Pathetic attempt at “being a domainer”
Every time a well-known person dies, a school shooting happens, an earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, plane crash, etc occurs, idiot wannabe domainers are first on the scene to register names like MJIsDead.com (no, I’m not going to give you a link). Private registration — I wonder why. Doesn’t really matter what you or I think of MJ — he’s still a person and he still has family, friends, and fans who miss him dearly. It’s NEVER crossed my mind to ever register a domain like this about anyone. Some “domainers” are going so far as to justify this, saying the media makes money off the stories so why can’t they. You learn that 2 wrongs don’t make a right in what, kindergarten? Everyone knows many reporters are right up there with lawyers and payday loan vendors as the lowliest scum on the planet — is that where we’ve now set the ethics bar?
A lot of domainers are starting to sound a whole lot like black hat SEOs. These guys are another class of idiots who think they can hijack urls and subdomains, inject links into other people’s websites, put up multiple 10,000 page splogs, spam the shit out of everyone’s blog comments (mine included) with pharmaceutical, gambling, and adult content links, put spyware on people’s computer which tells them they have a virus when they don’t and threatens them what will happen if they don’t buy their product, etc and think it’s unfair when someone like Google decides they don’t need scum like that in their index…
The more and more I see stuff like this, the more and more I see the merits of increased regulation.
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June 25th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Hey, have you seen this news article?
New details about Michael Jackson’s Death Emerge
I was wondering if you were going to blog about this…
June 25th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Agree 100%. I can still remember the plethora of dopey JFK Jr domains for sale after he died in 1999.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Michael,
That link isn’t working for me — not sure if it’s a problem with my blog, so you have my apologies if that’s on my end.
——
David — yeah, it really is sad. Above all else, it really is a lack of respect. I can just imagine some of these guys sitting by the television all day with their laptop *hoping* tragedy strikes so they can make a few hundred (if that) off of it.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
yes mate..
I understand your frustration.
I was quite annoyed with some people as well a few months back.
http://belshass.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/an-attack-on-the-world-and-immoral-domainers/
well.. what can we do apart from ‘Naming and Shaming’ them.
best,
Ritz
June 26th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Ritz,
Excellent post on your blog there about the Mumbai terrorist attacks. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who sees this as being highly unethical. I voiced my opinion on Namepros about this as well — there seem to be more people who think this is wrong than right, however there are a surprisingly large amount who think nothing of it — that “it’s just business”. As one person on Namepros wrote, I don’t think anyone would see this as “just business” if people were profiting from the death of one of their friends or family members.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:33 am
Reece;
I couldn’t agree more with this post, except for the comment about lawyers being the “lowliest scum on the planet.”
Is that really necessary? My father is a lawyer who has given back an unfathomable amount of time and money back into the community where I grew up. He voluntary sits on the board of numerous nonprofit foundations and has amongst the highest ethical values that I’ve ever seen in a person. At work, he is surrounded by male and female lawyers that have the same high ethical and moral standards as his.
You had a great point up until that statement. Reece, you definitely lost some of my respect.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Hi Lawyer’s Son,
To be fair, there certainly are some good lawyers who aren’t just great lawyers but great people and I certainly didn’t mean to imply that your father or that every single other lawyer was scum. Sadly, it does happen to be one of those professions where most are willing to prostitute their beliefs and ethics so long as someone is willing to pay the going rate — Professions where there is money to be made (eg. law, politics, domaining, web development, stocks/banking) seem to attract more than their fair share of people looking for “easy money” that are more than willing to do whatever it takes to get it, as we see in this post about someone trying to profit from the death of another human being. I’m fairly confident if I were to go out in the real world and ask people if they thought what this domainer did was morally acceptable, I’d get at least 95/100 saying no. In the domaining community, I would guess judging by posts about this on Namepros that it’d be more around 65/100. It says nothing about any individual person in the profession however it does speak to the lower ethical standards in the industry as a whole — some are great people but there are a whole lot of bad apples, some “domainers” even going so far as to register typo domains of other domaining companies for pay per click revenue…
June 26th, 2009 at 2:13 am
I cant believe that amount of names that have been regged since last night - It was the same after the air france crash a few weeks ago when 280 people lost there lifes.
What I cant get is one of the MJ domains is showing a whois to a very popular and well know domainer - Im not going to name anyone or let you know what the domain is but I was surprised this guy doesnt need the money with portfolio he owns but why would he register this name?
I dont know - I can see newbies trying to make a quick buck and think this is what domainers do but an experianced guy like this - I dont get it.
