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Buying a Domain From a Cybersquatter
Nevo writes "A partner and I are in the planning stages of a business. We've decided on a name that we'd like to use but the domain name is already registered. The owner has a single 'search' page up (similar to the one at www.goggle.com)... clearly not a legitimate business interest, but since we don't own a trademark on this name it doesn't qualify as bad faith, I don't think. Does anyone have any experience buying domains from these operators? Do you have any advice on how to approach the owners of these domains to get them at a reasonable cost?"
When I've accidentally typed in an address wrong, I've been brought to a page with "premium" domains that a squatter is sitting on listing the prices for them. They were all pretty bland and stupid sites like a000.org or MedicMan.net but they listed the prices anywhere from $100 to $5,000. Unfortunately what you have to realize if you're going to make this offer is that they're doing this for those few times a year they strike it rich so it's probably going to be closer to $5,000 or more. If the site is like two last names or something readable, it's probably going to be pretty high cost. Far less than a court case you probably wouldn't win though.
The last thing you need to realize is that whatever money you give this guy is just going to fund him to buy up more domains and keep his hands on others longer. If you wanted to do the most conscious thing for the community, you would just find another domain and not give this scum one red cent.
My work here is dung.
If you owned goggle.com, this would be a good way to drive some free traffic
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
If they are a squatter they will have contact info on their page. If not you can find the registered owner with WHOIS. I would make them a reasonable offer and stick to it. Remember that there may be available alternatives ( .org, .net, .us, etc.)
I was at a wedding over the weekend and one of the people at our table was talking about how their son runs a fairly profitable business in providing capital specifically for the purchasing of domain names. I can't recall if the business model involved a fixed interest rate, or a percentage of income, but it's the sort thing i never thought you could finance. I wonder how long before they start packaging them and selling them as securities on Wall Street :-)
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
i recently had an experiance buying a domain name from a squatter. we promiced to pay them £100 for the domain name, and then they sent us their fasthost account details, without us paying them. we thought we would take the opertunity to simply take the domain name anyway, and transfer it to our own account without payment.
hopefully you could try and get this idiot to do something similar, ie some details to see that the domain is in the account as "good faith" before you hand over any money.
Don't sound too interested when talking to them, mention possible alternatives. Lower your offer if the negotiations drag out - cybersquatters are in this for the money, and not selling the name means that they're not making any.
If your business plan depends on owning one specific domain then your business plan sucks.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I would suggest finding another Domain that they own and first asking them if you could buy that one. That will give you a high end price. Tell them no thank you. Wait a day and say you also like the real one. Then offer to buy it at 1/2 the price they gave for the first one.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
What do you think the name is worth? $100? $500? They'll want at least 10x that much. If you're willing to pay through the nose, then go ahead, but these people will do whatever is necessary to squeeze every last penny from you.
I would suggest either a different TLD, a different name, or a variation on the name: "MyBizInc.com" instead of "MyBiz.com".
One option already noted is giving a reasonable offer and sticking with it.
Another option is simply asking for a quote, but don't for the love of god tell them you're planning a business. Rather just send an informal message in the style of "I think $domain is a cool name, yadda yadda...".
Personally I'd opt for trying to figure out a name for the business that's not taken. Nonsense words that are easy to learn and not profanity in major languages are good bets.
.: Max Romantschuk
When was the last time you timed out a website address in full? Current browser technology dictates that it's easier to just google a company. And after first finding the site you are looking for, no more than a couple of typed letters uniquely identify the desired website. Even Google itself hardly needs its epynomal domain name, although users might be sceptical about surfing to www..com. So, pick any domain name, as long as it seems trustworthy. I'll leave pointing out the downsides of this approach to you...
Surely the process is pretty simple,
Send the guy an email asking if the domain is for sale. If the owner is a *pinky to mouth* "One million dollars", kind of guy, it is unlikely that there is any approach you can take that will force him away from a ridiculous price anyway. The only advice that seems valid is, "Don't make the email sound like you are both wealthy and desperate".
Personally, I would make it a short one line email, "Is this domain for sale? If so, please respond with your asking price", then just take it from there. I like to believe that there is nobody that is still stuck in the late 90's when it comes to cybersquat domain prices, but you never know. If the price you get back from him indicates that he is acting like a 90's squatter just email back with, "Ok, thank you". Keep it terse, and keep the ball in his court. Most of all, don't get attached to this particular domain until *your* name is on the whois!
Murder in the first. ;)
Presumably your are talking about a .com name.
Are you going to register all the alternative endings? .co.uk .org .net etc. Because others will and if you don't then their site will be picked up when people search for your name.
Better to have a name slightly different from the one that is already registered and register the relevant alternatives.
within the past year, my company went around purchasing the .net, .us, .biz, etc TLDs for our domain. none of them were taken except for the .net version. we called the guy up and said we were interested and asked what his asking price was. he said $2000, to which we said that was way too high. he came back to us with, "well how much do you want to offer for it". i think that our final buying price was between $300 and $500.
in that experience, i realized that some squatters are just one or two guys that sat around and registered a ton of domains for a couple of dollars a piece. they are going to use the car salesman mentality by "hit em really high... then scrape them off the ceiling so you can get the price you want to sell for". so they slap you with the $2000 as their asking price knowing that you won't pay it. they know that you won't come back with a $50 offer since their first offer was so high. if they had first said $500, then you probably wouldn't offer them as much. if you really want to play their game and you are just getting started, it might be safe to just kill your webserver while you are on the phone with them so that they can't see what type of company you are or if you has the money bags.
anyway, just go into it like you are buying a car. don't seem too interested or you will pay way more than you should.
stephen
Many of the successful internet companies make up their own name. google, hulu, reddit, slashdot, etc. Make up a word that doesn't exist and go with it.
news.google.com is just as good for google as news.com would be because browsers autocomplete from left to right. I type news, the google site comes right up.
So if you want greatsite.com but thats taken then register blah.com and create a subdomain greatsite.blah.com
Down the track you may be able to snap up the domain you originally wanted, or you may have a better idea by then.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
My boss received an e-mail from a cybersquatter that sought to sell us a URL that was very similar to a URL we currently owned. My boss, being the URL hound he is asked me to purchase it. I offered the squatterâ(TM)s auto-bid website $50, which it automatically turned down and told me I had to offer a minimum of $500. I walked from the deal, only to receive an e-mail an hour later from the squatter, agreeing to my $50 bid.
...and contacting you if I ever need business advice.
+1 Brilliant (Disclaimer: I may be easily impressed)
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Find a more valuable domain name, especially one the owner would be interested in, and propose a trade.
Just wait until it expires, then swoop in and register it. /then email the squatter and ask them if they want to buy it back
Here's a quick warning: there's a lot of scamming in the domain marktplace. It's easy for scammers to get you to buy, then never transfer the domain.
1. Set your PayPal account to draw against a credit card, not your bank account. You have both your credit card's consumer protections as well as PayPal's this way, the difference being you can actually get someone on the phone at your credit card company. When they yank the money from PayPal, suddenly PayPal will care.
2. Use an escrow service. Buyer puts the money in, you transfer the domain, and then you get paid. Most scams happen when people do direct purchases. Lots of domainers use escrow.com. It works.
3. Make sure you are dealing with a legitimate business or a real person. A little due diligence goes a long way.
-- $G
Give us the address, we'll give his server so much traffic he'll be begging to give the domain away.
Telling the actual URL in question would be a bad idea as it may cause the current holder to up their asking price since it was linked on slashdot.
We buy a lot of domains where I work--a big honkin' national enterprise--but we never use our work email addresses when we approach a squatter. That way we don't tip them off to how much money we have. So, my advice is to be aware of how you present yourself, and be careful not to give the squatter the impression that you're anything more than a casual buyer. Don't mention that you have a partner, for example, and don't reveal why you want the domain.
First of all what you are describing is not cybersquating - it's no trademark, not a domain typo - there is no bad faith. The domain has been registered by a domainer - a domain trader that buys premium domains treating them as an investment.
When you type in the domain name you will see a domain parking page - a website filled with some adds in order to earn some money to finance the cost of domain renewal plus sometimes a few bucks extra. The domain is not indexed by google - it's a mutual agreement between large domain parkings and google - not in index, yet with google ads.
As the domain is not registered as a clear example of cybersquating (and so is not getting a lot of traffic) you can be pretty sure it's for sale - that's where we earn money.
The domain value is based on (in no particular order): .com is the most expensive
1. domain length - the shorter the more expensive.
2. tld -
3. the acctual domain name - if it is just a bunch of unpronaucable letters it will be cheap, if it's a word it will cost ya, especially if it means something. some random examples ghdn.com < geen.com < geek.com
If you want to buy the domain make an offer, but a fair one or you will be added to ignore list after the first message. We get loads of offers which are too low by two-three orders of magnitude and reading all off them is not really an option.
Once you agree on the price do use one of the domain markets that offers escrow - sorry I can't really point you to a speciffic site, as I deal exlusively in eastern european tlds and we have some local markets.
It's not worth the hassle or your money to pay for a squatted domain. It's always possible to find a decent substitute, maybe even a better one.
First lookup the owner of that domain. Then, there are many sites out there that will tell you which domains that person owns. The way you handle this will be very different if he owns 10 vs 10 thousand domains.
Do a search with some of the "Buy this Premium Domain" sites to see if he has listed any of his sites to see how reasonable he is. Those prices are usually 1-2x's a real max bid starting point.
When you do ask for a price, ask him for the price of several of his domains at once. Act like you are not specifically interested in just of those domains and any would work for you. Maybe pretend to be another reseller interested in building your portfolio.
Some of the other advice above is also good. Don't be desparate, and the first email should be very short.
domai.nr -- A site to help you find a cool domain using 2 letter country codes and subdomains. WAY useful tool for finding alternatives.
Suggest you get a temporary email address when (if) you initiate communication. Your normal email is just too useful a lead for them to google and see how much you're worth stinging for. Better yet, ignore them and find another name.
I'm not in the domain name business, but from time to time use to buy, sell and register some domains.
In my opinion and experience, there two kind of "sellers" out there. The one who know what to and how to sell and the quantity of money they want for specific domain name and the rest. These others just have no idea about the real value of a domain name and sell it for the price you say. Last domain I bought was 4 letters!!!! length and the price which the seller wanted was ~ $10000. In the end and after few emails telling him that "...I'm not in the domain name business and can't pay more than... bla bla bla", I got it for ~ $85 (paid in â).
So its all about a game and lies to get the desired domain :)
Hope that gives you some advice.
Theres plenty of help out there, especially at the WIPO: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/
.. keeping in mind a case with WIPO can set you back $1500-$4000 USD (http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/fees/index.html)
For an example of people who have lost domains check out: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/cases/index.html
I actually found this an interesting read from all the responses cybersquatters have.
There is an article at WIPO about cybersquatting, can be found at: http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2009/article_0005.html
in my opinion, if you really want the domain and it isn't being used, and you made a proper offer for the domain (not something like $1 million dollars) and they refused, i suggest you either threaten to take it up with WIPO and get it transferred to you to lower the cost, or actually take it up with WIPO
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
I would suggest looking for another TLD. Sure, .com, .net, .org etc. are nice, but there is so much more. Why not try India (.in) or Russia (.ru) for a change? Your domain name will still be short and perhaps it will even attract more customers...
They will not type in your company name in the URL bar and add .com. They will type your company name into google and click on the result. If they're recurring customers, they will bookmark your page.
