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Cyber-Squatting vs. Legitimate Domain Brokering?
Silverhammer asks: "I just started my new job for a small Michigan company, and one of my first duties is to sell off what could be a VERY high-priced, high-profile domain name. The company registered it years ago for legitimate reasons -- before the whole *.com rush and "cyber-squatting" hysteria -- but after a corporate reorganization it fell into disuse. Now, the inevitable dilemma of "renew or sell" has finally reared its ugly head." Like it or not, domain names are marketable. Big time. But is this fair? What do you all think should
be the proper way to handle a domain name that has fallen into disuse? More in the article body...
"My question to Slashdot is a two-parter. First, the general: what is the real difference between cyber-squatting and legitimate domain brokering? Squatting for its own sake is a Bad Thing, of course, but domain names are the real estate of the 'Net and real estate is a legitimate business. Second, the specific: what's the best way for me to proceed with selling this domain? I want to keep it clean and sane, but it's still my responsibility to get the best price I can for the company. "
I'd say to Auction it off of course. That's fair, honnest and open.
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
I think that any generic domain name is auctionable to the highest bidder, per-say. For example, loans.com, business.com, buy.com. No one in their right mind would name a company by that name, so pretty much the domain would just point to an already existing business domain.
However, where it comes down to someone selling a domain name that is already the name of an established business, is where the line should be drawn. If a company would want to sell, they should sell to the company that has it as a rightful name, rather than some other company that'd just exploit it.
Just IMO
I'd say it is your company's to sell. I mean, this isn't one of 500 domain names scooped up to block a legitimate organization from registering it. If it was bought (or better yet, actually used) in good faith, then I say sell it.
IANAL, but I do think that the law is geared towards allowing your name to be your property if there is a good faith intent to use it, rather than speculating or ransoming good names.
"Use it or lose it" .us domain hierarchy. But since that's not profitable so f*ck the rest of us, right? "Use it or lose it" is a call for conservation - we only have a limited number of names so don't hoard them. This means you should give it up as quickly as possible (highest bidder is your option).
The namespace is very limited. There fewer words than there are companies.. and even people. We really need to link the namespace to geographical distribution - like the
"I got here first."
This is the second camp. Basically InterNIC has far too much power, and this is the solution - take the power back. Make it so if you get here first, you keep it, end of story. It's remarkably simple and effective but it skirts the issue of the size of the namespace and trademarking issues which, like it or not, have become center-stage since the "dot com" blight. For this, I'd say you got it... so either keep it or resell it depending on what your company's bean counters say - if you can make more money selling it, great. If not, hold on to it (think of it as an investment). Either way, companies are dollar-oriented so make a case to the bean counters one way or the other and go with the best option.
Hope that helps.
All I can say is if you use eBay, fer chrissakes don't start the bidding at $20,000,000 unless the name in question is microsoft.com, or something similar. If I have to read through one more stupid auction describing the "next big this-or-that" domain name for sale I'll have to beat somebody with a stick. Makes it a real pain in the ass to serach for old NeXT hardware, I can tell you.
Of course, maybe I'm bitter because some loser picked "simple2use.com" (simple2use@earthlink.net being my old email address for over a year) before I got a chance to do so, then posted it for $1.5M *and* he had the nerve to post a note on the "site" saying nothing more than "I'm a squatter, buy my domain and make me rich cuz I'm a lam3r". Squatter bad. Squatter go away. Servo kill squatter.
Anyway, if you're going to do the auction thing, I would suggest 1) setting a reserve and prominently mentioning it in the posting, 2) make clear your requirements for authorizing the transfer, and 3) document why this is such a great name, rather than just saying "it's the next Yahoo!".
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I face a similar dilemma. I bought a domain a couple of years ago that I had intended to use for a personal site with a particular theme, and actually did have a partial deployment on it for a while; I've subsequently abandoned that project, and have little other use of my own for the name. The registration is up in a couple of months, and I've considered just letting it lapse, but for one thing: because of the awarding of a particular new sports franchise, the domain name has some serious potential as a fansite, etc.
