Comments | jackwilliambell: A certain whiff of carrion about it

jackwilliambell

A certain whiff of carrion about it

Feb 04, 2009 18:15

About six months before Anita passed away I set up a new website for myself, using my full name for the domain. (It was jackwilliambell.com, but I'm not linking; more on why later.) The hosting company took care of the domain name and I did a quick and dirty home page intending to revisit it as part of my sekrit projekt, then added a couple of ( Read more... )

business, stupid, update, meta, humancondition

Comments 19

holyoutlaw February 5 2009, 03:08:34 UTC

Yuck. In a word. Your response sounds entirely appropriate.

jackwilliambell February 5 2009, 06:08:26 UTC

What's the worst they can do to me? Refuse to sell?

Meh...

scarlettina February 5 2009, 04:22:57 UTC

What Luke said. Sheesh!

jackwilliambell February 5 2009, 06:09:16 UTC

I love that user icon! "Fountain of smart." Heh...

joycemocha February 5 2009, 05:13:59 UTC

What disgusting slime those folks are. Leeches--no, leeches are better than this.

jackwilliambell February 5 2009, 06:11:02 UTC

Yeah. Leeches at least go after fresh blood. Vultures, on the other hand...

magscanner February 5 2009, 06:15:11 UTC

The photographer that had had hiddenknowledge.com (similar to my main domain, but mine has a hyphen as hidden-knowledge.com) dropped it, and some scumbag company grabbed it immediately. Then they started offering it to me, for upwards of $1200. I didn't buy it. From time to time I would toy with them, pretending interest but making offers in the range of thirty or forty dollars. Finally I told them I would take it off their hands if they paid me $50, but that otherwise I was not interested. Next time they contact me, the price goes up.

jackwilliambell February 5 2009, 13:22:44 UTC

Good for you. Thing is, someone must pay them; otherwise why do they stay in business?

scottij February 5 2009, 14:14:37 UTC

This happened to me a few years ago when I forgot to renew and my domain lapsed.

I wasn't actively using it at the time either, so I just waited. After a year or so they gave up and didn't renew it, since it wasn't worth the registration fees to hold on to if no one was buying. I then got it back with no problem.

So unless you have an immediate need or think there's another jackwilliambell out there itching for domain, a little patience may solve all...

Or perhaps jackwilliambell.net? :-)

jackwilliambell February 5 2009, 15:17:30 UTC

I use my full name everywhere on the Internet precisely because I am the only Jack William Bell out there; it makes it easier to ego-google. So, no, I don't think anyone else will want the domain. Thus my willingness to let them try and flog it.

I considered .net, .org, etc. What I would really like to see is jack.william.bell, but unfortunately the ICANN rules don't allow us to create our own TLDs.

One thing though: Since this is a domain based on my name, a name apparently only I in the entire world has, what would happen if someone bought it and turned it into a porn or a racist site? Would I have any legal recourse? Defamation of character or whatever?

scottij February 5 2009, 15:35:05 UTC

I suspect you would have legal recourse, but not without incurring a lot of expense and/or time to go through ICANN arbitration or a lawsuit.

It might be easier to dispute the transfer itself at this point, since that is probably more cut-and-dried, but I'm not sure how one goes about doing that. Did you ask ICANN about it when you called them?

jackwilliambell February 5 2009, 16:28:23 UTC

Well, at least mis-use of my name isn't currently a problem. In the meantime I'm not that motivated. Especially after finding out how difficult it is to track down exactly when/how things happened.

ICANN wasn't really any help. Apparently they don't have the resources themselves to address abuses. And I'm sure the people who are abusing the process are careful to price things so that it is considerably cheaper just to pay their ransom.

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