7/18/13- Only So Many Names

[Billy's Little Trip]

I'm having a hard time figuring out why this is so awesome.

I'll tell you why. Because a wonderful thing is a Tigger, a Tigger's a wonderful thing. Their tops are made out of rubber,
their bottoms are made out of spring. They're bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is, he's the only one!

[fluffy]

Libel and vandalism are separate matters (not sure which your reference implies). If someone has a domain or username that you wish you had...so be it. I have had mine since very early on in the whole www thing, but if I was 20 years younger and still wanted to use my (fake) name I'd just use a different username or domain or whatever. Marketing should be about product, not branding. Branding is a device used to market product.

CRay's issue is that he let his domain name lapse and a squatter grabbed it. I have sympathy for that situation, but only so much.

[Caravan Ray]

Libel and vandalism are separate matters (not sure which your reference implies). If someone has a domain or username that you wish you had...so be it. I have had mine since very early on in the whole www thing, but if I was 20 years younger and still wanted to use my (fake) name I'd just use a different username or domain or whatever. Marketing should be about product, not branding. Branding is a device used to market product.

CRay's issue is that he let his domain name lapse and a squatter grabbed it. I have sympathy for that situation, but only so much.

Yes - I wouldn't go overboard on the sympathy. I just find that a bit amusing. And puzzling.

I got that domain name from Hostbaby back in 2009 when I did my CD with CDbaby. I think it cost me $10 or something for a year. I had it for a year and didn't bother paying the $10 again.

Does that mean someone is now paying $10 a year for a website to advertise caravan related material? Who would do that? Could that possibly be cost effective. I mean, I have tried to help out - I still quote that as my website - but I can't imagine they will be getting a lot of traffic through.

And what would it mean should I ever want to use that again? (I doubt I ever will). Is it gone for ever? Or will it be available to me for a grossly inflated price? Can I get a website from Tuvalu? That would be cool.

[JonPorobil]

Libel and vandalism are separate matters (not sure which your reference implies). If someone has a domain or username that you wish you had...so be it. I have had mine since very early on in the whole www thing, but if I was 20 years younger and still wanted to use my (fake) name I'd just use a different username or domain or whatever. Marketing should be about product, not branding. Branding is a device used to market product.

CRay's issue is that he let his domain name lapse and a squatter grabbed it. I have sympathy for that situation, but only so much.

Yes - I wouldn't go overboard on the sympathy. I just find that a bit amusing. And puzzling.

I got that domain name from Hostbaby back in 2009 when I did my CD with CDbaby. I think it cost me $10 or something for a year. I had it for a year and didn't bother paying the $10 again.

Does that mean someone is now paying $10 a year for a website to advertise caravan related material? Who would do that? Could that possibly be cost effective. I mean, I have tried to help out - I still quote that as my website - but I can't imagine they will be getting a lot of traffic through.

And what would it mean should I ever want to use that again? (I doubt I ever will). Is it gone for ever? Or will it be available to me for a grossly inflated price? Can I get a website from Tuvalu? That would be cool.

You're pretty much on the right track. There are entire companies devoted to the practice of "domain squatting," which basically means that they snap up a bunch of web addresses the moment they expire (they're probably paying less than you did for the domain, though), and assuming that, since you (or someone) wanted that domain before, then you (or someone) will presumably want it again. Only they're going to charge a significant markup based on that presumed demand. In your case, it seems, they've gambled wrong, but it's a tremendously profitable endeavor for some companies.

The same thing happened with http://www.songfight.com/ too. In case you didn't know, songfight.com was the original domain for this site, back when Collin Cunningham ran it. Then he let it go fallow, so jb and spud registered songfight.org. After a while, they got Collin to agree to set up an auto-redirect on songfight.com, but since that time, the .com URL has expired and someone else snapped it up. I don't remember whether the price they wanted was prohibitively expensive, or whether the fightmasters simply refused to do business with the domain squatters on principle, but it seems unlikely that we'll ever get our .com domain back ever again.

[fluffy]

Code: Select all

   Domain Name: CARAVANRAY.COM
   Registrar: TUCOWS DOMAINS INC.
   Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
   Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
   Name Server: NS1.DSREDIRECTION.COM
   Name Server: NS2.DSREDIRECTION.COM
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 15-jul-2013
   Creation Date: 15-aug-2009
   Expiration Date: 15-aug-2014

Code: Select all

   Domain Name: SONGFIGHT.COM
   Registrar: TUCOWS DOMAINS INC.
   Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
   Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
   Name Server: NS.BUYDOMAINS.COM
   Name Server: THIS-DOMAIN-FOR-SALE.COM
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 25-jul-2013
   Creation Date: 23-aug-2004
   Expiration Date: 23-aug-2014

FWIW, Tucows is one of the larger wholesaler registrars, and they do provide a massive bulk discount for the bulk registrants. buydomains.com is an obvious squatter who is trying to cash in on the idea that someone might want to get their domain back; dsredirection isn't quite so obvious and they might just be linkfarming (which helps other sites to get better search engine placement). Looks like they're both also involved in serving up malware, probably because there's a huge amount of money to be made in that too (both from direct advertising revenue and from 'ransomware' payments).

It's all very scammy/scummy and obnoxious.

Also right now buydomains.com want $3888 for songfight.com.

[JonPorobil]

Also right now buydomains.com want $3888 for songfight.com.

That is both obnoxious and reprehensible.

[Caravan Ray]

Also right now buydomains.com want $3888 for songfight.com.

That is both obnoxious and reprehensible.

So, looked at that Buydomains.com and saw that the songfight is, as you say for sale for $3800. But caravanray.com is not available.

What is going on there?

I assume it is because caravanray.com is probably a far more valuable commodity than songfight, and so the current owners simply would not part with it at any price? Right?!?


...edit...

oh OK, I see now - mine is owned by a different mob - and when I tried to go to their website - my computer went into some sort of virus warning spasm.

Cool!