Any Consesus That Domain Parking Should Be Illegal
Folks:
I am referring to companies who grab a bunch of available domains and sit on them in order to sell them at inflated prices. I am not talking about someone trying to squat on a domain of an already trademarked name such as mcdonalds. I am talking about people who grab phrases like the one that I wanted for a personal site ilovearthur.com. It's not a trademarked site. There is some looloobrain whos got it parked for a ransom of $3,000.
Is there consensus here that such behavior should be illegal and not allowed by ICANN?
Can I send a note to ICANN on behalf of Linode and our community to th is suggestion?
Thank you
I Love You All
Mark Allyn
4 Replies
You make a good case… but I don't see how it could be easily enforced.
Find out who actually owns the domain and make them an offer of $100 for it and see what happens.
You can also get some similar domains:
https://uk.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&domainToCheck=ILOVEARTHUR.COM
I now have ilovearthur.net and ilovearthur.org; however many of my friends try going to ilovearthur.com, being that the .com is automatic. That's what I am fighting against.
Now the question is, who own it? It goes to a domain broker, which does not give a clue to who owns it.
Going to whois, I find the following:
NameFind, LLC is the domain portfolio business owned and operated by GoDaddy, the largest domain registrar in the world. GoDaddy has been using the NameFind …
And googling Namefind shows that it's run by godaddy. What I cannot figure out is Namefind the actual owner or just a Godaddy subsidiary broker firm.
The google maps for the address 2150 E Warner Rd , Tempe, Arizona, 85284, US which appears to be a big giant data center building, so I don't think that's much of any help.
Since I have heard weird stories about Godaddy, could I assume that they are a big domain parker as well as an ISP?
Here is another thought. ICANN, who is responsible for names and addresses, has a board of directors.
Does anyone here know if Linode/Akamai has anyone serving on the ICANN Board of Directors? If so, do they have any visability to this forum?
Godaddy likes to serve as a broker between buyer and seller of domains. Their site says:
Call (480) 366-3343 for buying assistance
https://www.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&domainToCheck=ilovearthur.com
Call them and see what they say.