Tim Greer
05-07-2001, 08:59 AM
/* begin rant
Let's talk about the greed and ethics of the large company's on the Internet for a moment. This was discussed in another thread a while ago. Here's some news that sort of angered me, but nothing I didn't expect. Wired.com (now Lycos.com) has a registered a domain name (chatcentral.com) since April of 1996 and was a domain name of a site name I was running for about 5 months or so before they registered it. By the time I decided to get a domain by the site name, I found it was _just_ registered and got another one.
Over these years, I noticed that not once has this domain been used by them. I (over these years) made many attempts to contact them via phone and email for all the relevant (and some non-relevant) contacts I could find, anywhere. I became more and more bothered that they didn't respond to my emails or calls, or messages I left. It was either impossible to get a hold of someone, or I left voice messages or emails to a variety of people, never to be contacted back. So, a few weeks ago, I decided it's been a month or so, and I'll try again.
I called the numbers, only to get more voice mail boxes or no answer. I then went and emailed all the contacts (for the umpteenth time) for Wired and Lycos -- only this time I filled out both site's form mailers for all the departments I could possibly think would be remotely relevant -- such as sales, feedback, general inquiries, etc.) -- hey, you never know. So, I emailed everyone the same email I had pre-typed out. Here's what happens...
My Email:
"PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO WHOMEVER IS IN CHARGE OF DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS AND OWNERSHIP!
I have called and emailed all the contacts available on your domain records, as well as web sites. I have gotten no response, other than to be handed off to other staff members. I have had a well established site called "Chat Central" for years and your company has been holding onto the domain chatcentral.com for years and has never used it -- and since the first year, I've been trying to call or email anyone I can, to ask that it be released, or used or sold. I have offered to buy it, or pay for the registration of the domain, or just to get information on it. NetworkSolutions, even if your company decided to simply stop paying for the domain, will hold onto it for another year before they finally make it available again. Can you please decide, or find out what is going to be done with it and let me know.
I just want to know what intentions your company has, since it seems likely this was a domain registered a long time ago, and was never intended to be continued to be paid for or held since it was never used and has not been used at anytime since. I see no reason to hold onto it and I would really like to have this domain, as it is and has been fitting [the name] for years. I ask that you be fair and reasonable, as holding onto this domain and not even contacting me back, just doesn't seem right. Perhaps making you aware of this oversight will finally get some answers or progress? You may call or email me at the contacts shown below. Thank you for your time and attention on this matter."
So I get a reply from a lackey, whom says:
"Tim, I will pass your interest on to the people that would make a decision on this. At this point the domain is highly valued intellectual property. Given our business, it could conceivably be useful to us in the near future."
Yeah, right. They never have used this or likely thought about it. Fair enough, it's a decent domain name, but use it for goodness sakes, don't just sit on it until the end of time, because you can!
So, I hear back from the Vice President of "Brand Strategy" (heh, heh) for Lycos (Steven Fund), whom says:
"With regard to your e-mail below, we would be interested in selling the domain name "Chatcentral.com" to you. The asking price is $100,000.
Please let me know if you are interested in moving forward with the purchase of this domain."
Oh yeah, I'll move forward straight away. Let me take a large portion of my life savings to buy a friggin' domain, just so I can have a domain name that matches my site name! Great idea... yeah... right. Anyway, after a while, and bordem, I responded back (just a few minutes ago). I wanted to tell him, well, all sorts of things, but I tried to refrain from being harsh, while letting this guy know how stupid he is for asking A HUNDRED GRAND for a domain. This isn't chat.com, you know. So, I say:
"Mr. Fund (how fitting),
In reference to your email and selling price of $100,000 for the domain chatcentral.com, I have considered on what to state in my response. I'm not sure what experience you have with these sorts of issues, but that domain is (and few are) worth nowhere near that. Indeed, that is a ridiculously large amount. I simply asked your company to be decent enough to either release it or use it [well, I did ask if they'd sell it, but not for the price of a small home], after having it registered since 1996 and never once being used.
