The parasite economy
If I had a tech blog that had a readership > 2, I'd write:
sycophant |ˈsikəfənt; -ˌfant|
noun
a person who acts obsequiously toward someone in order to gain advantage; a servile flatterer.
The domain SYCOPHANCY.COM is aptly registered to one Philip Maher of Denver, Colorado. This domain is squatted-meaning, Mr. Maher has registered the domain with no purpose other than hoarding it and hoping to extract money from someone who wants to use the domain for legitimate purposes. It's the digital domain equivalent of scalping. So when you casually browse to that domain, it just serves you non-content and a bunch of ads.
The domain's name servers are provided by SEDOPARKING.COM (also owned by Phil), whose mission statement is:Domain Parking is a simple way to earn money from your domains' natural traffic. If you have registered domain names, but they are not currently being used, then domain parking is a great way to put those domains to work, earning you revenue. You can make money without even lifting a finger! The idle domain is used to display relevant advertisements -every time a consumer clicks on one of the advertisements, you earn money.
Free money! Quick, snatch up available domains and subject them to the digital slavery of being an ad farm, before someone does something-anything-of actual value or interest.
Mr. Maher's domain name record lists his e-mail address as phil@semtraining.com. What does SEM Training do? We are experts in the science of Search Engine Marketing & Optimization. We teach the safest knowledge to personnel.
We teach you the latest techniques and methodologies to get ahead of your competition and dominate the growing online marketing space.
In other words: for a wad of money they'll teach you how to spam search engines. (Though, honestly, I do wonder what it means to "teach the safest knowledge to personnel.") They'll teach you, for example, how to register domain names and hoard them and make them do nothing except generate ad revenue, all by disingenuous manipulation of search engines.
Domain squatters and search engine optimization hucksters still rank above patent trolls and spammers and black hat hackers, sure. But they're right on par with mortgage scammers, pirate media operators*, and people who pretend to enhance your connectedness with friends and family while selling your data to the highest bidder.
Cheap jabs at Facebook aside, it's rather sad that we have a thriving parasite economy. Unregulated markets always give rise to arbitrage and other forms of vaguely malicious "business." But it seems that the Internet has not only given rise to large and prosperous cloud of such obnoxiousness, but also rendered the general population generally apathetic to it.
Now, if this were a real tech blog I'd be tying this up with a neat little conclusion. Maybe something about striving for a less mediocre world. Maybe something about What Ought To Be Done About It.
But really, I have nothing more than to say: this sucks, and I wish it sucked less, and I wish Karma actually existed so that Phil would contract Loa Loa infection in his eyes.
* I know a lot of you think of pirate music sites as A-OK and a well deserved kick in the nethers to the loathsome music industry, but: when you make your money by stealing the creations of artists and using that as a bait for commerce, you're a parasite. And when you then hide under the skirts of "free speech and expression," you're more loathsome than the music industry who, at least, is open about their greed and doesn't pretend to be a noble cause.
sycophant |ˈsikəfənt; -ˌfant|
noun
a person who acts obsequiously toward someone in order to gain advantage; a servile flatterer.
The domain SYCOPHANCY.COM is aptly registered to one Philip Maher of Denver, Colorado. This domain is squatted-meaning, Mr. Maher has registered the domain with no purpose other than hoarding it and hoping to extract money from someone who wants to use the domain for legitimate purposes. It's the digital domain equivalent of scalping. So when you casually browse to that domain, it just serves you non-content and a bunch of ads.
The domain's name servers are provided by SEDOPARKING.COM (also owned by Phil), whose mission statement is:Domain Parking is a simple way to earn money from your domains' natural traffic. If you have registered domain names, but they are not currently being used, then domain parking is a great way to put those domains to work, earning you revenue. You can make money without even lifting a finger! The idle domain is used to display relevant advertisements -every time a consumer clicks on one of the advertisements, you earn money.
Free money! Quick, snatch up available domains and subject them to the digital slavery of being an ad farm, before someone does something-anything-of actual value or interest.
Mr. Maher's domain name record lists his e-mail address as phil@semtraining.com. What does SEM Training do? We are experts in the science of Search Engine Marketing & Optimization. We teach the safest knowledge to personnel.
We teach you the latest techniques and methodologies to get ahead of your competition and dominate the growing online marketing space.
In other words: for a wad of money they'll teach you how to spam search engines. (Though, honestly, I do wonder what it means to "teach the safest knowledge to personnel.") They'll teach you, for example, how to register domain names and hoard them and make them do nothing except generate ad revenue, all by disingenuous manipulation of search engines.
Domain squatters and search engine optimization hucksters still rank above patent trolls and spammers and black hat hackers, sure. But they're right on par with mortgage scammers, pirate media operators*, and people who pretend to enhance your connectedness with friends and family while selling your data to the highest bidder.
Cheap jabs at Facebook aside, it's rather sad that we have a thriving parasite economy. Unregulated markets always give rise to arbitrage and other forms of vaguely malicious "business." But it seems that the Internet has not only given rise to large and prosperous cloud of such obnoxiousness, but also rendered the general population generally apathetic to it.
Now, if this were a real tech blog I'd be tying this up with a neat little conclusion. Maybe something about striving for a less mediocre world. Maybe something about What Ought To Be Done About It.
But really, I have nothing more than to say: this sucks, and I wish it sucked less, and I wish Karma actually existed so that Phil would contract Loa Loa infection in his eyes.
* I know a lot of you think of pirate music sites as A-OK and a well deserved kick in the nethers to the loathsome music industry, but: when you make your money by stealing the creations of artists and using that as a bait for commerce, you're a parasite. And when you then hide under the skirts of "free speech and expression," you're more loathsome than the music industry who, at least, is open about their greed and doesn't pretend to be a noble cause.