URLs are no longer really important. I know people who have no idea what that funny bar on top of their browser is for that displays some funky random characters whenever they click on a link and a page loads.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you really want to buy a domain off a scummy squatter -- you must have it --
The squatter paid very little for the domain, $10 or so per year. He is also probably making some minimal ad revenue, which you can estimate by digging up page view stats or other similar metrics on the internet. Domain registration sites are particularly helpful in estimating domain traffic and value.
From these, you can construct what you think is his minimum acceptable value, which is low. The value of the domain to you, of course, is much higher. You need to arrive at a number somewhere in between, preferably close to the low end.
Typical negotiating tactics apply. He knows the domain is much more valuable to you. Your goal is to pretend you can't pay much of course to bring the price down. That is, if you would really pay $2000, do not start anywhere near $2000.
I would begin by emailing the owner, asking simply if he might be interested in selling the domain? He'll write back with some ridiculous value, probably ten times what he estimates it might be worth to an interested buyer. Say it's $10,000. Ignore this number. Write back saying, gosh, that's really high! And it's for a personal project, and you might be able to pay a couple hundred dollars. This will not offend the owner; after all, even a couple hundred dollars is a good price for him. He'll write back with a much 'better' offer, as much lower as possible without being comical, like $4,000. Tell him thanks, you thought hard, and can cough up maybe $350 but that's all you can afford. He'll write back with an offer like $1,500.
Then I'd kindly point out that you know the domain is probably earning him about $50 per year at best, and so your offer is really a nice win-win for both of you, and to show you're really interested in doing the deal, you'll offer $400. Tell him you're ready to finish the deal.
At that point the squatter will not walk away from $400 being held out to him -- which is, in reality, a great deal for him, and not so bad, I guess, for you. You paid $400 for what's worth $2000. Don't feel bad, the punk does not deserve the profit anyway. :) ... and yes this is about how real negotiations I have been involved in do go down!
Don't make the email sound like you are both wealthy and desperate
I don't know. I get requests for a few of my domains all the time. The one liners, in fact, the more plain the email... The more wealthy and desperate I assume they are. The "chatty" emails I assume are from John/Jane Doe.
The one line, try not to reveal anything emails, get the 7-8 figure quote. The "chatty" emails where he tells me it was his nickname in high school or his dogs name and he wants to setup a tribute to the dog that saved his life..., they get the better deal.
Seems to me it depends on who the seller is which method would work better. The one line email might work better on a Cybersquatter. If it's a human being, the backstory might be useful.
-[d]-
I waited for mine. It was owned by a company in S. Korea that eventually let it expire. Search engines have replaced the need for a good domain name. Granted having a name you want on your business materials is desired but I am sure you can figure out something else.
A company I know purchased a domain name. About $5000 after some long and drawn out negotiations, threatening a lawsuit, etc.
After they got it, they immediately regretted it. Turns out that some previous owner of the domain name had been involved in shady activities, at least to the point of sending spam.
Just about every mail recipient's spam filter ended up blacklisting their e-mails. Hardly a good start for a new business.
They're still sticking with it, trying to convince the spam filterers to de-list them. Not a straitforward process.
The title of this post is completely misleading. From Wikipedia cybersquatting is "registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else". There's no trademark, not even a business... the submitter just saw a domain name he liked and that was already taken. That domain name could have been acquired by a multitude of reasons, some of which include just keeping it for future use.
:)
When I've an idea for a personal project, and think of a good name for it, I check if it's available; if it is, I register it, and while I'm not using it, why not placing some domain parking page? It's gonna pay peanuts, but everything helps in crisis times. I want to clarify that I'm against mistyped domain or inadequate (popups, casinos, etc) advertising like most internet users.
When you see a domain name you like, just make an offer or ask for a price. Those prices are usually unreasonable, so just find an alternative. Also, always keep in mind that a good product is leaps and bounds better than a good name
Speed Dial for Firefox
A business partner did this, and a month later he had $6k of bogus charges on his credit card. So be aware that these people are probably not above reselling your info and then throwing up their hands and saying, "Oh my, how'd that happen?"
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Is it yahoo.com? The price is already high though.
They're not "cybersquatters" but you're giving them that label because you are upset that they own something that you want for cheap. They registered and paid for the domain name (they're not getting something for free), before your business even started. Since you have no relevant trademarks with priority rights (i.e. created and used before the domain name, and in the same class of goods/services) that they're violating, they can do anything they want with their domain name. Just because you feel you might be better able to use a domain name then they can doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. There are lots of empty pieces of land in most places that do not have skyscrapers on them. It doesn't mean that I can compel the owners of the land to sell them to me at below market value.
Microsoft owns the domain name juice.com, for example, and currently redirects it to a search page on bing.com (visit www.juice.com and you'll see). Similarly, CNET has owned Kids.com for years, and it is currently a parked page. Microsoft acquired bing.com years ago, before they launched their new site. Smart companies plan ahead, and register domain names well before their product launches. Your company was not smart enough to do the same.
Your company has choices. It can coin a new term ("google" wasn't a dictionary term, but was a typo, when the Stanford boys registered Google.com). Or, it can get real funding, and acquire a domain name that is within its financial means.
Hi,
I had to solve such a problem once for a customer of us. A domain expired by accident and fell into the hands of a domainsquatter. The poor ex-owner had already advertisement material printed with his domain name on it. Damages would have ranged at about 10K$.
The problem: If a german company tries to purchase the domain, the prices tend to skyrocket (probably the same for US companies). So we created a fake russian student (not very rich) who wanted to use the domain for his private web site. He had a russian email address, had a small home page with his russian ISP etc. This way with a little negotiation, we managed to purchase the domain at a very reasonable price.
You have to be careful to become the owner of the domain. At first they tried to "lease" the domain to us by just setting the records. But it was completely in accordance with our virtual pesonality to display some paranoia and insist on a complete domain transfer.
Sincerely yours, Martin
It doesn't matter if it's bad faith or not, ICANN wants the domain to have a useful purpose. That's why people put the "search engines" up. However, the likelyhood of them showing up to defend their useful purpose is slim to none. The problem you have is that in order to file with ICANN for ownership of a domain, you need about $3000.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=icann+domain+dispute&l=1
Last time I had to do it, it took about a month. This was last year. We filled out the paperwork, then our "dispute agency" (ICANN itself delegates to an agency) contacted us for MORE paperwork, then the other guy didn't reply because he had used an "anonymous registrar" so we won by default.
First, decide on a price you are willing to pay and then vow not to go any higher. Don't look at the asking price, just decide what it's worth to you. Offer the squatter half that and if he haggles with you, be tough and then walk away if he wants higher than your top price. In fact, stop at about 3/4 of your top price then walk away for a few weeks. See if he calls you.
If you can't get it for the price you want, start looking into other variations on the domain. A domain is only as 'valuable' as the marketing you put behind it. So the domain itself won't make or break your business. You'd be better off investing that money into a good marketing campaign or branding/logo designer etc.
As for the actual transaction- don't buy it unless he is listing it through a legit registrar's after-market domain auctioning/selling system. Don't take the "send me the cash and I'll unlock it for transfer" line.
Protect yourself and get a lawyer to do the actual transaction.
Don't buy names from squatters. It only encourages the business model, and we don't want to do that.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Cybersquatting is considered an abusive registration, and therefore subject to 'expedited administrative proceedings' with an ICANN representative. Its likely to cost you a fair bit to go through the dispute resolution, but if their site is obviously a 'for-sale' site, then you're pretty much guaranteed to win - para 4, section b refers almost entirely to cybersquatting.
It might be worth going this route if a) the scumbag has registered several domains you want (eg .com, .net) , and b) also wants loads of cash for them. The cost for the NAF panel is $1300 (nice work if you can get it :) )
I do think the dispute-resolution process is pretty poor for the most obvious forms of abuse, and should be opened up to more, quicker and cheaper forms of arbitration, with anything other than the most obvious cases requiring a higher panel,but ICANN is run as an international body, so I don't expect anything to happen, ever.
If you buy domain names on speculation, you're a cybersquatter - someone who reserves space for no reason other than to occupy the space a resell it. There is no legitimate reason to hoard domains, except to capitalize on the scarcity.
Now, since you appear to be a cybersquatter, I can see how you are a bit touchy and are looking to legitimize your business plan. That's fine. That's why houses are called "resales" and not "used." A "Domainer" (aside from sounding like something out of Waterworld) is just a nicer name for a cybersquatter - but you do the exact same thing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Think about how you contact the person and how that comes across to them, especially if you're interested in a domain that might appeal to other people. You're probably not the first person to ask.
I have one domain that I've had since 1992 that I've probably had over 100 offers on, some as high as $16k, but all of the offers come from some random free email account. Almost all of them come across as some sort of scammer, so I don't even consider them real offers. I'm not sure if there are scams out there involving offerring to buy domain names, but it's not enough money for me to waste my time finding out. I'm also not in a rush to sell a 4 character domain name that I've had forever and give as my email address for contracting work I do.
A lot of people assume the domain isn't being used because I don't have much of a home page. Sending me an email stating that I'm not using the domain is a good way to end up in the bit bucket. Asking how much I want to sell it for when I've never offered it for sale is also a recurring theme. If you want to make an offer, make it. If you seem like you're on the level, I'll be courteous enough to tell you I'm not interested. I have countless people expecting me to engage in a conversation back and forth about their interest in my domain. Since I have nothing to gain from the vast majority of these discussions, I don't respond to any of them.
I've suggested that if someone just wanted the name for a web site, I can direct the traffic to anywhere, but nobody has been interested in this option. It seems like it wouldn't be completely unreasonable for a legitimate business to make an arrangement for something they feel will benefit them. I even had one company threaten to sue me unless I handed over the domain name to them, claiming I was infringing on their copyright of a common English word. The funny thing is that if a human being, instead of a lawyer, had approached me as if I were a vaguely intelligent human being, I probably could be convinced to point the home page to their site with some very agreeable terms to both parties.
On the other hand, if they're really just a cybersquatter, those people are only interested in money, so decide whether or not you want to pay their price.
How do you go about aquiring domains that are simply held by squatters that don't want to sell because they're convinced they're making enough ad revenue from the sites to make it worth it (even though on the domain you tried, there's no way in hell they really will be) like this company here:
http://www.nameadministration.com/
I've been waiting on a particular domain for a couple of years now. I got the .org and .net, but the .com is occupied by a squatter.
What I've found is that any interest at all will result in the price going up - and offers (if you've identified yourself) to sell it to you.
Even a domain watch (such as those that GoDaddy offers) will result in them holding onto it in the hopes that they'll get some money for it.
You can either wait them out, or pay the premium that they're asking (and fund their future squatting).
If the domain was previously owned and expired, it may have just been snatched back up in the hopes that the original owner made a mistake or to get some visitors expecting the old site.
If this is the case, and it isn't a valuable domain already (where it is sure to sell), e-mailing simply alerts the owner that there is someone interested in the domain. They may only have registered it for a 1-year test to see if it gets any bites. If you don't think it will be snatched up otherwise, you can try to simply backorder the domain with a service like GoDaddy and wait for the year to end. I just recovered the domain for a friend's restaurant doing this on Tuesday. I had set him up with a temporary domain last year after losing it so he would still have a presence. It's just redirected now.
Really? How can you tell?
My company has a couple hundred domains that were purchased over time, for different projects, products, services & proposals. Not all of them are active, but when you're in the early planning stages, it's worth paying $7 to godaddy to get the domain before anyone else.
Lots of legitimate companies buy domain names for future use. The default for many registrars is to show a search page & some ads.
Personally, I'd start by looking at similar names. Or different extensions. By making an offer, you may drive them to buy other, similar domain names in order to force you to pay a higher price.
the modern mob.
