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?