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Domain Names to Suck More
A submitter writes: "MSNBC is running this article about a free speech lawyer who will be doling out sites with the word 'suck' in it for free. He and others are afraid that too many of these gripe sites have been taken away from their owners and given to the target companies and is willing to fight in court for these people." We posted about the VivendiUniversalSucks decision earlier.
I suggest we set up a website to promote a lawsuit where the guidelines are more ambiguous. I recommend registering "www.hoovervacuumcleanersDONTsuck.com"
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The summary should specify that the domains are "company.comsucks.net", not "companysucks.com" as the summary implies.
*Life is too serious to be taken too seriously.*
I think we just need to formalize it, there is a definate need for the TLD ".sucks"
I think it only fair that the existence of this site is disclosed while discussing this story.
I tried to do the something similiar last year. I set up a subdomain redirection site so you could assign microsoft.usuck.com to wherever you wanted, etc. (Actually, that site pointed HERE - and I didn't do it). I had over 70,000 domains being redirected.
After the spam community started using my domain service for their own good, Verio threatened to pull the plug, so I stopped that service. What a pity.
It was so fun, though. Getting emails from parents saying their kids were going to drop out of school because people had set up redirections from (example) johnsmith.usuck.com that ended up redirecting to gay porn sites.
The type of people who tend to register *sucks.com sites are generally not those who are interested in providing constructive criticism to a company in the hopes of improving it. No, they're the type who will be upset with that company no matter how much they've done to improve. (Otherwise, there could come a point where they'd have to say, "Yeah, X sucked three years ago, but they've improved a lot and don't suck anymore. We're shutting our site down." Who could see that happening?)
Don't get me wrong; I'm all in favor of allowing *sucks.com sites. But I don't pretend that they're any more objective than the company site itself.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Would it be OK for a company to buy up all the words in the English language so that you couldn't complain about them?
If I understand your meaning - and I apologise if I'm missunderstanding - this is just a silly fantasy hypothetical situation. A company can't buy words and then forbid you from using it to criticise them.
How can it be OK for them to buy up all the derogatory domain names, then?
Because unlike words domain names are a commodity that CAN be bought and sold. Turn the question on it's head - how can it be OK for someone (the government?) to STOP the company from buying the domain names it wants? Aren't the individuals who own the company afforded the same freedoms of speech and property that their detractors are?
Granted, you can still criticise them with a different domain name, but having a -sucks.com address does heighten your visibility.
This is actually a pet peeve of mine. The confusion over freedom of speech. You have the right to freedom of speech which you can use to criticize the company. You do not however have a RIGHT to a soapbox! You have every right to buy, rent or borrow a soapbox from whoever might be selling. But you do not have a right to compel them to sell or to speak on your behalf. You do not have a right to air time on TV or Radio, in print, or to any particular web domain you don't already own. The government choosing to deny your NEA grant, the paper refusing to print your editorial, the *sucks.com domain the company you hate already bought - none of these scenarios is an abridgement of your freedoms of speech or property!!
Besides even this is an unrealistic hypothetical. Any creativity at all will suggest domains the company never would have thought of. Apple could buy Applesucks.com (they didn't but they could have) but they would most likely have missed crapple.com. If someone want their own domain as a soapbox but can't think of ONE the company didn't think of... well, if that's the case they're probably better off with a geoshanties site anyway.