My current take on it is this: it's a domain name investment, I have every right to try and sell it; like the poster said, it's real estate. I've bought domain names purely speculatively before, nothing has come of them (yet), but it seems to me that the critical distinction between legitimate domain name speculation and cybersquatting is that legitimate speculation doesn't impinge upon the rights of a current trademark holder. If someone had the foresight to buy oven.com when it was still available, who's to argue with their right to make a (potentially substantial) profit on it when they sell the name to GE?
Anyone have a good argument as to why someone should NOT profit from a legitimate domain name investment?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
If it is a trademark of your company, it's probably a good idea to hold on to it. Set up a web page under it to redirect to your company's "real" web page, but keep it maintained and paid for. Trademark law in the USA has this nasty little "use it or lose it" provision that you have to enforce your trademark or you lose all rights it.
If it's a name unrelated to any name your company uses or plans to use, I suppose it would be a good idea to sell it. Set up a web page under it indicating it is for sale, and leave that up for a couple of months before auctioning it. Give it an absurd price like a million dollars or so at first (depending on how good a name it is), just in case there's a sucker out there with more money than sense, but remember to remove mention of the price if you put it up for auction!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
When you think about it domain names are like mining claims. In the Voisy's Bay "gold rush" (they were actually mining nickel) one company spent a few million on buying up the mining rights to huge amounts of land. This cost them a fortune. (I believe around 3 million) OTOH it gave them the *chance* to make a fortune. In the case of domain names it's not really that cheap to buy up large numbers of them. But if you strike it big you're in luck and you might be able to pay off your investment.
First off, your firm bought the domains fair and square (I assume), so they are yours. Quit worrying about cyber-squatting issues, that was an issue when NSI did not bother to actually collect money from people grabbing domain names by the fistfull. Now that you have to pay in a reasonable time for any public domain name it is no longer squatting, it is more like hoarding.
As for the second portion of your question, what should you do with the names? That is in essance a financial question.
If your web site generates large amounts of revinue by web contact, i.e., you have ads all over like ZDNET, or you sell stuff direct over the web like FreeBSD.org, etc. then keeping popular names and redirecting the traffic to your main site is the way to go. The name of the game is eyeballs there, with a direct link between eyeballs and sales. Similar to what C|Net has done with news.com (and it's others).
However, if it is more of an informative site, none or few direct sales generated from the web, then taking the domains to one of the auction sites will probably be the best way to go.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
You're asking Slashdot to help you decide upon a moral course of action? For you first duty in a new job? I don't know whether to feel honored that you think so highly of us, or appalled that you consider Slashdot a fount of moral wisdom.
Ask a technical question, fine, go for it. Ask us our opinions on philosophy, morality or politics, okay. But this is hardly to place to ask for a moral advice for a real world problem.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I think that domain registration should be handled by a country with slightly more SANE IP laws than the US.
Perfect example is this, Nina Hartley (yes, the porn chick) registered nina.com for use as her personal website and some off the wall purse maker who makes nina handbags tried to legally wrestle the domain name from her. It's her FUCKING NAME and she actually had to spend money to fight in court to use it.
Look at the fight between amazon.com and that amazon lesbian book store.
I say, first come. First served. If I had the insight to host a website about small soft breasts and registered microsoft.com, first M$ would be SOL. However we should limit the number of domains that any 1 person or company can own.
Someone registered kano.com before I did, that doesn't mean that I should sue does it?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Consider it this way: there is no difference between brokering and squatting on a domain name. That said, I don't see anything wrong with either.
Intent is frequently cited as being the defining point, and I really have to take issue with this. A company can say anything was its intent, and trying to second-guess a corporation is just that, guessing. If we're serious about calling one thing by its proper name, we should call it exactly what it is: abandonment, of an unused domain name or unmaintained site is on it, or exchange, if a maintained site is located there.
