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The Man Who Owns the Internet

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-a-way-to-make-a-living dept.

Tefen writes "CNN Money posted this story about Kevin Ham, who has made a fortune gobbling up lapsed domain names and has recently launched a lucrative business partnership with Cameroon, the country which controls the .cm TLD. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue."

5 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does ANYONE click on those ads? by mobby_6kl · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. Because people will click on anything.

  2. IP addresses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Block outgoing TCP packets on port 80 to these IP addresses:
    64.20.33.115
    64.20.33.131
    64.20.49.210
    64.40.116.41
    66.45.231.154
    69.46.226.166
    204.13.160.26
    204.13.160.129
    208.254.26.132
    208.254.26.140
    209.200.153.152
    216.34.131.135
    217.68.70.69
    That should get rid of many pages you get to when you type "typos".

  3. Re:So the market sure is promoting innovation by QuickFox · · Score: 4, Informative

    If they simply auctioned them then the squatters would bid each other out of business. They do auction them. TFA tells about such an auction. Domain names for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. And yet profitable. Crazy.
    --
    Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
  4. Re:So the market sure is promoting innovation by QuickFox · · Score: 4, Informative

    And yet profitable. Why are so many people so upset about this particular scumbag making a huge profit this way? For years Google has been profiting far more by promoting this very thing.
    --
    Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
  5. Re:So the market sure is promoting innovation by yankpop · · Score: 4, Informative

    In my experience, part of the risk is gambling that you'll be able to get zoning by-laws overturned, so that land you bought as cheap agricultural can be sold as as very expensive residential. There's enough money involved to seriously subvert the political system, making it very difficult for regular folks to get their politicians to stand behind the planning documents that are supposed to be safe-guarding the future of our communities. In the end the politicians get a nice campaign donation, and we're stuck with another eye-sore cookie-cutter subdivision on prime agricultural land.

    Full disclosure: I've been involved with enough community groups fighting against such zoning by-law changes to have come to the conclusion that all land speculators are devil-spawn, although intellectually I know that's probably not true in all cases.

    yp.