Cyber Squatters Grab Up More Than 600 'Pope Francis' Domain Names

tsamsoniw writes "Although the newly appointed Pope Francis I has proven himself technologically savvy enough to use Twitter, the Vatican dropped the ball when it came to quickly registering a domain name for the pontiff after his appointment earlier this month: Within hours, cyber squatters grabbed up more than 600 domain names containing derivations of the pontiff's name, including popefrancisi.com, popefrancis.co.uk, popefrancis.org, and popefrancis.fr, according to domain-name company names.co.uk."

Comments

Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[eldavojohn]

Although the newly appointed Pope Francis I has proven himself technologically savvy enough to use Twitter, the Vatican dropped the ball when it came to quickly registering a domain name for the pontiff after his appointment earlier this month

Well, you've put me in the awkward position of defending papal technology. None of this really matters considering Vatican City has its own TLD of .va so it would be a waste of money and resources to try to accumulate every other TLD. I believe .va is tightly regulated to include only 1990s era website technology. The last pope's virtual dedication was done in comic sans as seen here.

Funny, if the pope was more like the humble carpenter Jesus of Nazareth and less like an enshrined emperor he wouldn't have this problem as there'd be no financial gain to drive extortion. Keep paying your tithes so the Vatican has deep pockets ... or would that be a Louis Vuitton to match his Prada shoes?

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[Penguinisto]

Err, what extortion?

The majority of catholics online just go to vatican.va for anything out of the Vatican, and studiously ignore the rest, if they even bother to go at all.

Seriously - even if every one of those squatted domain names pointed to lemonparty, it would make exactly zero difference to the laity. QED, no financial gain to be had. Overall, it's sort of like saying that the Vatican should have somehow snapped up any and all variations of @Pontifex on Twitter, when there's really no need.

I guess the confusion comes from thinking that the Catholic Church is like some sort of commercial entity, where brand recognition and trademark protection online trumps all. Fact is, it doesn't - the Church has been around administratively since Constantinople was a living human being, and has had to put up with a hell of a lot more defamation and disparagement over the millennia than a bunch of wannabe blackmailers holding GoDaddy accounts can muster.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[Obijon70]

This pope has a history of being humble though, from turning down his limo and mansion (in his last post). Plus the name he picked in honor of St. Francis, in homage to the saint who was all about the poor. And as a bonus, he doesn't look like Emperor Palpatine.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[RyoShin]

None of this really matters considering Vatican City has its own TLD of .va

Because absolutely no one went to whitehouse.com when trying to get information about the White House in Washington, D.C.

(For those not in the know, whitehouse.com was once a porn site; whitehouse.gov is the USG's website. According to Wiki the .com domain changed hands and content a little under a decade ago, shows how current I am.)

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[Penguinisto]

PS, concerning:

or would that be a Louis Vuitton to match his Prada shoes?

...you do realize that those (like most other finery, etc) are donated, right? Hell, I worked for a company that donated nearly 2400 solar panels to the Vatican (enough for 300kWh peak output), and all the trimmings to convert it to AC power.

Seriously - it's one thing to pick on instances of actual snobbery and imperial trappings, but quite another to infer it from the donations.

I know the next argument - "sell it to the poor!" Well okay, but who would buy a shitload of used solar panels, a pair of red shoes of a specific size, or etc? Sell the Sistine Chapel? Okay - so how much do you sell a priceless historical treasure slathered with Michelangelo's artwork for?

I guess it's the problem with having an institution that's been around for longer than any existing political entity... you tend to gather up a lot of stuff.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[DerekLyons]

Keep paying your tithes so the Vatican has deep pockets

Time to come visit us in the 21st century, the Church dropped the tithing requirement a long time ago.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[eldavojohn]

who would buy a shitload of used solar panels, a pair of red shoes of a specific size, or etc?

I can't tell if you're serious or trolling so I'll try to keep this short. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In our day of capitalism, the more capital you have the more inherent power you have based on what you can buy with it. All that gold and gilded shit in the Vatican? That could certainly be sold to collectors and the power structure could make do with a modest monastery in the middle of nowhere.