It's that simple. If you find another and that's taken see what's on the site if it's under construction or just the usual search sh1t put up buy the domain registrar (which many do) try contacting the owner and find out what happened there are lots out there that people registered legitimately thinking they were going to do something with but they never got around to it or the business idea never got off the ground. You could even find yourself talking to the Official Receiver/Liquidator if the business went bust. At the end of the day not everyone who owns a domain name that's just sitting there is a squatter although most are. If you do find yourself talking to a squatter end the communication and move onto another domain.
Good luck
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
You are much better off finding something unique. I did, it uses two actual words, and it is not used by anybody except one guy as as a user name in a few places. Just Google things until it draws a blank.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
What do you do when your own surname is owned by a domain whore?
Trademark the name (costs a few hundred dollars), even if it's just for a stylized word (not the typed word) in the secondary register. Then send a polite letter to the domain registrant asking for the name. Even a weak trademark might be enough to get them to shy away.
Offering these scumbags money just teaches them that they're on the right track. If you've got money to burn, why not throw a little at some of the many groups that are trying to outlaw this practice?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I had a domain and had good intentions of using it but never got around to it for around a year. The company who contacted me had a completely different business than I *would* have used it for, but I was broke so I weighed out what I thought it was worth, trying to be fair (hay it was a pretty good domain name) and asked for $5000. I figured they would negotiate me down and prolly take 1/2 or less. TBH, would have been happy if they took it or not. They lawyered up and after a few nasty certified letters I let it go since I couldn't afford the legal coverage. Kinda sucked to be sued out of it...
you are not providing any 'service' by owning this arrangement of alphabetical characters. you dont 'own' it, it didnt even exist until you 'bought' it.
your 'business model' is the equivalent of buying sunshine or air and then then charging people to use it. its fucking free, nobody had to create it or expend aany energy for it to exist.
you are a leech on society. kindly get a real job that contributes to civilization, like being a fry cook or a dish washer.
f***t***
A few years ago I bought a domain for personal use, and accidentally got the wrong one. I was planning on [mynickname].net, but got [mynickname].org.
When the .org was about to expire I was going to nab the .net one, but at that point some chinese webstore was running on the adress. A year later it expired, and some squatter took it, and wanted several thousand dollars for it. Waited a year more, the squatter expired and I got my precious domain for only the registration fee.
Keep in mind that even if they do agree to your offer for the domain name, you might not actually be purchasing it from them.
In many instances, squatters like these will often "sublet" a domain name, rather than actually sell it to you outright. If you aren't thorough, you might not notice the issue until after it needs to be renewed a year or two down the road. The idea is that once a person has operated under a domain name long enough for it to have value to them, they'll be so desperate to keep the name that they'll pay just about any price to continue using it.
Once they know they've got you hooked, it'll be just one more reason to justify doing it to others.
8==8 Bones 8==8
That's the real tricky part though. If you change your web host (and thus change IP address) all the work you've done to improve your Google ranking (not to mention links from other websites, bookmarks, etc) is gone and you'd have to start over again. Having a URL is still a necessity (though having a memorable URL is not as important as it once was).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
A cybersquatter my company dealt with just up and asked $15kUS for a domain right off the bat (actually I've heard he asked numbers ranging up to $30kUS). We have the .org and the .net but he has the .com, and this is a very unique but fairly obscure name, not something you'd expect a cybersquatter to go after. The .org site is probably the most descriptive, but the .com definitely would have been nice to have...and I can say with certainty that nobody else is going to be interested in that domain, and that we would never pay him more than three, maybe low four digits for the .com.
Someone had the Google account name too (we were looking at hosting videos on Google Video at the time), I had to wonder if it was the same guy who went on a squatting spree after we expressed interest.
Oh I just looked up the company for your entertainment. Some place called Name Administration Inc registered in - guess where - the Cayman Islands. They currently "own" nearly a quarter million domains.
Here's their website:
http://www.nameadministration.com/
They have such gems as ingrowntoenails.com, fueltanks.net, and bebes.com promoted on their front page.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think this is waist of time and money. If the previous site did not have exactly your type of content, and was not optimized for your market, then why pay big bucks for it?
I might buy a domain because it is exactly what I would need (i.e. it is exactly a product name), but in that case I would have the trademark over it and would not be entertaining them anyway. Small, reasonable offer even then is all I would go for. Domains really do not have that much value, even if they are short and old.
If you buy a similar domain, but not exact domain, add the search engine optimization then it is worth more. I might buy out a competitor's domain that is closing their doors or something.
So, I guess my point is, how do the search engines view that domain?
Living in Chile
More and more, domains are becoming less relevant. Instead, people are using search engines as their primary navigation tool. I don't think it matters what domain you actually purchase. I think focusing on your Google PageRank will grant you a better return on invested time.
interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
Don't do it - it rarely works out. Come up with a new business name.
We had been waiting for someone else's registration on a domain to lapse (they wanted something like $15k), when it got sniped by a squatter who owned a registrar.
He promptly contacted us, and offered us the domain for about $700. We replied with a counteroffer of $250.
He accepted, we have the domain now.
The hardest part was waiting the 60 days to transfer the domain to another registrar - we didn't want to be lining his pockets indefinitely.
My advice to management was "just wait, we can get it for free in a month". Their reply was "It's cheap at $1000, just buy it."
How much is having that domain worth to you? $250? $1000? ZW$100,000,000,000? Offer 1/3rd of what it's worth to you, see what they counter with.
It just doesn't work, land in a good location is not like a domain name. Land is limited and, hey, land is land. You can build a McDonald's in any good location, but there's only one mcdonalds.com, and if you registered that before such a company existed (or worse yet, after such a company came into existence but before they registered the domain) with the intent to extort anyone who may want it for ludicrous amounts of money, you are SCUM.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Use the Microsoft approach (see MikeRoweSoft.com). Make a large offer for the domain. Once they accept, withdraw the offer and forward the paperwork to ICANN. The agreement to sell can then be used as evidence in arbitration and the anti-cybersquatting rules mean that they can have the domain taken away from them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's about as helpful. All you'll be doing is financing the person to buy 100 other domains and hook the next sucker.
Pick another name.
I have a domain I've owned and not used for almost 15 years, it's a .com that would be very attractive to anyone with a directory or yellow pages plan. Every so often I get a query on it but it's always.... wait for it... a domain squatter. I tell them it's $10k and never hear back. If I had a query from someone who really was going to do something with it, I would negotiate rationally.
So for those who say "registrant!=squatter" that's not my experience. (Well except for me, um, never mind.)
I'm looking over the wall, and they're looking at me!
...they may not necessarily be a cybersquatter (at least, not intentionally).
I own a couple dozen domains that used to belong to clients or ex-clients of mine. In some cases, they went out of business and failed to pay for the domain renewals, so I decided to transfer them over to myself; in other cases, they changed their minds about the name of their business and decided not to hold on to the other domains.
So, I now have about 2 dozen of these domains under my control; since I have no use for them, where's the harm in asking a reasonable price (anywhere from $50-$100) for them?
Finally, in one case, the client went out of business *and* screwed me out of a good $1,000 in development payments, so trying to recoup some of that with a domain that I now legally own seems reasonable.
Not saying this is the case here, just noting that it may be a similar situation.
I'm pretty sure you can get yahoo.com for almost nothing. Unfortunately, you also have to take the company attached to the domain name.
make an offer and be willing to walk away.
You have to show proof to the registrar that you have the company name registered, (for a .com.au), and for others, such as .org.au you must show your organisation is substantially tied to that name.
Personally I think it's a much better system than being able to randomly register anything. Owning a domain name you have no legitimate claim to can result in you losing your registration.
In meatspace, if a business sets up in a poor location, it affects their traffic because it is a PHYSICAL business. More importantly, no land = no business. On the internet, very few people even type URLs anymore, they google everything. All that domain registration does is place a few letters in the address bar of people's browsers.
Of course, the name does enormous things for your placement in google. Just do a google search for "buy flowers": at least half the results have the search the search terms right in the domain name. This is not a coincidence. If the name describes what you do and is also your branded name, your success in google is almost guaranteed.
Having a domain name that describes your company is tremendously important for a variety of reasons, not least of which is google ranking. Further, with modern browsers, the address bar searches your history. If you have your name or your product in the domain, this helps people find you a second time. Google Chrome is even better: search and address bar are the same. While I despise these people who park pages, their price is usually worth it if you are a company and the name is good.
So, in the cyber-world, picking the name actually does make a big difference in the amount of traffic you get. Having "widgets.com" really is the equivalent of being off of the highway, while "example.com/widgets" is really miles down the road.
Also, giving up domain names means completely abdicating your surfing to search engines and people who know SEO. Not a good idea.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
You email them, you make them a reasonable offer, a little below what you're prepared to spend, and you go from there.
If they don't reply, or want a stupid amount - you've not lost anything.
I've given up on Buydomains because they price unregistered "premium" domains (ie: anything readable) sky-high. A name that I wanted was $200 through them, but $15 via another registrar.
I have owned criv.com since 1998. It's short, pronounceable (sort of), and on the com tld. Check it out, it's my wife's flower farm (Coos Riviera).
Over the years I've had a few people asking if I'm looking to sell. Since I am not looking to sell, I have always quoted the same price: $48,000. After reading these negotiating tactics, I understand why I still own it! As for the price, I figure my wife would be angry if I sold the domain, but she'd be mollified by the new car I'd buy with the proceeds.
Anyone else have a pronounceable, 4-letter dot com? What would it take for you to sell?
SCO.com
A friend of mine had a fairly nice .com domain name, "dev2dev.com". He was using it for personal use and running a few toy programs for him and his friends. Then he started getting more and more hits from all over. It turned out that BEA had created a developer community site at dev2dev.bea.com, but many people forgot to add the "BEA" part.
I was in a training class with BEA a few years ago as they mentioned that more samples and the community was located at dev2dev.bea.com. I mentioned to the sales guy at the back of the hotel ballroom that I had a friend with dev2dev.com and he was seeing a bunch of hits and that my friend was a BEA developer too.
About a month later, I get an email from my friend saying that "someone" was offering him $500 for his domain. I told him that I'd mentioned it to BEA Sales guy and that he should try to get a perpetual developer license for everything that BEA sells and 2 unlimited CPU production licenses for everything as a swap. He wanted a turbo for this import car instead that was around $5,000. Further, the party offering to buy the domain wasn't saying who they were. I don't know the **exact** terms reached, but it was under $5000 since he didn't get that turbo and talked about it for a while.
Ok, so if you go to http://dev2dev.com/, you don't see BEA there. Obviously, it wasn't them. My friend has no regrets over this - he saw it as "free money" for his $7/yr registration cost. Clearly, he wasn't a squatter and a win-win outcome happened.
I have a few (under 5) domains that I'd be happy to sell for $500 each. I tend to use subdomains now, so only my main, really ugly name, is needed.
The post is a little light on details, so I'm taking some liberties here. . .
Just because the website for a domain doesn't have anything unique or interesting on it doesn't mean the owner is a cybersquatter. The owner could just as easily be using the domain for e-mail only. Or for un-Iinked web pages for personal (or private business) use. I own several domains like this. Public websites are only one single (potential) aspect of a domain. It could legitimately and happily be used in other ways. Or maybe he really plans to put a site up some day but hasn't gotten around to it yet.
My advice to the submitter is to first and foremost keep these things in mind. Unless you know for certain the domain is being squatted on, don't approach negotiations from that standpoint.
I would suggest deciding up front what the domain is worth to you. If you're eventually unable to agree on a price in that neighborhood (or below), you need to be prepared to move on. You have no leverage. Period.
