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July 07, 2003
Suggestions for dealing with Domain Squatters?
( Impatience )
I've noticed a few well-intentioned attempts to link to openmikes.com. All well and good, except the site that I run is openmikes.org.
I'd like to use openmikes.com, but it's been thoroughly squatted upon by the weasels at buydomains.com. With a name like that, how do you even pretend to assert good-faith use of a domain? I wouldn't even mind as much if they were auctioning names, etc. -- can't imagine anyone trying to outbid me on that one. But they want $800+, non-negotiable. Won't respond to any inquiries otherwise, and they renew the thing yearly, like clockwork.
No, I don't have a trademark on the name "openmikes" or "open mikes", nor should I or anyone else. And if I did, the $1500 fee for an ICANN dispute seems out of whack for a free site. So apparently I'm SOL, and I'll continue googling for unintentional links to the weasels, and asking people to update accordingly.
Any thoughts?
Posted by proub at July 7, 2003 10:56 AM
Comments
you could also start a gogglebomb so that someone links with a horrible description to their page :-)
Apart from that theres not a lot you can do. Someone tried it on with my domain once - they wanted thousands of pounds. I didn't even bother to reply until they sent me an email asking how much I would pay for it. I sent back a response stating the standard domain registration fee - ie ten pounds for two years. Never heard a peek from them.
Posted by: Andy at July 20, 2003 04:29 AM
Yeah, I've tried the offer-something-reasonable approach, as well. No dice.
Again with the complete lack of good faith registration -- it's not like they could possibly believe anyone would pay $800 for that domain name. But they need to have a large portfolio to appear impressive; one $800 (or more) registration pays for a lot of their "filler" acquisitions.
This is crap. Not only do they have no intention of *using* the domain, there's clearly no *real* intention of selling it, either.
Posted by: Paul Roub at July 20, 2003 10:59 AM
Hello Paul
This is really unfair.
I've googled your website trying to get some info about that "weasels".
Tried to snatch domain manually ( without any backorder services ) and failed.
The domain moved from one "weasels" to another.
Fuck!
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Good luck!
Posted by: Aleksey at July 14, 2004 10:51 AM