Article Labels Domainers as “Spammers”
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
Article in Indianapolis Business Journal tells one side of the story, mislabels domainers
An article in the Indianapolis Business Journal labels domainers, who are people who invest in domain names, as the “equivalent of e-mail “spammers”":
“Domainers,†the equivalent of e-mail “spammers,†run programs that automatically search for unclaimed letter combinations, snatching up everything they find. Then they hold Web sites hostage, hoping to sell them to the unwary businesses that should have registered them in the first place.
Before the domain community starts huffing and puffing about how this is an example of “old media” trying to descredit the domain name industry, I can tell you with 99% accuracy that this is not the case. What did happen was reporter got lazy. He was probably under the gun to get out copy. A lawyer pitched him on the problem of cybersquatting. He took everything he was told at face value without doing the necessary background research and left out some important details.
The article by staff writer Peter Schnitzler has a lot of accurate information and good, although tired, points from both lawyers and experts:
Eric Johnson, an information technology professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business at Indianapolis, said cybersquatting is an area in which the cost of carefully pre-empting problems is low, but the potential for expense from neglect is high.
and…
Bitwise takes precautionary measures for all its clients to shore up ownership of all relevant domain names. Brumbarger said that’s standard practice these days. The service is bundled into monthly bills.
It’s a shame that the mislabeling of “domainers” as cybersquatters (and in this case putting them on par with e-mail spammers) continues to happen in the press. There is a solution to this. Someone sold the author on writing a story about this issue. If a domainer had sold the author on it, the article would have been more balanced.
The domain name industry needs to push its own press agenda.
Further Reading:
“snatching up everything they find”
…”everything” must b free.
Two back to back topic sessions at the Domain Roundtable this August:
“Business Community Convergence – Listening to the End User”
“Domain Industry Image – Cybersquatters? How Does the Public and Business See Domain Investors?”
I’d like to see the author of that article and several others of late into those sessions.
Stand together or we all fall separately.
It’s a fairly loose name though. It talks as though everyone involved in domains are out to do no good. Does this mean then, going with his comparison, that everyone using email is a spammer? Of course not! There are plenty of honest domainers out there who don’t wait and pounce the second a domain has lapsed … just as there are plenty of people using genuine opt-in mailing lists to promote some products.
[...] Domainers, the equivalent of e-mail spammers? According to an article mentioned on Domain Name Wire, this is the case. In agreement with the comments on domain name wire, this article has been a rushed job. [...]