If you're unwilling to move on, then clearly the value you initially placed on the domain is too low. Just because you don't want to pay more, doesn't mean you're entitled to get it for less. The domain is worth exactly what someone who wants it is willing to pay for it. Not a penny less. Not some arbitrary "fair" amount. That's how free market economics works.
Start by soliciting an offer. Do your best to get the owner to throw out a number first. If you absolutely must make the first offer, start low, but don't be unreasonable or insulting. I wouldn't expect any half-decent domain to go for less than $100.
Pretend you're buying a used car and you should make out OK.
A tangential issue is to CYA after an agreement is reached. Take the necessary steps to protect your payment and ensure full transfer of ownership.
LG.
Without getting all commie, people who have a lot of money, or opportunity, or options, always whine "It's nothing personal, just business." When you have the option to buy domains and sell them for 100x-1000x the price, why wouldn't you? Legally, of course, it's totally legit. Ethically, it's totally not. And I'll tell you why.
When you buy a piece of land, the law assumes that you are doing your bit to maintain and develop that land. In fact, most property law revolves around that idea of having to put work into it. You pay taxes on it, and you are generally expected to be doing something to maintain it's value. When a property falls into total - or dangerous - disrepair, they come to you with the fines. If your sidewalk is hazardous, you can get sued. This is all considered the price of ownership.
With domains, there is no such cost associated. In fact, all that buying up domains does is suck money from actual wealth-generating sectors of the economy. If I start a business called AwesomeWorldChangingWidgets, I can't get that domain if you're squatting on it without first paying you way more for that domain than you did. Now, if you were society at large, and that additional value was being spread across those people who help to bring value to the domain name itself (such as the internet routers, the municipalities that maintain fiber, ICANN, or any of the host of other sectors that make the Internet viable), that would be fair. But you're just taking the money and running: you're taking the money for someone else's work.
The only complaint anyone ever has with capitalism is the 'I got here first' problem. When you start out with resources others didn't have a fair opportunity at, and then exchange them for disproportionately large sums of money, you're playing into this. Yes, it makes your life easier, but you've only helped yourself - and at the expense of literally everyone else. That makes you unethical.
[Ego]out
First of all what you are describing is not cybersquating (sp)
Ok...
The domain has been registered by a domainer - a domain trader that buys premium domains treating them as an investment.
That's the definition of a cybersquatter. Domainer is what cybersquatters call themselves -- it's like how mobsters call themselves "legitimate businessmen".
it's no trademark, not a domain typo - there is no bad faith.
That's just a subset of cybersquatter. I think we used to use the word "domain scalper" for these guys, but I'm not a real Internet anthropologist, just an old man.
Why don't you just buy it? God forbid people invest in something in hope of it gaining value. These people invested tens of thousands of dollars in their business, god forbid they make any money to "fund their future squatting". You probably don't mind paying for everything else you want, why not pay for the domain name you want?
I have my own side business that has my last name as part of its title. Amazingly, when I went to register a domain name for it, I discovered that somebody had actually registered the name I wanted as a .com domain. (This is pretty unlikely, since my last name is uncommon AND spelled differently than most people who share a very similar last name. Not only that, but to register it with my business's full title was just weird!)
When I went to the web site, nothing pulled up at all, and the whois info informed me some business in China held the domain registration for it. Quite odd...
Rather than mess around with any of this (and wind up being asked to pay who knows how much to buy the domain), I went ahead and registered the .net version of my desired domain name instead, and used it for about a year. I paid GoDaddy about $5 for a year of "site monitoring", so they'd shoot me an email any time the status of the .com domain I wanted changed.
It was interesting to see, because after a while, I received several notifications about it changing status. (Someone appeared to be transferring it to someone else, who transferred it again. My guess is that some of these squatters are just buying "packages" of domains from other squatters?) By the 2nd. year I was in business, the domain had finally expired and I was able to register it myself for only a few bucks. I then ran my .com and .net domains simultaneously until the .net one expired.
You never "buy" a domain! we rent them and the yearly fees are what we pay for them.
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
I've got a .org site, and have had for quite a few years. About a year ago someone bought the .com version of the domain, waited an entire year, and then tried to sell me the domain for $950 or 'make me an offer'. I offered him 50pence, and since I was the only similarly named domain I figured he realised he couldn't make any money from it, and then didn't renew. I was able to pick up the domain for the standard price after that.
.org or .net version of the domain, and simply wait. They'll contact you eventually, just don't give them a penny and it'll eventually work out.
My advice would be to register a
It has been a while since I posted on slashdot, but I could not resist because this is WHAT I DO (but WHITEHAT)
Here are some references: (Please be careful with MODS - these are NOT links to my sites]
http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/140576
http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Drupal_com_domain_has_been_donated_to_Dries_Buytaert
http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml
Here is my simple advice:
You are screwed.
The squatters won long ago - THEY know the rules:
1) Register a domain
2) Be careful!
a) Do not put up infringing content
b) Put up a 'search' page to generate some profit
c) Do not offer to sell, just wait
d) Hide in another country with nicer rules for scammers if possible
3) Profit!
Here are my suggestions .TV ? (I may be biased as I bought the first premium dot TV domain)
1) Choose a different domain
a) Choose another Top Level Domain , may I suggest
b) I can offer some for FREE for Open Source communities (Notice: No link to me - just google for OpenDomain )
c) Try different variations of the brand
2) Suck it up and pay.
a) Lease the domain
b) Negotiate - a lawyer may help if you DO have IP
Good luck!
Why are they scumbags?
If I was in a town, and there was an empty lot on the corner of McDonalds and Main streets, I would buy it hoping McDonalds would want to put a restaurant their.
If they did and I made a tidy some everyone would say I was a smart businessman. Do the same with domains and it's some how 'wrong'?
There is nothing wrong with what they are doing. You may not like it, but to damn bad.
Outlawing this practice is outrages, a waste of the courts time, the waste of out legislators time and pretty much pointless.
How do you define a cybersquatter in a manner that separates people you think our cybersquatters from people you think are legitimate?
Add to this they are not squatters. A squatter is someone who goes into a home they didn't pay to be at and refuse to leave. These people paid to do this, if anything they are capitalists, just like any person who buys and sells land is.
Perhaps CyberBaron might be more accurate.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
sitting on a domain name unproductively with the intent to hope someone will come along and pay your ransom is not what most people consider legitimate business. while some URL's sell for high premiums because of the website behind it, or simply the value of the name itself (consider systemax's acquisitions of circuitcity and compusa URL, trademark, logo, etc.), this is not the case of many URL squatters who simply buy up every domain in sight, hoping one will make a payoff when a corporation takes interest.
If the owner hopes to invest in domain names, they should be expected to work the value of the name. but i disagree completely that a business hopeful with an actual use for a domain name should happily pay the extortion of a common domain thug.
Wait a minute. Are you seriously calling someone who has a domain name you want, but won't sell because they are making money, a squatter?
In that case Google is a squatter because I want that domain. The fact that they are making money from ad revenue is irrelevant~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
True story: an architect friend decided his business needed a presence on the Internet several years ago, but not knowing anything about the Internet except it was a way to advertise, and being cheap, he asked his neighbor Bob to set him-up. The neighbor bought and registered his domain name, ("www.[last_name]architecturalstudio.com") and set up a very simple page with contact info, etc.
My friend was happy, but two years later, the domain name came up for renewal and he and the neighbor were no longer on speaking terms. The neighbor ignored the renewal notices and one day my friend gets a call from a client saying his website had disappeared and a search page was in its place. Friend calls domain registrar (GoDaddy) who informs him his domain name expired thirty days previously and had been purchased by another party (even though GoDaddy says they'll hold the domain name for sixty days after expiration before putting it up for auction - one of many reasons to stay the heck away from GoDaddy).
Friend contacts the new owner - someone located in the UK - who tells my friend he can buy the domain name back for the low, low price of $40,000.00. Friend says no thanks and registers a new domain name and begins process of putting up another website (with my help). Day later, friend gets another call from a client asking if he knows his original domain name is now a pr0n site. Friend apologizes and then receives an e-mail from the chap in the UK saying he can buy the domain name back for $500.00.
Moral of the story - never, ever, give anyone else control of your domain name. Especially not Bob.
What?
In our company with work since 2003 with a domain COM.AR (we're from Argentina) and NIC.AR doesn't charge about registration domain. Two year later we wanted buy the .COM domain, but it was registered by some company named Wolf Internet Service LDC . I contact that "company" and request us U$S 1200. The site still parking in SEDO and have some words, key, related with our website content.
I started to investing about this kind of frauds and discover a "neutral" organization named WIPO . I contacted with them about my problem at (you can send your questions in any language), about the fraud, and they reply me with information about similar cases and I interesting part:
"In a dispute involving one to five domain names, there is a fee of $ 1500 for the United States to a dispute that has to be resolved by a panel composed of a single member, and a rate of $ 4000 United States to a dispute that has to be resolved by a panel composed of three members."
So, they are charging me U$S 1500 to dispute the site when the cybersquatter request me $ 1200. The "bad guy" still winning.
We still with this problem, and is more difficult to us solute it because our country is no experienced about cybercrimes our copy right laws.
Wait for them to forget to renew. I snagged one exactly that way and didn't have to wait very long.
The difference is Property is -real-, or at least my tax assessor says it is, you do in fact own it (assuming things like you pay your taxes and don't get it taken under Eminent Domain).
With Domain names, you don't actually -OWN- them.. you are just leasing usage rights to them. It's very much like how phone numbers work.. every now and again the whole 867-5309 thing comes up.
Now YMMV with your individual telco how they feel about this.. but in short, you still don't OWN the number.. you need the telco's consent to move your phone line to a new physical premise.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
When I started my company, Station Four, we had the same issue. Since the name wasn't established and there were many variations that would be acceptable (station4, stationfour, stationfourdesign) we went into bargaining with the owner of stationfour.com with a "we'd like the domain but we don't need it attitude", we had already picked up stationfourdesign as a back up.
If we really really wanted a domain that matched our company name and we couldn't get 'stationfour' then we probably would have come up with another name.
The guy asked for too much, we said good-bye, he came back and said he'd sell it for $80 and we picked it up.
I frequent an online BBS, the Armour Archive (www.armourarchive.org). It is a hobbiest board for people who make medieval armour.
At one time, the .org (or .com, I can't remembernow) domain got snapped up by a squatter when it expired. It was not a big deal, as the BBS owner switched domains to the .com domain and the BBS went on.
As a way to give back to the community, however, I approached the squatter and offered to buy the .org domain back. He was hesitant at first, thinking that it had something to do with "amor" (love). When I explained that the domain he had squatted on was used by a bunch of hobbyists and they would never pay a lot of money to get it back, and I offered him like $200 for it, he agreed, and I got the domain and gave it to the BBS owner.
I think the trick here is to simply be up-front with what you are willing to pay. If you're only willing to pay $500 for it, say so. Either he'll sell or he won't.
