A bit of domain name satire to get you going this Monday morning.

$4.25 million? That’s extortion!

[This past weekend I came across one of those web sites blaming parked domain names for all that ills the internet. The site used the typical logic: parked domains are unused, and it's not fair that someone who will develop the domains can't get access to them for a reasonable price. Here's my satirical response.]

I’m fed up. Outraged. And it’s time for the government to step in and do something about a problem that plagues our great country: empty land.

For example, a few miles down the lake from my neighborhood is a beautiful waterfront lot of 1.4 acres. After all these years, it is still undeveloped. The owner says he was thinking about building a house there one day, but we all know he bought it just to resell it to someone else for more than he paid for it. The ad even says “football-field sized” green, lakefront yard”. In other words, he knows it’s a great generic piece of land that can be developed with a number of types of houses. And he wants $4.25 million for it!

It’s time the government mandates land be developed or surrendered to anyone else who wants to build on it. If nothing else, the owner should be required to sell the land to someone for a fair price if that person wants to develop it. This price should be capped at $50,000. Anything more is just extortion.

Closer to my house, there are several empty lots along my street. It pains me to look at these empty lots every day. They could be put to greater use! Some of the owners of these lots even have the audacity to place ads on their property saying that the land is for sale. It’s not fair that I should have to pay $100k per lot just to build on this land. These lots have been empty for 50 years. If the owners had any intention of building on them, they would have done so by now. Like I’m actually going to believe the guy that said he’s going to build his retirement home on his land. I’ve heard that one before!

So let’s get a petition started. Let’s tell the land management office it needs to do something about these mean, ill-spirited land owners that hoard property for “investment purposes”. Let’s call it what it is: squatting.

Go Daddy’s security team stops perpetrator; about 1,000 accounts affected.

GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain name registrar, has thwarted an attack by a person who gained access to customer information.

The company discovered that someone gained access to certain customer information through a vulnerability in its systems. The information accessed included names, physical addresses, and customer IDs. Passwords and other sensitive information was not compromised. Affected accounts have been temporarily locked.

“As a precaution, we’ve locked all of those customers’ accounts,” said GoDaddy CIO Neil Warner in an interview with Domain Name Wire Sunday evening. “We started contacting the customers by phone, and are sending an e-mail if we haven’t reached them by phone.” Warner said that all affected customers have been notified, and that only 1/10th of 1 percent of GoDaddy accounts were vulnerable.

Warner said the company is not sure about the intent of the perpetrator.

GoDaddy employees about 30 people dedicated to security, and these teams work 24 hours a day. It’s been a busy week for the team, which dealt with a denial of service attack on its web hosting operations Wednesday morning.

Warner said it appears the attack came from inside the United States. “We have gathered our logs and have sent it to our legal department, which will be forwarding it on to proper authorities to see if we can take action against that person,” said Warner.

Rate and review domain registrars at Registrar Judge.

Hard work — and good fortune — propelled successful domain investors.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers, he argues that successful people got to where they are through hard work and good fortune. Whether it’s their cultural background or just plain being in the right place at the right time, successful people don’t do it on their own.

Consider Bill Gates. Yes, he was smart and worked hard to create Microsoft. But he was also born at just the right time to be in the position to start a software company. He also went to perhaps the only school in the country with a computer terminal. Without that, it’s unlikely he would have created Microsoft. (One of the more interesting trivia in the book: in what months of the year are the most successful Canadian hockey players born?)

The same can be applied to some of the more successful domainers. The back stories on successful people in the domain industry is well chronicled in David Kesmodel’s The Domain Game. Consider Frank Schilling. He was at the exact moment in his life when he was looking for a way to feed his family. His hopes of starting an online casino had been shattered. Pay-per-click on domains was just taking off. He then worked tirelessly to build his domain empire Name Administration. There was a lot of hard work and foresight, but also a lot of luck. The same can be said for most other people chronicled in The Domain Game. For some it was as simple as being in the right place at the right time. Or being located near other big domainers who got them interested in the business.

