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Microsoft Hotmail Domain Reward Check on E*Bay
Big_Joe wrote to us with the continuing story of Michael Chaney. Michael is the guy who paid the re-registration fee for the Hotmail domain name, after Microsoft had failed to over the Christmas holiday. He's auctioning the 500$ "thank you" check off on E*Bay and has pledged to donate the winning bid to charity, as well as matching up to $2,000 of that out of his own pocket.
Seems to me like he is buying fame, but anyone who complains about someone giving 2 grand away to a charity for purposes of achieving another few minutes in the spotlight isn't gauging the situation properly.
No shit.
Andover offers up millions to buy Slashdot, get press attention and make its IPO a lot more attractive. The Slashdot community responds with as much adoration, love and praise as it can muster.
This guy offers up $2,500 to help charity and possibly -- though by no means definitely -- get press attention for himself. The Slashdot community thinks he's a contemptible publicity whore.
Go figure.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
This guy is raising money for a charity and he is a hero. I agree with this.
But Bill Gates gives billions of dollars to charity and it is a conspiracy/Bill Gates Sucks/Microsoft Sucks/etc etc..
Is there a bit of Hypocrisy in the slashdot crowd?
Yeah, there was one mindless twist who openly boasted about setting his threshold to TWO or THREE(!) while moderating! His explanation, "I don't want to see the crap, so I'll browse high". People really should be locked at -1 when moderating, that's just pathetic.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
(IANAL, but...) Microsoft wasn't close to losing this domain name, but in general it would probably fall under the rules for abandoned property.
A trademark is *not* an absolute IP right, it has to be defended. That's why they send out "cease and dissent" orders for trivial infringements, like the "Dummy's Guide to my roommate's most annoying habits." If the IP owner doesn't defend their rights, they become unenforceable.
A domain name can be defended by trademarks, of course, but the flip side is that a domain name is the most trivial thing to defend - the cost of an annual renewal is far less than the cost of consulting with your lawyer for an hour. If a company not only didn't pay the fee while the domain was "on hold," but actually let it slip entirely, a judge is unlikely to feel that they exercised due diligence in defending their IP property. It depends on how tightly the domain is tied to the company, of course, but I would not be surprised if domains with only loose connections ("passport" = Microsoft?) be declared legally abandoned and open to whoever paid the bill.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This guy has a lot of integrity or, at the very least, is one hell of a showman. What would truly be funny is if he donated the money to OSS.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Alright. I have read dozens of posts saying how this shows how great the linux community is. Personally, I think that is a load of crap. I have been a part of the community for about a year and a half, I have submitted hacks to kernel.org and have helped new people. But, I think this man paying for a companies mistake, then giving the money (along with 2500 dollars) away only shows how great this man is, not how great the linux community? Granted 3000 (or however much it totals) is a fair sum, it isn't like it will create a new charity, it isn't a rather outrageous donation. Its just an interesting happening, and this man seems to be very nice, but what did the Linux community? If a man is part of a car club, and that man helps an elderly women cross the street, it reflects the man, not the freaking car club. Same goes for linux. THe community is just trying to take credit. The linux community does many good things as a whole, BUT THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.
"Lazyness is the first step towards efficiency." -Patrick Bennett
"linuxsux (0) "
With the requisite shades. And, suprisingly, seems to have a high bid (might be a welcher).
But who would sink to this level? This is going to a charity, be it one to feed the homeless, one to help children, or one to help people being stepped on big corporations. Why should some troll be allowed to stomp all over this good will?
Using this for free adversiting or free trolling over Linux users (raising the bid price unfairly, too)..
It really says a lot about a person's moral fibre, that. It also really disgusts me.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
At one company I used to work for the managers would always complain that their expense credit cards would keep bouncing becuase accounting would put of paying poulty sums for months, aparently we nearly had the phone line cut of a couple of times.
I have heard suggesting that this kind of thing is common accros lots of companys, I wonder how many valuable domains will be lost over the next few years attributable to sloth from the bean counters. This guy proberbly done the right thing in using the whole thing to get quite a bit of publicity for himself, I however might have been tempted to nab the url for myself after it had been 'reposesed'.
People talk about the value of generic domain names before they have been used, but what of the value of a domain name like hotmail after it has become so popular. Makes you wonder how much Microsoft would have been prepaired to pay to get it back. I know there are rules against domain sitting that allow a company to claim a domain name they have a trademark in relation to, but would this stand up in court if the name had been lost due to non payment?
I think that he has been unfairly ripped on slashdot because he was hoping for some money. As far as I'm concerned, I wish he did get some money out of this.
Now he has gone the other route and will be donating money to charity. Good for him. I think it says great things about the Linux community.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
I don't think I've heard about someone with such a sense of civic responsibility in a long time. Imagine - you're sitting at home/work trying to read your hotmail and it isn't working. Do you sit there on your @$$ and bitch about microsoft and the evil empire and how you can't rely on anything anymore...NO, you find out what the problem is and go and fix it, and I'm not talking about just flicking some switch here to re-activate hotmail so you and others can read their mail, you fork out cold hard cash (or was that plastic?) without any certainty that you will see that money again. Then a week or so later you get a cheque form some corporate fat-cats who's @$$ you saved by shelling out your money. Looks like the fat-cats didn't have any loose change because they've made out the check for $500! Do you sit there and think to yourself - "Sweet, looks like a nice new something for me", or "gee, now I can pay off all those parking fines." NO, you offer to auction the cheque off to charity, and then offer to cough up another $2,500 or so for said charity. Makes me feel kind of ashamed of myself, how about you?