To say that an auction on ebay wouldn't absolutely blow up with bidding on The Pope's used shoes shows you are either unintelligent or disturbingly apologetic to the insane amount of power and influence the pope has and continues to try to hold on to. It is staggering to hear someone say that.

The solar panels? Fine. But you could sell a lot of vatican stuff and put that money to good use helping the poor. They don't and they still ask for donations instead -- often from the poor. As someone who grew up Catholic below the poverty line watching 10% of my parents income go to a man in a magic castle with better digs than anyone else in the world, I can tell you he is further from Jesus than the homeless man on the street. The Bible will tell you it's harder for a rich man to enter heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. And yet the top leaders live in gilded opulence. Fitting for Italy I guess.

It's a shame.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[CrimsonAvenger]

the Church has been around administratively since Constantinople was a living human being

Umm, Constantinople was NEVER a living human being. It was a CITY.

Perhaps you meant "Constantine", the man the CITY of Constantinople was named after?

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

It should be a .com. From "The Economist": http://www.economist.com/news/business/21573101-management-tips-catholic-church-pope-ceo

THE Roman Catholic church is the world’s oldest multinational. It is also, by many measures, its most successful, with 1.2 billion customers, 1m employees, tens of millions of volunteers, a global distribution network, a universally recognised logo, unrivalled lobbying clout and, auguring well for the future, a successful emerging-markets operation.

. . . more choice quotes:

The pope has no shortage of crisis-management tools at his disposal, including the doctrine of papal infallibility.

His most pressing task will be to deal with the sex scandals. This is partly a theological issue: the church would attract a very different workforce if it did not insist that all priests be male and celibate.

Still, he could learn from the private sector about how to manage the workforce he has. First, you need to punish errant employees rather than protecting them or shuffling them about. The best companies are quick to “proactively outplace” wrongdoers. Second, you need to treat your reputation as your most precious asset by drawing up clear rules on ethical behaviour, insisting staff adhere to them and conducting aggressive public-relations campaigns. Third, you have to keep looking ahead. Companies hold meetings of senior leaders to review their strategies every year, rather than every century or so.

The church’s core competence lies in providing spiritual goods. Yet it devotes a lot of its energy to running an earthly operation. Some of this makes sense—schools and hospitals help fulfil Jesus’s mandate while promoting customer stickiness. But what about running an in-house bank (complete with the world’s only ATM machine with instructions in Latin)? Or managing property portfolios? Big companies like IBM and Ford have got out of non-core businesses and contracted out as much as possible to specialist companies. The church should do likewise.

The church cannot take its success in the global South for granted. It is under pressure from lean start-ups with more vigorous marketing. Its market share in Latin America has declined from 90% in 1910 to 72% today, thanks to the growth of Pentecostalism. The Latin American church is responding by borrowing Pentecostal techniques such as holding “liberation masses” in soccer stadiums and allowing priests to speak in tongues.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[amicusNYCL]

plain ol "vadican.va" doesn't work

Well, http://www.vadican.va/ doesn't work either.

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[Penguinisto]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Err, what absolute power? The pope cannot have me executed, cannot seize my property or bank accounts, and would have a very hard time building an empire in the geographical sesne, considering that they have no army.

You speak of money. Well, let's see what the money looks like.. not a lot of money there, as they mention tens of millions of Euros and USD, not billions.

Net worth? Not anywhere near as much as, say, the market cap of Intel, Microsoft or Apple...

So, err, yeah. Not much absolute power there, even accounting for your false ideology that money somehow == power at some even ratio.

To say that an auction on ebay wouldn't absolutely blow up with bidding on The Pope's used shoes...

LOL! Seriously? You place a lot more faith in eBay (or Christie's, or whoever) than I would credibly want to (fake bids notwithstanding).

But you could sell a lot of vatican stuff and put that money to good use helping the poor. They don't and they still ask for donations instead -- often from the poor.