Why is it that so many successful domainers live in Western Canada? Was it the time zone, making it easier to catch expiring domains? Perhaps the network of other domainers to learn from?

The thesis of Outliers can be applied to just about everyone. You should pick up this book and consider what has helped you get to where you are today. Perhaps it’s your ancestors from 1,000 years ago. Or the year you were born. Or what middle school you went to. And, of course, lots of hard work.

GoDaddy plans to open online selling site.

In direct competition with eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), domain registrar Go Daddy is launching a marketplace dubbed “Go Daddy Marketplace” for people to buy and sell goods online.

Users can set up stores and upload products. GoDaddy will handle all payments and notify sellers whenever a product is sold. Marketplace will integrate with other GoDaddy products, such as allowing users of its Quick Shopping Cart to import product listings.

By launching the marketplace, GoDaddy hopes to capitalize on its massive web site traffic, which it describes as “millions of Go Daddy visitors”. GoDaddy would be smart to syndicate product listings across domains that currently have GoDaddy parked pages on them, too.

The service seems to compete with Yahoo! Stores, Amazon Marketplace, and eBay’s fixed price listings and stores.

The service costs $4.99 per month plus a 10% commission on products sold. Pricing seems fairly comparable to Amazon Marketplace, which doesn’t charge a monthly fee or listing fee but collects a per transaction fee of 99 cents, a sales commission of 6%-12%, and a variable closing fee. Both eBay Stores and Yahoo! Stores have higher monthly fees, although eBay does offer a pay-per-item fixed price sales option.

It’s unclear if the service will use a home grown platform or if it’s being outsourced. It also seems like it will demand a lot of time from GoDaddy’s support team as it deals with fraudulent transactions and consumer complaints that plague Amazon Marketplace and eBay.

GoDaddy plans to launch Go Daddy Marketplace later this month.

Domain lawyer Ari Goldberger gets another win, but the panel creates a tough hurdle for reverse domain name hijacking.

Domain lawyer Ari Goldberger successfully defended FullTerm.com in a UDRP dispute at National Arbitration Forum. The case pitted Hologic Inc, maker of a device to determine if a woman is likely to give birth before full term, against domain owner Vertical Axis Inc.

Hologic didn’t apply for a trademark to the term “FullTerm” until 2006, claiming a first use in commerce date of 2004. Vertical Axis registered the domain back in 2001.

It was essentially a slam dunk case, and Goldberger asked the panel to find Hologic guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. When you read the case for reverse domain name hijacking, as written by the panel, you’d think they would find Hologic guilty:

Complainant fails to proffer convincing evidence that supports its claim that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interest in the at-issue domain name. Complainant likewise fails to present evidence that Respondent acted in bad faith in registering and using the disputed domain name. Moreover, there is no effort made in the Complaint to provide any relevant explanation of bad faith, beyond a conclusory one-sentence assertion that mirrors the language of Policy 4(b)(iv). Under the circumstances, the Complaint is quite deficient in this respect. Complainant knew or should have known that its trademark FULL TERM was registered well after the Respondent registered its domain name corresponding to the generic term FULL TERM. Perhaps Complainant should have also known that it could not prevail without presenting the Panel with at least some explanation tending to support its bare allegation that the Respondent acted in bad faith in registering and using such domain name.

OK, done deal. Right? Wrong. The panel goes on to write:

Nevertheless, while the Complainant’s case is weak and its pleading leaves much to be desired, it does not rise to the level necessary for a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. There is no sufficient evidence to show that the Complainant brought the Complaint in bad faith. The Complainant, through one of its divisions, did have a trademark registration for a mark that is identical to the disputed domain name. Complainant also presented a prima facie showing that Respondent lacked rights or interest in the domain name. Finally, Complainant supplied a screen print of the commercial website to which the disputed domain name resolves. Therefore, the Panel finds that the Complainant’s conduct in filing its Complaint did not amount to Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.

Wow. I guess if you take a few minutes to file the case and print out a screenshot of a parked page, this panel won’t find you guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.