.
Joe
mgreen02
[snip]
> Anyway what ARE you doing still lurking on here Matt?
Well it is, techically, a trading-cards group rather than just M:TG so
I live in hope that someone will post looking for a game of V:TES in
the Stourbridge/Wolverhampton area. *sigh* It's almost enough to drive
me back to Magic, but then I remember being mana screwed and get over
it. This area is a CCG black hole. Games Workshop seems to have an
iron grip on the teen pound here. Alooooooough the new Marvel VS.
thing...maybe...just maybe...
Also, I did spend a stupid proportion of my life playing Magic and
it's a bit hard to let go. :)
> We thought you'd
> managed to break free of this place, which has become particularly tedious
> partly thanks to the unofficial group police but also partly because little
> controversial gets said other than "yo momma so fat" type posts. Hows
> Alice?
>
Alice is fine. We're getting married in September.
We're playing City of Heroes (MMORPG thing) at the minute having
played Asheron's Call with Geordie Tait for ages. I still like reading
Geordie's writing which keeps me up to date with M:TG a bit.
Cheers Joe, give our regards to Chad and his brood.
Matt.
mgreen02 at eudoramail dot com
Adam Reynolds
> Actually it is. Check
>
> http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm
>
> And the part where it says
> a. Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory
> administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a "complainant")
> asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of
> Procedure, that
>
> (i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or
> service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
> (ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain
> name; and
> (iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
>
> And also that it goes on to say that court proceedings are possible if the
> dispute resolution fails.
>
> Jimmy is "firestorm" not "cutting edge cards", it's clearly confusingly
> similar to ours and was being used in bad faith.
>
Any chance you can talk to Nominet about this?
As to his search engine placement activities. I believe in the US a
company was asked to cease and decist from optimising their site to
get as much of a rivals traffic as possible. I do believe a trademark
was in use there.
Adam
JC
> > none from cutting edge anyway. It is a dastardly deed and totally
> > dispicable but unfotunately ain't illegal.
emails from 2 years ago. Money must be tight if they cant afford the
£2 a year for the domain.
>
>
> Actually it is. Check
>
Actually it's not
> http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm
>
> And the part where it says
> a. Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory
> administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a "complainant")
> asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of
> Procedure, that
>
> (i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or
> service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
What Is a Trademark or Servicemark?
A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade
with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them
from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark
except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service
rather than a product. The terms "trademark" and "mark" are commonly
used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks.
Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a
confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the
same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly
different mark. Trademarks which are used in interstate or foreign
commerce may be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office. The
registration procedure for trademarks and general information
concerning trademarks is described in a separate pamphlet entitled
"Basic Facts about Trademarks".
Now when did you register cutting edge cards as either?
> (ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain
> name; and
I felt like reserving the name and paying for it to be linked to some
cigerate card company. It has not pointed to my website since when u
raised this last year. It was only pointing at my website because I
registered the domain using the same host.
> (iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
>
Well please tell me since no traffic is directed to me how am I using
it in bad faith.
> And also that it goes on to say that court proceedings are possible if the
> dispute resolution fails.
>
> Jimmy is "firestorm" not "cutting edge cards", it's clearly confusingly
> similar to ours and was being used in bad faith.
>
Over the course of the next few months the domain will be pointing to
a site that sells birthday cards.
----------------------------
As for the search engine well if u have a complaint have a word with
google. Try searching for the following on google
carphonewarehouse
phones4u
british airways
These are now all larger than you and all have people using thier
names in google.
Now if u have an issue raise it with google.
> Joe
Andrew Mitchell
This kind of practise is normal for Google.
Try searching on Google for 'Spybot', 6 months ago you wouldn't get to
see the site of the free application
(http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=home), instead you get
links to copycat products that have to be bought... after many many
complaints, this has been fixed.
But what Jimmy's done is actually fine. His site comes up as one of
the advertised and paying links - it's not in the 'search results'.
Of course you guys could also pay Google to advertise your site and be
listed up there too, or you could hire a search engine consultant to
get your site description to match up nicely with Google's algorithms.
A friend of mine is making a killing providing this kind of service
(http://www.clicks2customer.com/).
Cheers,
Andrew
Joe Mac
"JC" <cs...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eb58a31a.04061...@posting.google.com...
> > > However what he's doing isn't going to make him a lot of friends, well
> > > none from cutting edge anyway. It is a dastardly deed and totally
> > > dispicable but unfotunately ain't illegal.
> Well they should have thought of that when they started sending me
> emails from 2 years ago. Money must be tight if they cant afford the
> £2 a year for the domain.
>
> >
> >
> > Actually it is. Check
> >
>
> Actually it's not
<snip irrational arguments>
>"I felt like reserving the name and paying for it to be linked to some
>cigerate card company."
...as you do.......
:-D
Cutting Edge Cards, proud sponsors of Firestorm Cards
Nigel Edwards
> [snip]
> > Anyway what ARE you doing still lurking on here Matt?
>
> Well it is, techically, a trading-cards group rather than just M:TG so
> I live in hope that someone will post looking for a game of V:TES in
> the Stourbridge/Wolverhampton area. *sigh* It's almost enough to drive
> me back to Magic, but then I remember being mana screwed and get over
> it. This area is a CCG black hole. Games Workshop seems to have an
> iron grip on the teen pound here. Alooooooough the new Marvel VS.
> thing...maybe...just maybe...
Marvel VS is great. That is all :-)
Regards,
--
Nigel Edwards <ni...@NOSPAMZ.jagox.demon.co.uk>
"You dab your eyes at the end and wonder what is so wrong about the love
of a lesbian for a dinosaur."
Owen Pauling
> registered the domain using the same host.
I like it when businesses show some nerve with their advertising,
don't get me wrong, but the above is bullshit. Why would you spend
money registering a domain to point it to nothing? A domain that
points to something completely irrelevant is as good as it not being
registered to anyone at all. It shows some initiative, so you may as
well just admit you did it to pinch their traffic, that way at least
it looks like you've got guts.
JC
Owen.
> (iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
Read above line of nominet guidelines.
Andrew Buchanan
> Try searching on Google for 'Spybot', 6 months ago you wouldn't get to
> see the site of the free application
> (http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=home), instead you get
> links to copycat products that have to be bought... after many many
> complaints, this has been fixed.
I came across a sneaky example of this last week. I was looking in
google for Ad-Aware (the bona fide security product from Lavasoft) but
my search string was "adaware". The top listing in google was a
company called "ada-ware", which touted security products based on the
programming language Ada! I was nearly fooled.
However, when i checked just now, ada-ware are no longer visible in
the top 10.
Regards,
Andrew Buchanan.