Oh? 'splain this. Note that we're not necessarily counting hospitals, clinics, refugee camps, schools...

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[qbitslayer]

A day will come when nobody will give a shit about domain names. I can't wait.

What does it matter?

[Vrtigo1]

Cybersquatting implies that they hope to profit by selling the domains...more likely the Vatican will just take the names they want via the UDRP process as that's the defined way to get a domain name from someone that registered it with the intent to sell it. In that case cybersquatter gets $0 and loses the money he spent registering the domain.

Re:Cyber Squatter?

[jfengel]

Indeed; one expects that once the new Pope actually starts doing something, there will be legitimate sites springing up to criticize him.

But when the sites spring up within hours after his having been appointed, anybody with a well-founded opinion is more likely to be doing research than grabbing a domain name. Who's going to grab domain names that quickly? People who grab domain names for a living, and hope to sell them at an enormous markup to people who research their opinions before starting blogs about them.

I suppose it's possible that not all of the 600+ domains were profiteers. Some may well be Catholic groups (or anti-Catholic groups, or other interested parties) who know they'll have something to say and expect to use the domain name. But I feel fairly certain that one year from now, at least 90% of these domain names will either be transferred or be languishing as a parked domain.

I know how to fix this

[Nidi62]

Just send the Spanish Inquisition. No one would ever expect it.

Re:Cyber Squatter?

[amicusNYCL]

What is clear is we should not just vilify these people who are legally exercising their rights.

Yeah, it makes total sense that someone in Australia would register Popefrancis.fr, a French domain name, to publish a news site about the pope. Or that eRealEstate.com, from Florida, would register Popefrancis.co.uk, a British domain, for the same reason. These people aren't out to make a quick buck, they obviously just want to spread news and praise about the pope and Catholics.

Or maybe, and just maybe, I mean stick with me here, there are people like this, part of the "domainer" community, complete with their own domain news sites, magazines, etc, saying things like this:

On Tuesday I saw a list of 20 possible picks for pope. So I decided to hon my skill as I usually do on events of great interest. Being Jewish I was not aware the parameters for the pope changing his name but I was glad to see I had no shot anyways.

But while I did not hit the bullseye on this mission, I circled around that eye.

I got these 24 hours before the announcement: PopeJorge.com, PopeGeorge.com, PopeJorge.tv, PopeJorge.me, PopeJorgeBergoggio.com PopeJorgeBergoggio.org,

Then after the announcement I got these.

PopeFrancis.co.uk, PopeFrancis.de, PopeFrancis.be, PopeFrank.tv, PopeFrank.net, PopeFrancis.tv

PopeFrancis.co.uk got the most traffic yesterday. 82 visitors in the first 5 hours and 45 as of 10AM today.

All these names are availabe to transfer to the Vatican without charge....not that they would want any.

I can only imagine the amount of traffic the REAL domain got. PopeFrancis.com could have easily gotten over 1 million TYPE INS! Type ins! What more proof would folks like about type ins?

If the .com gets 1 million visitors and the .net gets 5000 visitors and all the rest combined get 5000 visitors, does that not illustrate the power of .com?

And this:

Godaddy came out with a press release and said theu sold 500 in the first 1 hour of Pope related domain names. So you could assume worldwide many thousands were registered. It is now a cottage industry in and of itself. We will see in what form this plays out. But a popular Pope could make for some very interesting domain stories.

As I write this I registered 2 more. popefrancissouvenirs.com, popefrancisinfo.com. Like I said, a cottage industry is likely to spring up. PopeFrancisMass.com

Here is one of his domain names. Go ahead, click on that and get all of the pope news and Catholic praise you can stand. Surely he's not in it just to try his luck gambling. (by the way, every time you click that link, you probably earn the guy fractions of a cent)

In case it isn't obvious, I have very little respect for people who go around registering domain names wholesale and trying to monetize them. Talk about a worthless existence. If they aren't going to use it, don't register it. But that's just my opinion.