I don't have a problem with domain squatters. Anyone who utilizes their intellect to have the foresight to figure out what text strings might make profitable domain names has a skill and they are making money off of that skill. People who get mad at domain squatters are really just mad that they didn't have that skill themselves.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Since he's going to charge an exorbitant price to make up for all the OTHER domains he's squatting without a buyer. You have two options (you can do both):
This, please God, this. I can't stand squatters. If more people start taking them to court and their domains get taken from them then maybe this ridiculous crap will stop.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Two years ago I had a good idea for a business. Something we had wanted to try for a while, so I alloted some cash for it. The name was a good one, and we wanted to use it. The first thing we did was make up the domain portfolio. That is, the list of site names that are closely related which we wanted to own. There were 15 variations of slightly different spellings and hyphenations and domains. All of them except the main .com we wanted were available and only $6. Made sense to buy those. All were redirected to that one main one. The main one cost us $800. I went to Sedo.com. They're a broker who makes heaps of money off of this sort of thing. They charged me $69 for the initial "estimate" of value. I'd call it a conflict of interest, since they made 10% on the sale of it, paid by me. That estimate was then accepted as the selling price by the owner, and I paid it. The owner had a WHOIS that was listed as the domain manager (1&1.com, I think), so I couldn't get to the owner directly. My feeling after the experience, besides feeling dirty and cheated, was that the process is set up as a pretty nasty racket, with many layers to make individual contact next to impossible, and really leaving little idea for the average person what the value of a domain is. That's the problem when the owners are just parking domains to make a profit. They aren't seeking to make the sale. The buyer is at an automatic disadvantage because there is an apparent and obvious need expressed simply by asking about it.
For those of you that are wondering, the domain I bought was tunersedge.com. We liked the name for an aftermarket performance auto parts retail site. Unfortunately, 2 years later, still no time to make it happen, but I still own the domains (all 15) and the company is still a legal entity. Maybe someday...
Strange, then, that speculating on land is considered reasonable.
especially since there's a lot more domain-name space than useful land.
There should be a .bus upper domain that you would have to be the owner of the business to register. Not sure what you would do for cases where there are multiple businesses with the same name. Just first come, first served I guess.
The violation clause only applies to trademarks BEFORE the domain name was registered.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Act like a kid. Register a new email address at live.com or gmail, timlikestheyankees@ or something that makes you appear young. Send an email to the company that owns the domain, make it very laid back, again act like a kid. Say you want the name for a new band / a project / your sister's birthday and how much is it. Make the email short and sweet, a lack of capitalisation and spelling will actually help here. If its a domain theyve not had any interest in you should get an offer at a low price. If you sent an email all business like from a proper email account they'd try and ride you out for a higher amount. In their eyes some money is better than no money. Worked for me in the past. R
Yet some of the most successful sites don't do that at all. Google, Yahoo and Amazon are fantastically successful, and both Slashdot and Digg are doing pretty well for themselves.
Those are all sites that are successful because they have regular readers/frequently repeating customers. If you sell widgets, and people only buy widgets once a year, people will go to your site once a year. Nobody links to widgets on their blogs. A lot of companies sell things that you buy once or twice in your life. Unless you want to get billions of dollars of capital together to build a company that immediately dominates your sector (it is spurious to claim that you could repeat google or amazon on a startup budget today) good SEO is really the only path.
Most of the sites that I visit that have descriptive names are using names that are descriptive of what company runs them rather than what they do (and that company name was already known/trademarked).
This is my point. In the case of the OP, the trademarked name is already registered. This is a serious problem.
I'm sure it helps you a little in search results, but it doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal.
When was the last time you purchased something from a company on the fifth page of Google? A small company I worked for paid thousands of euros to an SEO get first page google ranking. Our business (which was already pretty good) doubled immediately. Our main competitor had a position called Vice President of Search Engine Optimization, that is how important this is in a sector that has real, physical products (cheap consumer goods don't count).
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Since I don't know the circumstances of how you ended up at the cybersquatter, it is possible that they are just 'tasting' the domain to sucker you into paying them. If that's the case, just wait 6 days, and register your chosen domain with the registrar.
Short version of what domain tasting is: Squatter's script registers the domain you checked for availability using a "5 day free trial" grace period to sucker you into paying them.
Much better description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting
I am working on starting my own business and the first domain that I wanted was taken, so I bought the .net but then a year later the ROADWARRIORVPN.COM became available so I grabbed it. So in my case it worked out to get the domain as soon as you knew you might possibly need it.
You don't own domain names. Selling domain names is like putting a person who rents an apartment in the position to choose the next tenant.
In some states it's legal to sign a long-term lease then sublet your apartment. The owner may or may not have any legal recourse beyond what is in the original lease, like "all tenants, including subleased tenants, must pass a criminal background check."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
does the term "Cybersquatter" sound scatalogical?
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
"blah...blah...blah...SCALPER GOOD!...blag...blah...blah"
A ticket scalper is nothing more than another form of mugger. They don't add value by helping people who are willing to pay the higher price, they subtract value by screwing over people who just want to pay face value. If they stood at the ticket window and stole cash from the people waiting to buy tickets the same end state would be reached.
Being half an hour too late to buy tickets to a popular concert is annoying. Finding a bunch of tickets being sold online by these jackasses ten minutes after that is more annoying.
That only worked because Micro Soft had been around for a lot longer than Mike Rowe Soft. In this case, the domain squatter has been around for longer.
Probably the same as others have mentioned. We didn't contact the squatter from business accounts. We listened to his offer (an insane $100,000) then ignored him. He was so desperate that he precipitously dropped the price WAAY down. My boss ended up getting it for I think $100.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Send the squatter an email asking if they would sell it, and for how much. It doesn't hurt to ask, you might get it for cheaper than you think.
I recently did this. A friend of mine owned a domain for several years and stopped renewing it a few years ago, so a squatter picked it up. A couple years later I got sentimental so I contacted the squatter and he sold it to me for $50.
Yes it is.
It's the same idea behind buying an undervalued stock, doing nothing with the stock (except owning it) and selling it later.
It's the same idea behind buying a house that you feel is undervalued, renting it out/doing nothing, until the price goes up, and selling it later.
It's the same idea behind buying lots of gold because you feel it will be worth more in the years to come.
Buy low, sell high.
I have experience with the exact situation you are talking about. When I was going public with one of my websites I wanted the perfect name. I had a pretty good domain name already, but I felt that it was too specific. I wanted one that both spoke to what was being currently offered by the site, but still left room for the site to offer more than it already did.
.net of the hyphenated).
Eventually I settled on a name and it was owned by someone else. It was just serving ads. I WHOISed it, used the contact information and asked how much they wanted. What they asked for was not unreasonable. I felt like it could be an awesome name for the site's genre so I accepted and things went without a hitch. UNTIL...
Later, something like 3 days later, I decided that the hyphenated version of the name would be nice to have as well. I went to register it and it was owned also. WHOIS again. Guess who? Same guy... guess when registered? Same day he transferred the other one to me. In the end I decided it was worth it to me to buy it from him as well (after I bought the
I got exactly what I wanted. He made a small chunk of change (probably paid his home internet bill for the year). I was actually impressed with how smoothly it went down. I was even slightly impressed that he had the sense to go buy the other one when i bought the first one (though I intentionally did not buy the hyphenated one to start with because i wanted him to see he had options if he was in love with the name so he could still sell the first one to me).
I guess I would say just try to contact them and find out what they want. It might be less than you expect OR you might not be able to get it at all with your available funds. I wish you luck. Having a good domain name that reflects what you do will help a lot in growing your site's popularity. Not having your #1 choice will probably not kill your chances, but it can make things a little bit harder. It might be worth the extra money to get exactly what you want.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
And don't forget about gambling. It must not be reasonable either. Honestly I question why a person sitting on a domain that has a single search page is squatting? I have several that are either in development (behind the scenes) or failed attempts. Probably more failed attempts but I suck at promotion. These ALL have something on them that MAY make me some money to offset the costs that I have incurred while developing. I'm not squatting on them and if someone wanted to purchase them they could easily negotiate with me. Squatting would mean that someone else owns the rights or property to the said domain.
The Poetry of Google Voice is very strange.
gv-poetry.com
Jump the prices of the original domain names up to $100 or so. That makes it bite-able if you are sincerely interested, but too much to be in the squatting business, at least with the presence it has now.
This, please God, this.
sentence
Bow-ties are cool.
I just checked out mikerowesoft.com and it looks like a squatter has it. Sure, it's bing.com so it's microsoft, but it still says SQUATTER all over it.
Several years ago, I was looking at a particular .org domain for a nonprofit site. WHOIS reported that the domain had been registered, the registration had expired, and the domain was "pending deletion". I found out the registrar was dotregistrar, so I jumped through their hoops and paid them $20 a year for the priviledge of "backordering" the domain when they got around to deleting it. They said the "grace period" wasn't up yet (it's normally 15-90 days).
Fast forward three years - the domain is still a "pending delete", and I'm out $60. I tried contacting them one last time to find out what's going on. I'm still listed as #1 in the backorder list, but the domain hasn't been deleted. I say the hell with it and refuse to renew for a fourth year. The NEXT DAY, the domain has been registered to a new owner, who coincidentally, is a squatter whose sites are all registered with dotregistrar.
Either this is a really unlikely coincidence, or the whole "backorder" thing is a pretty blatant scam.
I believe Al Pacino does.
rj
Last year, I was exploring the idea of a browser-based MMO game - unfortunately, the name was already parked. I asked for a quote and got back "1,900".
I said "hell no" (at this point we hadn't even planned as far as breaking even on the $15 registration fee, so a four-digit investment was out of the question). I got back "800". Then, a week later, "$500".
So just by refusing/not reacting to the first two offers, I brought his price down by three quarters. The moral: Domain squatters use a pricing scheme known as "what can we milk them for?" Unless you are looking at a domain you know is highly marketable ("free.com", "download.net"), you probably shouldn't be paying more than a thousand.
Yeah, because we want to be at least twice as slimy and deceptive as the people we condemn. If you think a business is shady but legal, see if you can commit fraud to undermine them, provided you can avoid going to prison for it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Also analogies are evil
Nooooo! Not my precious car analogies!
Bow-ties are cool.
Well I'm pretty sure there's at least one common practice of cybersquatters that we can all agree makes them total scumbags. And that is the practice of snapping up a domain name seconds after someone checked its availability.
I do have to agree though with a lot of the posters here that simply holding a domain that may eventually be worth something can be considered legitimate business.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Unlike the above, squatters also clog up my search results, and pretend to be some sort of resource in their own right, feigning relevance to whatever search I did. That's more difficult to make an analogy, but I'll try...
It's like buying thousands of houses that you guess a few might be undervalued, putting a sign outside that says "Bed & Breakfast" or "Ye Olde Antique Shop", and when people come in looking for something entirely different, you either refer them to someone down the block who paid you for it, or you try to sell them the house.
It is generally quite dishonest.
Now, there may indeed be some cybersquatter rule that I can use to hurt them, but either way, I absolutely refuse to support their business model. If it's some kid who bought a personal domain and isn't doing much with it, fine -- but if it's yet another "What you need, when you need it" bullshit site, they can rot.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I am a Nigerian Prince with several million dollars held by the Nigerian government. I need your domain name to unlock the funds. As a sign of good faith please transfer your domain to me. In consideration I will give you 10% of the funds when they are released.
I think that has the right balance of wealthy and desperate.
Ticketmaster is guilty of this. Bruce Springstein did a series of concerts and wanted his regular street-level fans to be able to attend. Ticketmaster and Bruce's management agreed upon a range of ticket prices.
Ticketmaster operates a few subsidiary companies that also sell tickets. These companies bought the Springstein tickets at face value and turned around and sold them with a scalper's mark-up. The common folk were then priced out of the Bruce Springstein concerts and the Boss didn't see any of that premium pricing in the form of additional revenue.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Using an escrow service, its the safest way to make a major purchase with an untrusted party. I used http://www.escrow.com/ last year when I sold a domain name I had used for 15 years. It was quick, easy, and thier fee was tolerable.
That only works if you have a trademark to be infringed upon. The asker clearly states that he does not.
Really, he should consult a trademark lawyer rather than asking /.. The /. question about `should he deal with domain squatters' has a simple answer -- NO. End of story. Do not deal with domain squatters.