It's certainly your right to hold onto it and do nothing with it, or to ask far more than it's worth. I suppose, since I've been using that site name, long before your (well, Wired.com, before the Lycos buyout) company ever registered that domain and seek legal recourse. My fault for not getting it sooner, I admit, and I'm not the type of person to try and swindle a domain from a company. I don't believe, however, that you or possibly your company is being decent about this.
I'm not planning to file suit, I believe you have your rights to ask a ridiculous price, or simply hoard the domain and never use it, but your idea of the value of that domain, is simply that, ridiculous. Perhaps you will find some large company to purchase it for that price, but I doubt that even the ignorant large firms would be so foolish. I wish that your company would be more reasonable, and not just hoard something that never really belongs to you and try and get astronomical fees for it, but that's how some company's are. Disappointing, indeed.
I can only conclude that you are hoarding this domain, because you can. At worse, your company pays $35/year to NetworkSolutions... at most, you gain possibly a large sum from some idiot. I know how the world is and I don't expect it to be fair or people to be reasonable, but I do run a site by the name in question and have for some time, and I find this greediness to be appalling. This isn't a response to not being able to afford or want the domain, but I care more about the principal of it and that your company never has used it and doesn't seem to even know if they want to -- just seeing an opportunity to make (a lot of) money, if you can. I don't want the domain that badly, my current domains have just as much value. So, cheers to whomever is ignorant enough to actually throw away 100 grand for a ten letter domain and think they aren't being conned. Sorry to have wasted your time, thanks for wasting mine."
So, basically, these guy's are just going to hoard it, because they can.. because they got it earlier than I did. This bothers me, but who am I to say they are indecent for not using it? I think it's fair to ask for and expect a semi-reasonable response, and not a huge ransom for something they will actually never own and are just renting. There ought to be a law or policy against this. I mean, this isn't a trademark or copyright issue, it's a general domain name.
Why should they be able to just hoard it and never use it, yet only ask a ludicrous price for it? I tell you, I see enough goof balls trying to sell nothing domain names for far too much.. hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, etc. I wish these company's would get a clue and not just sit on domain names until someone gives in and pays these ridiculous prices. I wish people would refuse and force the asking prices into the ground. Those bastards... I mean, I could have and did find equally good domains, but it shouldn't be like this, in my opinion.
end rant. */
Let's talk about the greed and ethics of the large company's on the Internet for a moment. This was discussed in another thread a while ago. Here's some news that sort of angered me, but nothing I didn't expect. Wired.com (now Lycos.com) has a registered a domain name (chatcentral.com) since April of 1996 and was a domain name of a site name I was running for about 5 months or so before they registered it. By the time I decided to get a domain by the site name, I found it was _just_ registered and got another one.
Over these years, I noticed that not once has this domain been used by them. I (over these years) made many attempts to contact them via phone and email for all the relevant (and some non-relevant) contacts I could find, anywhere. I became more and more bothered that they didn't respond to my emails or calls, or messages I left. It was either impossible to get a hold of someone, or I left voice messages or emails to a variety of people, never to be contacted back. So, a few weeks ago, I decided it's been a month or so, and I'll try again.
I called the numbers, only to get more voice mail boxes or no answer. I then went and emailed all the contacts (for the umpteenth time) for Wired and Lycos -- only this time I filled out both site's form mailers for all the departments I could possibly think would be remotely relevant -- such as sales, feedback, general inquiries, etc.) -- hey, you never know. So, I emailed everyone the same email I had pre-typed out. Here's what happens...
My Email:
"PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO WHOMEVER IS IN CHARGE OF DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS AND OWNERSHIP!
I have called and emailed all the contacts available on your domain records, as well as web sites. I have gotten no response, other than to be handed off to other staff members. I have had a well established site called "Chat Central" for years and your company has been holding onto the domain chatcentral.com for years and has never used it -- and since the first year, I've been trying to call or email anyone I can, to ask that it be released, or used or sold. I have offered to buy it, or pay for the registration of the domain, or just to get information on it. NetworkSolutions, even if your company decided to simply stop paying for the domain, will hold onto it for another year before they finally make it available again. Can you please decide, or find out what is going to be done with it and let me know.