Now for the kicker: I think that domain name costs should be much higher, not lower, than they are now, and the revenue should be fed back into infrastructure or into a trust fund. Consider this: there is a limited number of valid domain names, in the absence of alternate TLD's. Domain names are valuable. Everyone who buys one today (costing as little as about 15$US) is getting it at a fire-sale price. And who should rightfully own unassigned domain names? I think that net users should, collectively, just like the state owns unsold land. The revenue should go somewhere which benefits the net community rather than lining pockets at NSI.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Brokering, on the other hand, typically refers to buying more generic names, like business.com, monkeys.com, giantdildo.com, and so on, and then selling them to whoever wants them.
There's a distinct difference here; and I think as long as your company doesn't own something like paramountpictures.com (in which case they might try to extort money from Paramount Pictures), but rather owns something like agrobusiness.com, then it's no big deal. The easiest way to get rid of it is, as others have already said, an auction. Start the bidding at what you paid for it, plus the cost of the time it takes to do the auction, so that at least you're not losing money on the deal. But don't try to extort people; it may not be illegal but I at least consider it immoral.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I will insist there is no such thing as legitimate brokering.
Given teh current state of affaris of the NSI trio of domains... do whatever you want.. it's a lost cause anyway.
It used to be you couldn't transfer ownership anyway..
Some time ago, I gave the whole squatting thing some thought and came up with this distinction: squatters are the people who register and let the name lapse for nonpayment (repeat as necessary) and investors pay the registration and hope to make a profit. Note that more 'sophisticated' squatters would have several people in the scam to try to hold a domain name longer (when the domain is about to lapse, the next person in line would hammer the server with a registration attempt until they get it). Plus a few other ill-defined criteria such as registering someone elses name in the hope of cashing in.
The new NSI payment policies make that much more difficult. I don't know if there are other registrars who are still vulnerable to that scam.
The part about registering someone else's name (knowingly) still applies IMHO.
In the case of Silverhammer's question, sell the name! It was registered fair and square and was even used appropriatly for a time.
I agree with your call on this one.
There's nothing wrong with investing in some online real-estate.
However targeting a certain business, person (several people have started doing it with NFL football player's names), or organization, then your moving into a gray area.
You bought it. It's yours. You can sell it. It doesn't even matter why you bought it. A domain name is only what people will pay for it. Even if you have a name like redhats.com (haven't checked to see if that one's registered) you can auction it to the highest bidder with no qualms. The only way the buyer could make money with redhats.com would be to sell a linux distro, that would be illegal (the infringing on red hat, not the selling of linux), but if you use it legally, say for setting up a shoeboy fan page (hint hint) that would be moral, but wouldn't justify a high price.
So if you find a sucker who wants to pay a lot for a domain, bill em for all they're worth and laugh as they either a) get sued by the company they're infringing on or b) spend 5 million on a domain that isn't worth more than the registration fee.
--Shoeboy
Currently I own virtualsurreality.com after a long and intensive search to find a decent domain name. What's sad is the number of shorter ones that are squatted on by major companies simply because it's cheap to do so. As much as I hate the people who squat for money, at least they have a goal in mind. I may not find their methods ethical, but they are understandable.
moc.com is held by Marathon Oil, who currently have a much better and cooler domain name. The best I can hope for is that they are holding onto moc.com in order to keep Mobil from getting it. The problem is that moc.com is a really cool, perfectly usable, domain name that will NEVER be used. Marathon might be willing to sell it, but as they seem to have no intention of replying to inquiries (I tried), it's not likely to happen.
And Marathon isn't the only person in that boat. Take a look at think.com. Oracle acquired the name and has no intention of using it.
The main question is, has the domain name been used or unused recently and has anyone approached you in the past year with an offer to buy the domain name? If so, you have an ethical responsibility to contact them and inform them that you are selling it through whatever means you choose to. (Ethics aside, informing potential bidders can't be a bad financial idea.)