Rob
June 26th, 2009 at 5:07 am
There is absolutely nothing wrong with registering domains related to Michael Jackson even after his death. I have never done antyhing similar but that makes me no better, no less than those that have. There are various reasons for people to register domains after a major event whether good or bad and these relentless righteousness blog rants just narrow the diverseness of society. In a world where we all talk about freedom of expression and freedom in general a lot of people fail to see that pushing their conforming morals on others is really an attack on freedom itself. I do hope some people including domainers(if it is their intention) can make money out of his death as others did when he was alive. I actually enjoyed hearing that so many domains were registered, human nature at work.
June 26th, 2009 at 5:27 am
This is the kind of unhetical behavior that must be fighted as it reflects a false and bad impression of our business.
Don’t be astonished if after medias talk about us as predators, squatters, …
It’s hard and long to create a reputation and so easy and fast to kill it.
These unscrupulus people are just a minority but thay are doing big damages… Shame on them!
I publicly ask parking companies to help us fight these bad practices by shutting down these accounts, otherwise they are as guilty as these people, they are building their future today.
Francois
June 26th, 2009 at 6:25 am
I don’t mess with garbage names like that but if you want to “keep it real” - 99% of people who condemn such behavior would have no problem profiting off names like these if they were making $100/day parked or what have you.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I agree with the poster of this story, but free markets are free markets. What should we do make a law against which domains are ok to register on the fly or ex post facto? Icann should scrutinize which domains are “OK” to register. There are a lot of creeps out there, you don’t have go sniffing around them till you get disgusted, just go to another domain. Do we have freedom of speech or not, tell me so I know if I am a slave or not, tell me so I can determine if I am oppressed or not.
June 26th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Here in Canada, if you say something racist and they can charge you with a hate crime. Teach your kids racist beliefs and they can take your kids away. Say something defamatory to the wrong person and you can be sued. Be completely honest as a “whistleblower” and lose your job and potentially destroy your future for wanting the right thing done.
Freedom of speech is an illusion in my opinion, just like our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the U.S. Bill of Rights, where the rights only apply when the government decides they apply. Heck, right in American law it’s written that they can get rid of rights to Americans and others as well (PATRIOT Act, National Emergencies Act, International Emergency Economic Powers Act, etc)
June 26th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I agree. 2 wrongs don’t make a right.
It would never cross my mind to register a domain like that.
J.R.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Good post, I’m glad someone said it loud and clear. After hearing that news it occured to me that that some people would rush to register those domains or probably already had;
June 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Excellent post Reece, of course you get the worthless scum who think its fine, but at the end of the day life has a way of taking care of those idiots whether they are the registrant or support the registrant behavior. Its why I laugh when people call this an industry ? And eventually you will see just how free your speech is, because there are a lot of things coming down the road, with the URS all someone’s agent or rep will be doing is filing a URS, site taken down right away and that will be a good thing IMO. Fuck these people FUCK THEM IN THEIR ASS
June 26th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I think i’ve seen this somewhere before…but it’s not bad at all
June 27th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Bottom feeders exist in all businesses. I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘ambulance chasers’ in reference to lawyers and ‘peeping toms’ in reference to paparazzi. Domainers are supposed to use their brains when regging name, these people apparently don’t have enough gray matter to come up with something original thats why they behave this way.
Whats even more funny is the fact that 99.99% of the names will be a wasted reg. So not only do they lose their reputations if exposed, they actually lose money in any case. And in case they do make a few bucks, I wonder if its sufficient profit for them to risk their standing, if any, in the industry. Is their online reputation worth so little?
Most domainers hate such bottom feeders with a passion is because it spoils the name of the industry as a whole. Non-domainers use examples like these to brand all practitioners of this trade with the same brush.
June 27th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Well said Samit. I came across a few names registered as early as 2005 (MichaelJacksonIsDead.com). They really are a bunch of vultures just hoping people die so they can make a few bucks off it, if that.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:54 am
and I saw..
MichaelJordanisdead.com
regged yesterday..
We live in a sad world really!
I’m disgusted..
… what’s the purpose of life? why are we here? why are we angry? why do we hurt others? Why do inconsiderate horrible things? why? …when one day it’ll all be over..
June 27th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I agree with your posting. It really annoys me to see. Creating a good, respectful website about him.. then fine. But regging a domain solely to benefit off misfortune is just plain wrong.
I got into a ‘heated’ debate recently since quite a big host (10tb.com, a SoftLayer reseller) host the website of a neo-Nazi, extreme right UK political party. I was making the point that I wouldn’t find it ethical to profit off selling hosting to such a group. But I was basically in the severe minority, with 80%+ of people seeing nothing wrong with it etc.
Seems baffling to me, but as long as I hold my morals and keep to them, I guess that’s something
June 27th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Hi Tristan,
Yeah — completely agree with you in both cases. I don’t understand why a hosting company would want to be associated with such a group… I guess such a company really isn’t any different than the squatters profiting off the death of others — neither apparently cares much about what others think of them for their actions and they clearly don’t have much in the way of a moral compass.