But from a business standpoint, it might make sense to do so, even if the /. community largely sees it as morally wrong. And as for how to handle it, that's for the lawyer to work out -- not /..
Ironically, cybersquatting is so commonplace that I've become wary of any domain name that sounds too good- pretty frequently it ends up being a stupid one page site full of ads.
Interesting - type mikerowesoft.com into your browser and see where it takes you. Any guesses?
Someone who purchases a domain name with the intent to sell it later, at a profit - doesn't *have* to make it look like something it isn't.
If you want to be against websites that misrepresent themselves, I feel like that's a separate issue from people who want to make money by investing in domain names.
You can squat and do whatever you want with the domain name.
The reason so many try to look like legit pages/search engines/articles with links are because they can generate revenue. Other companies pay the squatter when he brings traffic to their site.
I think the most apt real-world comparison is buying a vacant lot along the interstate 5-10 miles out of town.
Right now, the land is cheap (but not free - you are paying for it). Your hope is that in a few years (or decades), the town will grow and expand in your direction and your worthless lot will be a prime location.
You buy it cheap, hold it and hope it's worth more.
But, while it's worth nothing, you can make some small % of your investment back in the form of advertising.
So the guy finds an advertising company who will put up a large billboard.
NOBODY intentionally drives down I-25 to read this guys billboard. But people who are going into/out of town, might see it. Some people who see it might investigate it further and that might lead to the company getting business - so they are willing to pay the land-squatter some $$$ for hosting their ads.
There are countless (endless really) sites out there with ads littered everywhere. Many of them owned by 'real', 'legit' companies that exist in the real world.
I dunno, I just don't feel like squatting is inherently evil.
Of course, if you *do* hate squatters, you could take it upon yourself to be the anti-squatter. You could buy up domain names, in bulk, at a great cost to you. Then you could keep renewing them, until someone wants to buy it from you, and then you could sell it at no-profit.
If enough people did that, they could effectively drive squatters out of business.
"I think the solution is pretty simple; you can sell a domain name to someone else for at most the time-adjusted value of all the dollars you've paid the registration company. Anything extra goes to that registration company, who gets to keep reasonable operating costs. The rest goes into a fund for internet development or research or somesuch."
The last thing you want to do is encourage the regiastration companies. They do this kind of crap already in many cases. As for a developmenet find, tried that, anybody who paid into the Intellectual Infrastructure Fund in the first two or three years when .com became pay for watches the US congree steal it and give to Mike Roberts as payback for ICANN which he promptly wasted on Internet II to upgrade the net connection of some US universities. Given Canada alone put $4M into that fund this is not an idea anybody with a memory about such things is gonna endorse heartily.
The other thign is too there are some people that buy domains for $6 each - lots of them then try to make them make more than $7/yr. I don't think it's a very good business but it is a legal business and I'm not sure we want to go down the slippery slope of letting somebody decide what a legitimate use of a domain is.
What if someday somebody decides I don't have a shopping cart and am not doing e-commerce so it's not really a legitimate business and somebody is trying to do e-commerce should have my domain because that's more legitimate. That way be dragons.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I actually got back a URL that I had dropped by mistake when changing hosts. If you have the patience or are angry enough, register with a backorder service to pick up the URL next renewal time. Do it well in advance of expiration, as the service providers don't move all that fast. Also, don't obsessively check the URL. Squatters track the visits and will be more likely to renew or pick up URLs that generate traffic.
Just because your business is different to a domainer, does not mean that their business is not a valid one. Advertising on an unused domain is a perfectly reasonable business and is really no different from advertising on the side of a building whilst you are waiting to sell it. If I visit "flea.com" because I'm interested in getting cheap meds for my pets then it provides exactly what I am looking for. Would that be more or less valid a use if it had "Freds Light Entertainment Associates" hosted on it. Squatting implies that the domains are gained for no effort or that they are free. Yes, some of them are bought at a low price and some of them have a large mark up. However, it's not an easy business to be in, advertising has to be arranged, hosting paid for, design work done and portfolios managed. It's still a business, same as yours. Why should different domains not have different values? Is this any different to the price of a square foot of land having different prices dependant on it's location? To answer the origional question, my tips would be to find out what other businesses have paid for their domain names. The price will depend on the things listed above, the number of others who have enquired about the same name, price of similar names, current googlepage rank, links in, age and lastly and rather unfairly how much the seller thinks you will pay for it. Check archive.org to see what the site has been used for previously. I don't buy or sell domains as a business but I've chatted to some people who do.
A few years ago I purchased a domain from someone in St. Petersburg Russia. I e-mailed the guy and asked him how much he wanted. He was asking for $3,000 which was fine with me. Initially I was not comfortable sending $3,000 to an unknown person in St. Petersburg. So, we used escrow.com which specializes in selling and buying domain names. The buyer pays escrow.com and the seller transfers the domain to escrow.com. When escrow.com confirms the buyers paid and the transfer from the seller, they sending the money to the seller and transfer the domain to the buyer. Safe and simple.
Domains aren't land. There are some analogous aspects, but it's not the same thing, so we shouldn't expect to treat them exactly the same way as real property.
But as long as we're doing it, lets stretch the analogy a little bit. The law (IANAL) protects the property owners rights, but the law is also vested in seeing that land is actually *used*. This is why there are "adverse possession" laws. Also known as "squatters rights". In essence, the domain resellers are the property "owners" and people who want to use that land are the "squatters". Squatters (people who want unused land) in the real world actually have rights, unlike in cyberspace.
Squatters rights typically work like this: if you can squat on a persons land for a certain amount of time (say, 7 years) without them kicking you off it, YOU OWN THE LAND, because you were actually using it. Part of this law means that owners actually need to "regularly" walk their property to make sure that it's secure, etc., that nobody is squatting on it. And if you can use and occupy the land, and the other owner wasn't using it, you get to keep it and they lose.
The point here is that good use of limited resources (such as domains and land) is of value to society and thus to the law.
But adverse possession law doesn't work in cyberspace, for at least two reasons. First, the domain "property" owner can "walk" his property 3 billion times a second, even if he's not actually using it, because it doesn't occupy any physical space. Instead, its "size" is more a function of how useful it is within cyberspace. "buy.com" is the Louisiana Purchase compared to "xvlskdjf234235.org", which is like the one-room "garden" apartment you rent. So this unfairly supports domain resellers because they can be everywhere at once.
Secondly, there's no (legal) way to adversely possess a domain. Even if the reseller isn't using the domain to serve ads, you can't go and squat on it (to prove that you'll use it even though the owner isn't), because you'd have to hack his gibsons to do it.
Even overlooking the impossibility of adversely possessing a domain from a reseller, the issue is complicated by the fact that it's difficult to determine what legitimate use *is* in cyberspace. For example, just because there's no website doesn't mean it's not serving email. But what about ad sites or search portals? Is that a legitimate use? In the real world, you might buy property to put up a billboard, or more likely, you lease space from an owner to put up a billboard. (The owner uses the land, and you pay the owner for the right to place an advertisement there. Like *normal* Internet advertising.)
But a great domain doing nothing but serving ads might be analogous to buying Nebraska in order to paint the whole thing as a billboard for transcontinental flights. The owner of Nebraska probably makes money off it, and in some sense is "using it," but not really in the way that we understand land is meant to be used, and not in the way that is most obvious or suitable for the land in question.
So what does all this mean? Speculation can be appropriate, but it only works if it is practically limited by how long you expect to sit on the property, and by how much property you can speculate on. Instead, all domains cost basically the same no matter how good they are -- this is completely unlike real property where the initial and continuing costs (such as taxes, insurance, etc.) to the owner are based on some preexisting market cost. We also need to be able to define what it means to actually use property in cyberspace if we want to design a system that supports good use of cyberproperty.
Unfortunately, as things stand, we treat domain resellers as property owners, with all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages. They have all of the leverage, so the system naturally breaks.
In truth, I made no recommendation of having anyone dictate - or even imply - what the legitimate use of a business is. Rather, I suggested that, like post office boxes, domain names be treated as a rental from an institutional body. That you can sell the domain name, but that any cost you charge above the rental fee also goes to the institutional body. Basically, you can 'buy' and squat on a domain as long as you want - if you keep paying the fee - but you can't profit from it, any more than you could profit from reselling post office boxes.
By the by, two notes. First, $4M is pocket change to a country. Less than pocket change. Secondly, whenever someone brings up the phrase 'slippery slope', even when they're using it correctly, most people, myself included, discount what they're saying. Sure, 'slippery slopes' exist, but if you can't lay out the chain of logical events that leads from x policy to y problem, waving your hands and saying 'slippery slope' isn't much of a replacement.
[Ego]out
You're making the assumption, of course, that 'getting there with the money first' is a totally fair and equitable process. That no one starts out with more of this stuff than anyone else. Which, of course, is entirely wrong.
But you then have the poor taste to go ahead and exaggerate what someone would do in each of three cases for what you see as a totally inoffensive action. Nevermind that each of these three cases is entirely different. With real estate you have to continue to put money into it to maintain value. With stocks, you both get money out (with dividends), but are allowing others to use the money you put in to actually do something productive. You also stand to lose value there. With internet domains, neither of these situations apply.
In fact, a closer - and I dare say more logical - analogy would be the renting of a room, not the buying of a house. No one cares if you rent a room, or what you do in it - perfectly legit. Of course, if you sublet the room, most leases will state you can only sublet it for the amount of money you're renting it for, if you can do so at all. Why are internet domains any different?
You're arguing that someone who happens to have money at the creation of a new commonly held resource has all the rights to that resource. That they get to profit all they want off that resource without ever paying back into the communal holding. That is, directly, harmful to society.
You should be careful, by the way. Just because we say 'buy' a domain, that does not mean in actuality 'buy'. It means 'lease'. Because we say 'buy', you should not confuse it with 'buying a house'. The two are not equivalent. If you want to debunk someone's logic, you should be careful to use proper logic yourself.
[Ego]out
The problem here is that it's almost always more profitable to buy the domain from the jerkface than it is to not have it. Given that, even if they're cutting into your profits by being a parasite, they're still viable. Thus is the way with all successful parasites.
[Ego]out
Have you worked out the value for yourself? Is it a portmanteau? Just a funny word? A made up word? Or a common word/phrase that's going to seriously move people to your site intuitively? I know you've settled on a name, but if you're expecting to pay way more for a name than the $10-$15 it costs to register, I would seriously consider looking for a domain that is not registered. The domain name needs to pay for itself and should not be a major expense of your business. So if you see the name driving a serious amount of traffic directly, or being a significant factor in Organic search engine placement, go for it. Otherwise find another name you can get for cheap.
How is what he does any different from someone who buys land as an investment rather than with an eye towards development?
Only a little difference: novelty and authority. But the real question is where one stands on the principles involved.
No matter where you are on the political 'spectrum', you're likely to have a different opinion on property rights, as it's one of the key things that places you on that spectrum.
If you are middle of the road, you think, quite possibly you've naturalized your version of property rights, which means that you tend to think of them as natural rights that extend right out to owning anything short of a human, and would be really uncomfortable with the idea of thinking about your attitude as ideology.
If you are completely opposed to the notion of ownership of 'common' resources like land and water, names and culture, and you think stewardship should be organised by some huge strong centralized government, you'd be a socialist dictatorship kind of person. If you think stewardship of common resources should be managed on an ad hoc consensual basis in as regionally-specific a way as possible and regulated at larger scale by multi-party treaties , you'd be in the socio-anarchist ~ tribalist ~ libertarian municipalist quarters.