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No Zen is good zen
In my mind it's just a moral issue with possible legal ramifications. If you bought it in good faith and don't use it anymore, you shouldn't have a problem selling it. If you bought it because you thought it was "hot" to sell and it's not trademarked, that's within reason as well. However, once one has intentionally purchased domains containing prelicensed trademarks which don't belong to oneself, that's immoral and can also potentially be prosecutable, although usally businesses come up with alternative URLs as a solution.
.net, and .org just so others don't infringe on their trademark. This is wasteful and is a reverse type of squatting which ultimately wastes the company's own money.
Moreover, what about legitimate businesses cybersquatting? I have seen many instances where, for example, Ideafuture Inc registers ideafuture.com,
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
The problem with comparing this to land ownership is that there is a limited supply of land.
.com, .net, and .org to do what they want, and get back to using geographic names with proper naming schemes.
There is no reasons for domains to have such value, other than their mismanagement by NSI.
Leave
hell.. the only reason domains are so important is because us geeks didn't have the foresight to see this problem, and insist that something other than DNS was used as a primarly lookup mechanism for the WWW.
The poster was not asking us our opinions, as near as I could figure, but was asking us what to do in a REAL WORLD moral dilema.
It's one thing to discuss issues of "morality" such as GPL verus BSD or whether Bill Joy will go to Hell for the SCSL. It's even a good place to post calls for action, such as against DeCSS hearings. But Slashdot is not Ann Landers or Dr. Laura. That someone considers Slashdot a source of moral guidance is downright creepy.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You don't copyright names.
You copyright original creative works.
Just so you know..... .ca, you can get a .province.ca if you are provincially locate.d.. anyone can get a .municipality.province.ca, but the name you get must be related to your name/organization name.
.com is it is too flat.
.ca is about to be deregulated. I think the current system we have is excellent, and shouldn't change.. it's a perfect example of how *not* to exploit the DNS.
You must be in at least 2 provinces to get a
There are no fees.
Only 1 domain per legal entity is allowed (so you can't register 10.
This serves the original purpose of DNS.. to delegate a second-level domain (or third.. or fourth) so it can be further subdomained as per the network toplogy.
The problem with
Wanna be outraged? check out internic.ca
You know.. the reason used to be efficiency. It's supposed to be heirarchial....
but it's such a damn flat database now... why the hell not? Sure.. they should open up tons of TLD's.. take away the artifical value of these domains. The only thing that gives them value is their artifical scarcity....
Hmm.. DeBeers anyone?
First, I think this is a pretty lame question - I could see it in "Dead Abby" before I could in "Ask Slashdot". The entire point of having morals is to retain your constituition in the face of opposition - not to have Slashdot form them for you. If you have to ask what's right or wrong, then maybe it's not that big of an issue, eh?
Anyways, it really doesn't sound like you have much of a choice. If the domain name could go for millions, what business owner in their right mind is going to turn down the prospect of selling it? You may lose sleep over the underlying philosophical rubbish, but I think you should realize the futility of your position: if everying is as you make it to be, it will be sold. If the owners care about money enough to reorganize the company, then they'll certainly care enough to net a quick couple million at the expense of filing 10 minutes worth of paper work. I guess I fall into the camp of "change what you can, and accept what you can't," so I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Moreover, this is not the kind of strategy that can be formulated by ad-hoc consensus on Slashdot.
Please read all the /. responses. Perhaps someone will point out an issue you haven't considered. But before you take any action (and be sure not to let the domain name expire by accident while you are making up your mind and formulating a strategy), you need to talk to a lawyer. Specifically, you need to talk to a lawyer who knows something about the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
I will not prompote my own practice, but if you want a referral to one or more smart lawyers who practice this kind of law, call me right away.
Eric C. Grimm
CyberBrief, PLC
320 South Main Street
P.O. Box 7341
734.332.4900
Fax: 734.332.4901
ericgrimm@CyberBrief.net
In the meantime, DO NOT do anything hasty, and DO NOT screw this up.
