Conservative “think tank” gets mud on its face by not registering .com domain name.

Many domain arbitration decisions are dry reads. But I found myself cracking up this morning reading the case of SutherlandInstitute.com.

Southerland Institute is a Utah-based conservative group that purports to promote family, limited government, and religion. Its web site is SutherlandInstitute.ORG, and it failed to register the .com version of its name. Nick West registered the domain name in 2006 and created a parody of Sutherland Institute’s web site. West won the arbitration.

It’s the sworn statement from Sutherland Group’s president Paul Mero that made me almost cry laughing:

…On February 26, 2009, I personally met with the largest donor to Sutherland Institute. This donor had compiled a list of ideas to improve Sutherland Institute, and we discussed this list in detail. One of the ideas in the list was to improve Sutherland Institute’s website. Our donor appeared to be very troubled by certain content on the website. I was surprised by this suggestion because we had recently updated and modified the website. Furthermore, I could not believe that our website had caused such a negative reaction from a donor who has been such a long-time supporter of Sutherland Institute. Upon further investigation, I determined that our donor was referring to sutherlandinstitute.com, not the official Sutherland Institute website sutherlandinstitute.org. It required several attempts to clarify to our donor that the ‘.com’ website was not sponsored by Sutherland Institute because our donor did not immediately understand that ‘sutherland institute’ could be used as a domain name for both the ‘.org’ and ‘.com’ top-level domains. More specifically, our donor did not understand the significance of top-level domain differences.”

To understand how funny this is, consider the “Sutherland Governing Principles” on the think tank’s real web site:

Limited Government
Family
Private Property
Religion
Personal Responsibility
Charity
Free Markets

and on the parody web site:

Oppose The Gay Agenda
Limited Government Except When We Don’t Get Our Way
Our Bigoted Definition of Family
The One True Religion
Personal Responsibility & Taking Away Others Choice
Anti Same Sex Marriage Legislation
Free Markets, Exclude Homosexuals from Places of Employment

Can you imagine a major donor coming to the web site and thinking the organization he sponsored had this actual content on its web site?

A statement by another Sutherland Institute employee reads like a checklist of why owning a .com is important, particularly for security reasons. The think tank’s own web site designer was sending invoices to an email address at the .com version rather than .org. That’s a great example to show someone who’s thinking about starting a company with a domain name other than .com.

You can read the entire decision here.

Parent company of eNom enters into agreement to buy Demand.com domain name.

The domain name Demand.com is in demand.

Demand Media, parent company of eNom and NameJet, has entered into an agreement to purchase the domain name Demand.com for corporate branding purposes. The sale was announced today in a press release from the seller inter123 Corporation. The sale price was not released.

Inter123 was founded by Jeffrey Peterson, an entrepreneur mostly known for launching Hispanic portal Quepasa.com. According to its web site, Inter123 is a private equity fund focused on information technology and new media companies, although its portfolio page doesn’t show many investments.

Demand Media started as a company trying to bring social media to a vast direct navigation portfolio, but its strategy has seemed to morph since then. In addition to owning eNom, the company owns a number of popular web sites such as Trails.com, Cracked.com, and eHow.com. It also has a partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation for LiveStrong.com.

Company continues domain name liquidation.

The whois information for Mouse.com and Keyboard.com have changed, with the administrative email now showing domain name broker Sedo. This confirms that Live Current Media (OTC: LIVC.ob) has completed a sale of the two domain names, as DotWeekly observed on July 17. Mouse.com sold for $125,000 and Keyboard.com sold for $100,000.

Neither of these seem like spectacular domain names to me, as Keyboards.com would be preferred to the singular version. But when you do a little digging you see how even the singular version makes sense. For example, there’s a magazine called Keyboard Magazine, which uses the domain name KeyboardMag.com and caters to the music industry. That’s just one end user that might be interested in this domain name. And of course, there are plenty of ads available for the terms keyboard and mouse.

Neither domain name receives enough traffic for Compete.com to get an accurate read on them, but the service still suggests they each receive over 1,000 unique visitors per month.

If deal goes through, it would be good news for domainers.

The on-again, off-again relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft may be on again.

When news of a potential merger between the two companies first broke early last year, I wondered what it would mean for domainers. At the time I was conflicted. But then the potential Yahoo and Google hookup scared the crap out of me, which put things in perspective. I think it’s safe to say that a Yahoo-Microsoft hookup for online advertising will be good for domain owners.

The key reasons is that it would create a solid contender against Google for search advertising. I suspect Microsoft would invest heavily to get new advertisers, and potentially merge the existing ad networks. It may also snap up a couple existing search advertising companies to grow faster. If the Obama administration will look the other way, it might even try to subsidize advertisers to get them on the network.

Anything that puts heat on Google is good. It would be great if both Microsoft and Yahoo could compete against Google themselves, but it’s clear that isn’t going to happen.

From my previous conversations with Microsoft, I get the feeling they want to make a play in the domain space. That bodes well for domain parking.

This could just be a mental exercise in futility, as the whole Yahoo-Microsoft thing has been like the cute tease at a party. But unlike a Yahoo-Google deal, MSFT-YHOO is something I can get excited about.

End of sales agreement could have broad implications for Australian domain company.

It’s been a rough year for Dark Blue Sea (ASX: DBS), parent company of Fabulous. Its profits are down by three quarters, it has cut half its staff, and one of its biggest shareholders is trying to oust its Chairman. But the news got worse yesterday, as reported by Domain Name News: GoDaddy terminated its sales agreement with the company.

This is a big deal. Dark Blue Sea was counting on GoDaddy to lift its aftermarket domain sales, primarily by selling to customers who were looking to register a domain name but found their ideal one was already registered. The company was also able to bulk list its domains — and customers in the Domain Distribution Network — on Go Daddy Auctions (formerly TDNAM). According to a source familiar with the matter, a significant number of domain names are sold through GoDaddy’s “premium domain” upsell during the registration process.

Dark Blue Sea views its own domain portfolio as a money maker, whereas domain parking and domain registration are low margin service businesses. In fact, it has held discussions with other domain companies about acquiring parts of its service business.

When asked for comment, Go Daddy VP Adam Dicker stated, “We have evaluated our premium domain channel and made a business decision to discontinue our use of the Domain Distribution Network.” (Domain Distribution Network is Dark Blue Sea’s domain sales system.)

That doesn’t say much, but I speculate the deal wasn’t going well for GoDaddy. GoDaddy signed a deal with BuyDomains to sell its domains alongside DBS’ domains. BuyDomains’ inventory sold better, so it gave those domains more exposure. Over time, it wasn’t worth listing DBS’ mostly hand registered domains at all.

Another big factor was the drop in Dark Blue Sea’s stock price. Dark Blue Sea gave millions of options to GoDaddy, exercisable at 65 cents. The thinly traded stock now trades for 15 cents.

What does this mean for Dark Blue Sea? The company released a statement that “the impact of this may have a material adverse affect on future revenue and profit.”

The company has fiercely loyal customers of its Fabulous domain registrar. This may present an opportunity for another registrar to make a value acquisition.