Stripping land of its use value and strictly keeping it for its exchange value has been justified by broad-scale practice all around you, so it has a venerable history and seems natural. Domain names are new, the 'enclosure of the commons' via real estate has been happening for a very long time. There is an enormous and complex body of arguments against land speculation, some of them very quantifiable (so it's not purely an ideological discussion).
Also, domain names are not owned, they are essentially doled out with tenure grants and a fee. Structurally, they are treated like a common resource that is managed by central authority (more so than land, anyway). There is a different moral and ideological background.
Domainers usurp the original purpose of the domain. These folks seem to add nothing but lost productivity to the process of conducting business or having fun, unless you think the service they provide is the only fair way to do it.
Being legal does not make it legitimate, unless you believe fervently that the State is mother of all and that justice is blind in service of fairness (instead of in despair). There are many (not just marxists and anarchists) who also see land speculators as illegitimate parasites, sucking productivity out of the pockets of hard-working people who actually do worthwhile things with the land.
Damn those pesky terrorists
this domain already got when it was in use for the 1st time, go ahead.
Find out where he lives, hire a few thugs, you've got yourself a domain....
When you are hoarding diamonds or real estate, your hoard has an innate value to you. When you hoard domains, your hoard has no innate value. Your squatted domains have no value to you, only to other people that you have beaten to the punch. It's those people that consider the domains valuable, and now they must pay your extortion in order to get what you have taken for no other reason than extortion.
I had a domain that I had gotten in anticipation of starting an on-line service that would use it. I never got around to working on that business, and someone approached me to obtain the domain. We negotiated a fair price (way less than $1000) and the deal was done. In this case, I sold an idle business asset. A more appropriate analogy to cybersquatting would be a guy who takes all the free meals at a soup kitchen and then sells them to the hungry to the highest bidder.
Yes, it is broadly the same idea in the speculator's point of view. But there are key differences: domains are not originally sold at a market price, domains are not inherently valuable and there is not a liquid market.
This means squatters can obtain vast tracts of domains a little cost of capital in order to grossly inflate the price to the very few who have an interest in the domain. With land and property, a significant amount of capital is required to acquire it and therefore there is a significant cost (cost of capital) just to do nothing with it until the prices are higher. Furthermore people are able to relatively easily choose a different patch of land, whereas brand-owners are stuck with relatively few choices that connect to their brand (and sometimes, may have good reason to acquire all of them). Market forces naturally provide a degree of regulation over land and property, but very little over domains.
It's arguably like saying the government provides a water supply which it provides at incredibly low cost to it's citizens, but then people obtain the rights to 1cm wide strips of land around the water plant and charge an exorbitant rent to anyone who's home is connected via that one little strip.
(Apologies for any lack of paragraphing, if the preview is accurate then my p tags only seem to be doing the job of a br tag)
The free market is the *best* solution for *all* problems. Domain squatting is a perfect example of the efficacy of the free market in solving the fundamental problem of the distribution of scarce resources. Not that I'm ideological about it or anything.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think real estate speculation is also a scummy venture. People sitting on something, adding ZERO value to it, then demanding profit from someone else. Money for nothing, at the cost of someone else. This selfish behaviour helped fuel the housing bubble. These parasites deserve to lose every dime of their "investment".
Finally, someone who doesn't like realtors as much as I do! And those damn car salesmen... oh, they make me so mad!
The cybersquatter doesn't want the domain. He wants your money. Contact him and ask how much the site is going to cost. Don't be surprised if it is ridiculous then send an email back telling him your not interested at anything close to that price. I wouldn't be surprised if that price decreases rapidly to something quite more realistic. The guy is looking to make money and as long as its above cost he would be willing to sell. I don't get why people don't barter here as much as they do in Europe. Its a good skill to have.
Approach them for a DIFFERENT domain name (if you can find another one or two they also have). Make the approach seem like some teenager wanting a vanity name for his pr0n or r1pz site. Offer a lower amount and see if they will sell it. If you get their interest in selling, try "changing your mind" and switch to another domain name (still not the one you are really interested in, yet) and see how they respond to that (since you'll eventually have to do that to get the interest you want). You'll need to make a special Google, Hotmail, or Yahoo email address for the communication. If they seem interested in selling at a reasonably low price, switch (again) to the desired name and cross your fingers.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I had a similar situation. In my situation I was able to purchase the .net version of the domain name. The squatter with the .com version then contacted me trying to sell it to me. I sent a nasty note back that I would not deal with a fucking squatter. I think I also sent a note to their upstream for UCE.
Soon after that the squatter dropped the name and I picked it up. I'd paid for 'domain name back order' at my registrar, so it cost me a little more than normal, but not much more and the fucking squatter didn't get any of that extra cost.
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
I believe there is a special place in hell just for the domain name cybersquatter. Were it not illegal and immoral to inflict slow torture, I'd be all for that as a response. What I wouldn't do is EVER purchase the domain name from them. Think of the unique brands that have come from alternates, like 'flickr' for instance. I can not conceive of a brand so important as to reward these vermin. As an owner of dozens of domains, I can understand reserving a brand that you may or may not develop in the future and if not, either letting them expire or put them up on auction to recoup past registration fees and a reasonably good idea that you just don't have the drive to commercially develop. But to own thousands just so others will have to pay you a premium is to provide absolutely no value whatsoever while demanding exhorbatant fees for the privilege.
Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
Let's say I have a domain based on my last name. I keep photos there and not much else. A company that uses my name as a trademark approaches me to buy the domain.
Actually, the whole "I can club you over the head and take your domain because it resembles my trademark" thing is easily solved:
- Create a .tm TLD .tm domains to valid tradmark owners (at a relatively high cost, to support the necessary arbitration infrastructure)
- Sell
- Tradmark owners redirect to their main domain (e.g., kleenex.tm would route you to kleenex.kimberley-clark.com or somesuch)
Unless you're willing to spend hundreds/thousands of dollars you're better off if you come up with a new name for your business. Use the Web 2.0 domain name generator, you get great suggestions like Leendo and Twivee.
Bow before me, for I am root.
You must live with mommy and daddy. There is no difference whatsoever between land speculation and investing in a 401K, bonds, or stocks. You purchase stock or bonds with the hope that the company will do well and your investment will grow. When you engage in land speculation, you are hoping that someone will find your land valuable and offer you more than what you paid for it.
The housing bubble was caused by morons who purchased homes which were at the upper end of what they could possibly afford to pay, and did so with variable rate mortgages while the rates were low. The rates went up, and suddenly they couldn't afford to live in the houses they purchased AND feed their families.
Other than the fact that both involve owning a piece of property, they have NOTHING in common.
I'm sorry but this is truly a baseless rant about ethics. It's not about cybersquatting being the right thing or not. Intent determines that. And as that is something we cannot understand, a debate is pointless. As for Nevo, If you can't bargain for a decent price, I'd suggest getting creative with the name. I understand exactly how you feel. I'm setting up a business myself and my domain of choice has been parked by a wise-ass squatter. Good luck mate.
clever.
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
I disagree. People will get the order wrong even if they've visited the site before. They'll type "blah.greatsite.com," not even think about autocomplete not kicking in, and then get redirected to the squatter before they try the other way around. Think about how often you've seen people try "google.translate.com" instead of "translate.google.com."
Google wave or the evolution of "the system" may mean that Web Sites may no longer be static destinations that people go to but rather data sources. I still think domains will me very important as data source labels. http://goowave.com/google_wave_domain.htm
Am I a sleeze for parking the other four domains and trying to sell them? (I think not).
That depends on whether you have told her. Your position is completely reasonable, in fact even generous, as long as she knows that because she has not paid you you are trying to recoup some money by selling some of the domains. Not telling her would be somewhat sleazy because she might believe that you are just being very kind to her and she may get upset if she suddenly loses the domains without warning. Plus letting her know may motivate her to actually pay you if she makes some money from her art at some point.
They did something similar to Zero Software (micr0soft.com) back in the day, IIRC.
Hey man--I recently bought girlswithinsurance.com back from an insurance guy. He had no real use of the domain, I'm sure he'd bought it on an impulse via linky offered by his registrar. I offered him a fair price (more than $200) and he immediately accepted it, leading me to believe that he would have taken a much lower amount. Nonetheless I made good on the offer. I had him request the money from me via paypal that way if any litigation ever needed to be pursued, it would be evident to the court that he had asked for the money for a specific reason, and he couldn't argue that I was just randomly sending him money or anything. Anyway, the end result was that he was very good about it and there were no issues once the money had been transferred--at least none that were within his control. GoDaddy has ailing software but that is another issue. Anyway, hope this info helps--the basic thing is to keep records of all communications and transactions and possibly initiate phone conversation via skype and record it. All of this is slightly unnecessary things to do in order to keep yourself from getting screwed over.
I think you're missing the point, man. It's only cybersquatting if they're squatting on someone else's trademark, right?
I wonder what percentage of defaults were really on mortgages that weren't being flipped, hey?
Not again! It seems like this is a popular answer lately to tell people to not ask Slashdot, as if Ask Slashdot feedback isn't useful. Why read this section then? Personally I would value intelligent advice over a lawyer's advice if it wasn't intelligent. Neither source is flawless - no, a law degree does not mean you always know what to do. In fact, in this case, it's not primarily a legal question, but a question of business strategy. Will you now tell him to get off Slashdot and hire a business consultant??
It almost goes without saying that you can always pay a professional to get answers to your questions. Hearing the experiences of others for free is still a great value - and clever and unorthodox tactics from from a group like Slashdot is priceless.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Wish I had mod points to mod you up myself.
Well everybody here is discussing about cybersquatters and suing but it all boils down to the point that if you want the domain you'll have to purchase it from the dude who got it first!
Unless they want $500.000 and you have copyright it's stupid to start litigation so just spend the $100 to $500 which is actually what you would pay for a physical sign for a physical businnes
They will try to charge you more, but believe me, you can negotiate, don't tell them what you will use it for, just tell them it's your grandma's maiden name and you want it for her birthday present. They'll know you're full of crap just as you know they are when they tell you similar things to charge you more.
Just be sure to get a reputable escrow firm so you don't get scammed.
Not all people consider speculating on land to be reasonable. See the Austrian school of economics. Land can be taxed proportionate to its value to discourage people from holding on to it.
Except they may not have even considered selling it until you made some "large offer". I won't say it's entrapment, maybe fraud.. it's at least unethical.
The only "legitimate business interest" in owning a domain name is for the intarweb.
Pick a different domain name...
I got a domain name listed at $8,000 for $350 with some hardball tactics. First, I called the 1800, I didn't go through email. You need the human connection. Then, I said that I'd already registered a buch of other domains and that I wanted this one to complete the set. For instance {name}inc.com, {name}inc.org, {name}.de etc. what I really wanted was {name}.com. Asked the operator to pull how many hits the website had received since registration, (2 or 3) mentioned that half the hits were me checking it out. Told him I'd offer $350, go ahead and check with your boss, supervisor, etc. Then deliver the killing line: You can keep the domain with the $8,000 price tag and have zero dollars in hand, or you can have $350 in your account in the next 15 minutes. If business is good and you can afford to leave $350 on the sidewalk don't call me back. And I'm doing YOU guys the favor, I already have backup domains. I'm basically calling you up to give you money for little to no effort on your part.
A day later they called to say they'd accepted my offer.
Go through a third party--it doesn't have to be a lawyer or someone you pay, it could just be a friend--so that you and your business cannot be identified by the current owner. If you already have counsel, it would be best if it were your attorney. And gee willikers, as the longtime owner of PondScumAndLawyers.com, I really HATE urging anyone to use a lawyer, but this is a case where it would be best. And who knows, maybe they just bought it on a lark; I actually owned "nobodyexpectsthespanishinquisition.com" for about three years just because I thought it was a cool domain to have--I'm such a nerd.