Domains as property? Hmm...
>but domain names are the real estate of the 'Net and real estate is a legitimate business
This is a prime example of metaphor becoming fact.
There seen to be a lot of internet-related cases brought forward, especially in the US, where the real nature of the technology is dismissed in favor of vague notions of virtual space, virtual property, virtual trade, etc... e.g.
Consider the following:
Company X sues person Y because a domain name that they have paid for contains part of the company's trademark. Shouldn't the company be filing againt the domain registrar? After all, it's their server that is responding to the look-up requests and directing people to Y's servers, the action that X says is infringing. Can responding to a look up even constitute trademark infringement? After all, the DNS only transmits an IP address - it's the people sending lookup requests, and web servers serving pages with links to the site that are actually transmitting the trademark-containing-domain-name...
In any case, I don't really see how lame microscopic entries in someone else's database can be construed as someone's property. [some-dictionary-word].com doesn't really have the originality necessary for normal intellectual property protection. Some propose special domain name law to protect the alleged finite domain name resources. But such resources aren't limited at all. The worst that you can say is that a severe monopoly is going on.
There really isn't anything stopping a few community-minded individuals from starting an open-access DNS system, perhaps a system where each registrar gets a top level domain, or where companies/individuals/groups can be required to share domains where conflicts arise... Or someone could come up with a new naming system that allows for duplicates... Anyone interested in cooking up such a scheme? You would have one happy user right here. =)
Final Gripe: The expense of registering a domain with the de facto standard DNS regime (which claims to be government-regulated when it suits their purposes; how ironic) is insane. They could at least give the appearance of asking for fees based vaguely in some way to the service they are providing, instead of picking a flat rate dollar value at random... Perhaps they could do this by charging in relation to the number of requests responded to. I have no interest in subsidising the service of aol.com requests with my joeblow.org registration, after all.
Well, more than my $0.02... Food for thought, at least.
-rak
One problem with selling a name is the value of the existing search engine positions and links to your site. In my case, for instance, there are billions and billions of links to various resources on amazing.com. If I sold amazing.com, all those links would suddenly die, and I'd have to write everyone in the known universe asking them to change them. In addition, since my site has been active since circa 1995, it has positions in search engines like Yahoo which would be extremely difficult if not impossible to duplicate today.
The hassle factor alone is a good reason why I'm not eager to sell amazing.com, even though on paper I'm sitting on a massive windfall.
D
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I know I am a late comer to this discussion...
I have to vote for give it back.
The DNS system is a shared resource. Neither
you nor anyone else ownes DNS space. You requested
some because you needed it, and were given some.
Now that you no longer need it, you should give
it up.
This is the most fair solution. It gives anyone
equal ability to register it, and use it.
DNS is a shared resource for all net users. It is
up to each of us to use it responsibly and to only
use what we need of it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Personally, I think people should be able to buy > whatever domains they want and do whatever they
> want with them. domains should probably cost
> more int the first place though.
If I remember right... domains were originally
free. The only reason they cost money now is
because the domain registrars found out that it
cost them money to administer the database and
keep up with requests
(I could be wrong and would be happy to have my
historical knowledge corrected)
> To my knowledge, it's perfectly legal for me to
> reserve the phone number 1-800-walmart, even if
> Wal-Mart inc. doesn't want me to. So why should
> a domain name be any different?
Just because its legal, doesn't make it right.
The fact is that DNS is a resource shared by all
internet users. As members of a community, we
are responsible (morally IMNSHO) for our use
of shared resources. We are responsible for ONLY
taking what we need and giving back to the
community what we don't need anymore.
(thats not to say as soon as we no longer need it.
I see nothing wrong with holding something for
planned future expansion...but otherwise, I think
it should be given back)
I realize that my view is not popular in the world
today...afterall its not an ideal that is most
condusive to serving the All-mighty dollar gods.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"