Actually, since the bidding has passed 500 dollars, in fact it has reached $2,325.00 as of now, the proceeds will go to the highest bidders charity of choice, with matching funds(or $2500.00 if it goes above that) from Mr. Chaney himself. He is also trying to get Microsoft to provide matching funds too, or at least the original amount of 500.
First, here is a link to the charity the proceeds are going to, per the ebay item description: http://nashville.citysearch.com/E/V/NASTN/0002/13/ 67/cs1.html Second, note that the current bid price is $2,100, versus the $500 bid at the time the Slashdot story was originally posted. Egads. The Slashdot effect on eBay auctions? I can just see the call now for Malda to make karma points transferrable. It would be the next eBay craze - karma auctions.
According to this story in Wired News, ICANN is now letting registrars take 10-year renewals. Since $350 is just as much a drop in the bucket to a big corp as $35, I'm sure every one will take them up on it. The result will be far fewer cracks like this for some random stranger to fill.
One of the open source funds should bid like $10,000 for the check and then have him donate the money back to the fund. Then they'd have the check, and $2,000 more!
But seriously--what a cool guy--
/will
Seeing as people are paying thousands of dollars for a $500 check, I thought I'd take this opportunity to offer for sale not one, but two (!) checks from Microsoft to me. Check one is a $20 rebate check for Microsoft Encarta, and check two is a $100 rebate check for a Xircom 56K modem.
Bidding starts at $120, so lets see those offers fly! Papa needs a new pair of shoes!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
ZDNet bids item with pro-linux description
Posted by Roblimo on 04:15 AM April 1st, 2000
ZDNet Employee writes "ZDNet's CEO is auctioning his old Porche for a new Ferrari. The good thing is that the Porche comes with a Redhat 5.1 CD in the back on the trunk. All proceeds go to the CEO and his girlfriend." It's worth $11,342,251 as we speak. Can I bid with my inflated Andover/RedHat stocks?
If the bid's $2500 he'll pay out his max. $2500 for a total charitable contribution of $5000 which in a 30% tax bracket would be worth $1500 as a tax deduction, giving him an out of pocket cost of $1000.
If the bid went as high as $6000, then the contribution would be $8500 - worth *over* $2500 as a deduction, and he'd actually be ahead!
Anyway, just pointing this out for fun. The charity wins whatever the amount, so it's definitely a cool thing to do.
...but this guy has decided to give the money to people who really need it: Nashville's Table, a soup kitchen operation of sorts.
From the link on EBay:
Nashville's Table, formed in '89 largely through the efforts of Phil Bredesen, a healthcare executive who later was elected mayor of Nashville, collects excess prepared and perishable foods from groceries, restaurants, and caterers and distributes it to agencies that serve hungry, needy, and homeless people. Since then, Nashville's Table has collected and distributed more than 2 million pounds of food--at no cost to either the donors or the recipient agencies. Nashville's Table relies on funding by donations from individuals, corporations, churches, and foundations. Currently, Nashville's Table works with about 175 donor groceries and restaurants, but the addition of two trucks to its fleet doubled its capacity. The not-for-profit organization says that 17 percent of the population of Nashville can be labeled hungry or threatened by hunger, while 20 percent of all prepared and perishable food in Nashville ultimately gest wasted.--Bill Hobbs
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
We have no guarantees that this is really going to go to charity, and as far as I know, his promise is non-binding (real lawyers correct me if I'm wrong).
The reason I'm suspicious is his original quotes saying that he felt he deserved a large sum of money from Microsoft, based how much theoretical money was "lost" (which, of course, was really zero).
Call me cynical, but based on his past behavior I think a grain of salt is prescribed here.
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You should have capitalized the N in Nazis.
kwsNI
http://cgi.ebay.co m/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=239850613
Gentlemen (and women) start your bidding.
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Why?
I mean, I see your point, he's just doing this for good press (I'm not agreeing, just seeing). But honestly, if you can get someone to do a good deed just for some (free) good press, thats great! More good deeds will happen, and the world will be a better place.
Why does a good deed become bad just because it will get you covered in the media? This guy is giving $2500 of his own money to charity not to mention spending some of his time to raise yet more money for charity. HE'S USING HIS GOOD PRESS TO RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY! I think it is in remarkably poor taste to critize someone who is doing their best to get as much money as possible to a food bank. Sure, he gets his name in print, but in 3 weeks who will remember it? By your logic, Mother Theresa was extremly petty. I mean, her whole life she just kept trying to make headlines by helping people.
In short, I have a greal of respect for this man for donating his time and money to charity and very litte for you for critisizing him.
--Nick