Dallas Cowboys Website Disappears for Failure to Renew

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Josh MacFadden

Following an eventful weekend in which the Dallas Cowboys (1-7) lost in a blowout to the the Green Bay Packers (6-3) and subsequently fired head coach Wade Phillips, apparently the team forgot to renew its domain name registration for the team's official website www.dallascowboys.com.  As a result, for 48 hours the website was temporarily a generic landing page suggesting that the site was available for purchase from Network Solutions LLC.  The error was subsequently corrected November 9th as the domain name was renewed.  According to The Dallas Morning News, the administrative contacts for the domain referenced Jerry Jones Jr., the team's Executive Vice President and Chief of Sales and Marketing Officer (and son of team owner Jerry Jones) and have since changed to a contact email and mailing address care of Network Solutions, the Registrar.   Lesson learned for the team, as the domain is now renewed until November 2, 2020.

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Chris Bosh Awarded Control Over Domain Names

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Josh MacFadden

In a development illustrative of the importance of the Internet and social media to professional athletes and celebrities desiring to control their online image, a novel decision of a United States federal court in California awarded Toronto Raptors forward Chris Bosh control of the domain name chrisbosh.com as well as nearly 800 Internet domain names utilizing the names of college and professional athletes and celebrities including Canada's Steve Nash as well as several current and former Toronto Raptors.  A complete list of the domain names is available at:  http://www.winston.com/siteFiles/Domain_Name_List.pdf.

The award of the domain names follows an earlier award of $120,000 in damages under the U.S. Federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act for the infringing, unauthorized usage of chrisbosh.com for the benefit of the former owner of the domain (Luis Zavala and his company Hoopology.com) and a request by Bosh's counsel to seek control over the list of domain names which were wrongfully controlled by the defendants.

A company controlled by Bosh, MaxDeal Technologies, has offered to provide the domain names free of charge to their rightful owner following submission of a written request to Hadi@MaxDealTechnologies.com. 

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