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?

[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?

[amicusNYCL]

plain ol "vadican.va" doesn't work

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

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.