I just want to know what intentions your company has, since it seems likely this was a domain registered a long time ago, and was never intended to be continued to be paid for or held since it was never used and has not been used at anytime since. I see no reason to hold onto it and I would really like to have this domain, as it is and has been fitting [the name] for years. I ask that you be fair and reasonable, as holding onto this domain and not even contacting me back, just doesn't seem right. Perhaps making you aware of this oversight will finally get some answers or progress? You may call or email me at the contacts shown below. Thank you for your time and attention on this matter."
So I get a reply from a lackey, whom says:
"Tim, I will pass your interest on to the people that would make a decision on this. At this point the domain is highly valued intellectual property. Given our business, it could conceivably be useful to us in the near future."
Yeah, right. They never have used this or likely thought about it. Fair enough, it's a decent domain name, but use it for goodness sakes, don't just sit on it until the end of time, because you can!
So, I hear back from the Vice President of "Brand Strategy" (heh, heh) for Lycos (Steven Fund), whom says:
"With regard to your e-mail below, we would be interested in selling the domain name "Chatcentral.com" to you. The asking price is $100,000.
Please let me know if you are interested in moving forward with the purchase of this domain."
Oh yeah, I'll move forward straight away. Let me take a large portion of my life savings to buy a friggin' domain, just so I can have a domain name that matches my site name! Great idea... yeah... right. Anyway, after a while, and bordem, I responded back (just a few minutes ago). I wanted to tell him, well, all sorts of things, but I tried to refrain from being harsh, while letting this guy know how stupid he is for asking A HUNDRED GRAND for a domain. This isn't chat.com, you know. So, I say:
"Mr. Fund (how fitting),
In reference to your email and selling price of $100,000 for the domain chatcentral.com, I have considered on what to state in my response. I'm not sure what experience you have with these sorts of issues, but that domain is (and few are) worth nowhere near that. Indeed, that is a ridiculously large amount. I simply asked your company to be decent enough to either release it or use it [well, I did ask if they'd sell it, but not for the price of a small home], after having it registered since 1996 and never once being used.
It's certainly your right to hold onto it and do nothing with it, or to ask far more than it's worth. I suppose, since I've been using that site name, long before your (well, Wired.com, before the Lycos buyout) company ever registered that domain and seek legal recourse. My fault for not getting it sooner, I admit, and I'm not the type of person to try and swindle a domain from a company. I don't believe, however, that you or possibly your company is being decent about this.
I'm not planning to file suit, I believe you have your rights to ask a ridiculous price, or simply hoard the domain and never use it, but your idea of the value of that domain, is simply that, ridiculous. Perhaps you will find some large company to purchase it for that price, but I doubt that even the ignorant large firms would be so foolish. I wish that your company would be more reasonable, and not just hoard something that never really belongs to you and try and get astronomical fees for it, but that's how some company's are. Disappointing, indeed.
I can only conclude that you are hoarding this domain, because you can. At worse, your company pays $35/year to NetworkSolutions... at most, you gain possibly a large sum from some idiot. I know how the world is and I don't expect it to be fair or people to be reasonable, but I do run a site by the name in question and have for some time, and I find this greediness to be appalling. This isn't a response to not being able to afford or want the domain, but I care more about the principal of it and that your company never has used it and doesn't seem to even know if they want to -- just seeing an opportunity to make (a lot of) money, if you can. I don't want the domain that badly, my current domains have just as much value. So, cheers to whomever is ignorant enough to actually throw away 100 grand for a ten letter domain and think they aren't being conned. Sorry to have wasted your time, thanks for wasting mine."
So, basically, these guy's are just going to hoard it, because they can.. because they got it earlier than I did. This bothers me, but who am I to say they are indecent for not using it? I think it's fair to ask for and expect a semi-reasonable response, and not a huge ransom for something they will actually never own and are just renting. There ought to be a law or policy against this. I mean, this isn't a trademark or copyright issue, it's a general domain name.
Why should they be able to just hoard it and never use it, yet only ask a ludicrous price for it? I tell you, I see enough goof balls trying to sell nothing domain names for far too much.. hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, etc. I wish these company's would get a clue and not just sit on domain names until someone gives in and pays these ridiculous prices. I wish people would refuse and force the asking prices into the ground. Those bastards... I mean, I could have and did find equally good domains, but it shouldn't be like this, in my opinion.
end rant. */