The point is not that they're stealing. The point is that people stealing cars can also be seen as "adding value" by the same definition that squatters provide value.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Strange, then, that speculating on land is considered reasonable.
Land exists, and is permanent. To create new land, you need to invest an awful lot of work. To speculate on land, you need to give the current owners money.
Domain names DON'T. an unregistered domain name is like land that doesn't exist -- it's just not there. But as soon as you register one, it becomes a "place", whereupon you then squat.
See the fundamental difference?
This, please God, this. I can't stand squatters. If more people start taking them to court and their domains get taken from them then maybe this ridiculous crap will stop.
The real way to stop this crap is to forbid the sale of domain names, and only allow them to be leased by licenced registrars. Thus, in order to transfer a domain name between parties, the existing lease must either expire or be terminated, and the new registrant can lease it through any registrar they like. This would instantly kill the market for these unethical domain squatters and legitimate businesses would be able to get the domain names they like for a fair and reasonable price.
This is how the auDA successfully manages the use of Australian .au domains and they hardly suffer from the same problems that the global TLDs do.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
So would buying a domain name from someone who previously registered it, and then holding onto it in the hopes of selling it to someone else for more money be okay with you?
It's not a popular answer lately -- it's ALWAYS been a popular answer.
Getting legal advice on /. has always been a bad plan. Technical advice, sometimes it's good, but for the most part the `Ask Slashdot' section is full of stuff that you really shouldn't be relying on what Slashdot tells you.
The best approach is not to let them know any kind of business interest is involved. Have your 15 year old son broker the deal and claim the name is his nickname and he wants to start a blog for his friends. You could probably get it for a few hundred bucks depending on what the domain name is.
or else!
Someone who purchases a domain name with the intent to sell it later, at a profit - doesn't *have* to make it look like something it isn't.
The majority do, however, as a way to generate that secondary income source they'll need -- ad revenue from people hitting the site.
I dunno, I just don't feel like squatting is inherently evil.
It's possible my attitude has been colored by both how aggressive the squatters are -- seriously, type a name into whois, or into a registrar, and you'd better register it within a few hours or it'll be gone -- and by the fact that the vast majority do, in fact, misrepresent it, and use it for nothing but advertising.
There's also the fact that it is a very close business model to spamming. You're generally buying a ton of domains, most of which will never be used -- thus, you're cluttering the namespace, wasting valuable resources of the DNS system (though, arguably, you're also helping to fund those same resources), and irritating people in their search results, and generally doing nothing productive and wasting time, resources, and energy of other people... ...all in the hopes that you'll get a buyer, and that the number of buyers you get will pay for the rest of it.
That's how spam works, and it works pretty well. Send mail to millions of users, get back maybe hundreds of buyers, but it's so absurdly cheap to send that mail that you don't need many buyers to make up from it.
I guess the only way I really see it being semi-legitimate is when it's only a few domains, and they're just parked.
If enough people did that, they could effectively drive squatters out of business.
Unfortunately, there are so many possible domains that I don't know it would make a dent. I'd effectively be just another squatter in an already crowded market of squatters. They'd still get people willing to pay more to someone else who happened on a better name -- because it's really not about who's selling them, it's about what name you have.
No, the best I can do is just refuse to buy from them. And I do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...land by the interstate is real property, whereas a domain is just a made-up fiction of a property whose only real value is in its potential mindshare as a brand. That has to be valued.
Coming up with a great name only to find out some jackass is sitting on the domain waiting to charge you $5000 is pretty disappointing, though, and yeah, I'd like to do physical harm.
P.
Strangely, it was the trademark lawyers who figured out, centuries ago, that ownership rights should only be given in names without inherent value, for which you create the value. Generic terms, with meaning and inherent value, can't be owned.
We should have listened to their wisdom (odd to say that) but instead we built a space where an infinite resource became scarce, because we made just one prime area, .com, for commerce, so owning word.com was as good, or better than owning "word" -- and nobody should own words.
And thus all our domain troubles, and speculation, were born. The only way out of it would be to remove the specialness of .com, which is a lot harder to do now than in the past. If there were a modest number of equally valuable TLDs -- themselves with no special meaning, made up terms -- so that no one was inherently better than another, and so you could always find what you wanted, it would be good. But com means commercial and so will be special for decades.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
1. Offer them a real lowball offer - like $200. Enough to cover their cost of holding the domain, but no more. There's a good chance that after you go away for a while they'll come back to you and accept it. But not until they're completely convinced you've given up and gone elsewhere.
2. Realize that evidence has shown that real english words in domain names are less effective and less memorable than made up ones. For example, email.com has not been a particularly good domain, while plenty of other email providers with completely made up names have done just fine. Don't be obsessed with getting real words in your domain.
This is a perfect example of a situation where the first person to throw out a number loses.
In our cases the client had their .co.uk and needed their com too. This was back in 96 so even though they were a publicly-traded company with trademarks in multiple countries it wasn't clear that it could be enforced. The board of directors got together and established something like a $15k budget to get the name back.
I emailed the guy and he threw out $350. I literally ran to the bank and did an international wire transfer from my personal funds.
Worked out well for us, but what a fucking idiot :)
I know some domains are simply not available. Because the squatters who nabbed them do not want to be identified.
I used to have a website at gfody.com and I forgot to renew the domain on time and the very next day it was hosting some generic link-page with ads - it was even feigning relevance by including links to search results from keywords in the referrer. For instance my site was about graphics programming and delphi. When you went to gfody.com there would be links to delphi and other graphics related sites with ads displayed next to them.
I tried desperately to get my domain back but to no avail. If you're curious go ahead and try to figure out who owns gfody.com - it's a goose chase strung through various fake corporations.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Of course, the main reason that the Australian domains don't suffer much cybersquatting is that it costs ~$50-$120 a year to have one. Add to that the issue of dealing, even indirectly, with [company name redacted], and you have the reason why most Australians have .com domains.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Domain-name space is vast, but most of it is useless. s854j3kser.com isn't worth a penny.
I dunno, I just don't feel like squatting is inherently evil.
How about in this case?
Where the squatters profit from traffic intended for content that they've basically removed and replaced with their own generic, link-page.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Maybe I'm alone here, but this sort of shit has always pissed me off. The organization you're using this website for... it's an ISP, commercial company, and a non-profit organization? If not, why do you need all three domains (except to be incorrect on two of them)? It irritates me at work as it's a lot of pointless duplication to host three zones for every domain name, but it also means that the suffix doesn't tell you anything about the site.
The difference is that other speculative goods are fixed and sold for a price by someone who has build them or owns them through inheritance. Sure you might not see any value in that old car but someone else has always admired it and wants to rebuild it to its new glory. Or you might offer that old clunker for sale until the desperate person comes along and offers you much money in his desperation. Also your physical goods do age and need maintenance, the value of stock varies with the fortunes and skills of the companies managers, a house costs taxes and repairs, etc.
In contrast you can always buy a new domain for a set cheap fee a yr. IT does not age or need any risky repairs. In fact you don't buy domains, you rent them with a right to renew yearly. You sure can make the domain valuable by using it for a great service and attract some great business or simply visitors at the virtual address.
So you are comparing apples and oranges.
P.S.: I don't mean to defend cyber squatters here at all.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
and god will punish you in the end.
wtf...how exactly is it not a legitimate business interest? From what you have described they probably owned that name long before you even had the idea for the business that would benefit from the name. So its not like they saw your storefront and ran out an registered the name so they could hold it hostage.
Also, your probably being unimaginative. Somebody should make a list of businesses who names say exactly what they do. I am guessing its a smallish list.
I tried to purchase a jemson.com as you can see its doing nothing at present...
Being an obscure name, I though I might get away with it for a few hundred dollars.
On contacting the owner they asked for US$50,000 and not a penny less!
I laughed my head off and then decided on a different name that was available.
Don't assume a domain that appears unused is being squatted. It might be used for email, and it might have various unpublished subdomains that are being used.
Your sig reads suspiciously like mine. Thanks! ;)
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Last summer I did a small project for a local business. The owner wanted to sell his business and retire, so I registered a couple of domain names that described his business and added "for sale" to them, along the line of shoestoreforsale.com or paperrouteforsale.com and so on. I took a few pictures of his business and put a simple web page up on those two domain names and a couple of months later he sold his business and I changed the content of the website to simply say "sold".
When those two domain names come up for renewal this summer I'm not going to be renewing them. I no longer need them and the chance of another business of that exact type coming to me to sell his business are between slim and none, and Slim left town last week. So paying the renewal fee for those domain names would be a waste of money.
I would like to think that those domain names will simply expire and go back into the pool so they would become available for the next guy who has that type of business for sale to purchase and use, but I suspect that they will be snapped up by domain squatter-scammers instead. Which is a darn shame and no the way that the system should work, in my humble opinion.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
It's the same idea behind buying a house that you feel is undervalued, renting it out/doing nothing, until the price goes up, and selling it later.
In the country in which I live, doing nothing with owned property is liable to land you with a fine. Quite right too - property is a scarce commodity and having properties falling (further) into disrepair is a very bad situation.
Other than that, I kinda agree that domain name squatting falls into the other form of legalised gambling that you cited...
Cybersquatter had this incredible quality which was, um, I don't know how you can define it but I would, er, say it was, um, I'd say it was stupidity. Take Peter Cook's advice and choose a different name. Don't encourage Squatter.
Make them an offer they can't refuse.
Just wait until this whole DNS fad ends.
But now that it's on /. it's gonna cost $35 for a WHOLE year!
I love random hex numbers! Just like this one, 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Make up some excuse about being a non-profit or it's for your kids club website or something stupid like that. Cybersquatters typically buy many domains and must move some domains to cover the other 10 domains they'll never sell. Getting something is better than getting nothing. Offer ridiculously low on the pretense that it's for your kids or something. Then fight them at every move to increase the price. Settle for something reasonable. If the offer ever gets a reasonable place (less than $1000 is generally reasonable, $500 or less is more reasonable), buy it. If they try to jack you around on it, tell them to get screwed and blatantly buy a different domain name (like a .org). Don't be afraid to start using a different name, maybe you'll find the new one is better anyways. Maybe they'll come around and sell it at a reasonable price. Their cybersquatting is illegal and unethical, screw them.
I am a patent attorney (patents and trademarks). Recently a client had a similar problem, and I advised her to contact the trademark owner (who was not a cybersquatter, but this is otherwise similar). When she was told the price, I advised her to counter with what she would pay (making it clear that she could use another mark if the price was higher, but "somewhat preferred" that mark). It worked, and she is now one happy camper. The alternative is to complain to the Trademark Office and ask that the mark be revoked, then see if they will issue it to you - but I advise against going to court (but then I always advise against going to court - I'm biased, I guess).
You fail contract law. An acceptance of a contract is effective at dispatch. A withdrawl of the offer is effective on receipt. What you are suggesting is ENTERING INTO A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT and backing out of it. You're inviting yourself to be sued. Shame on you for suggesting that anyone do this.
What Microsoft did was different. They offered a small amount of money to the owner of MikeRoweSoft.com in exchange for transferring the name. The owner rejected their offer and dispatched a counteroffer, which Microsoft never accepted.
Mod parent down. Horrible advice.
The alternative would be to give them a stupid low bid and then send them a check that has to be cashed for a fee or being inconvenient to cash directly.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Does anyone else think that first come, first serve isn't exactly the most fair system, either? I mean it seems to me that the guy who got pants.com or sneakers.com because he was first to register it really isn't necessarily that much more deserving than a guy who can pay $10k for it but didn't come along until a bit later.