Suggestions for dealing with Domain Squatters?
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?
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 | July 20, 2003 4:29 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 | 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 | July 14, 2004 10:51 AM