RE: [Membership] Structure of 'at large' membership

[a@help.org]

Help.org is one of my domains and it points to my main consumer.net.

I have registered a number of domains for a variety of reasons.  I operate
sites such as privacypolicy.com, telemarketinglaws.com mummers.com,
network-tools.com, translatefree.com, etc.  These sites have content related
to the name.  I also operate a redirection service that uses more than 100
names.  The content of my site is based on providing consumer information
rather than just trying to sell domains.

I do have some domains for sale.  I am selling these names in order to
offset some of the fees I pay to Internic and other expenses for running my
operation.  These names are not "well known" marks belonging to some
company, they are almost all generic terms.  This difference is described
somewhat in the current WIPO report found at
http://wipo2.wipo.int/process/eng/rfc_3.html.  for instance I am selling
names such as invisible.com, concertnews.com, etc.  This is substantially
different than trying to sell something like exxonmobil.com to exxon-mobil,
inc.  I spent the time and effort to get the domains, I invested money in
its registration (every time I turn around I am sending Internic another
$2-3,000), and I had the forethought to register the name.  Therefore, I
believe that should be able to make a profit on the sale of the domain if it
sells.

Some sites I have seen that just sell domains are at
http://www.igoldrush.com/show.htm, http://www.igoldrush.com/links3.htm, and
http://www.igoldrush.com/links3.htm has links to sites selling domains.  You
will see several people (idiots?) trying to sell domains (often domains that
are not that good or misspellings) for huge amounts of money.  The vast
majority have not sold.

One of the biggest domain grabbers is at http://www.bestdomains.com/.  They
have all kinds of stuff registered.  They use different addresses (mostly in
Canada, see whois record for plenty.com for an example) which I assume is
done because they register large numbers of domains and do not pay for many.
However, they do pay for some of them.  They have been at it for at least a
couple of years because some of the domains they have go on hold after they
had it for 2 years.  Another place that bought up a large number of domains
about 2 years ago is CES marketing group at http://www.cesmarketing.com/.

The main domain grabbers who play the Internic game of registering domains
the day before can be found by running whois on the following

plenty.com - GlobeComm
cashews.com - CES marketing Canada
windy.com - Reflex publishing, Florida
sands.com - Someone in Oklahoma
camping.com - someone in Florida

When a very desirable domain is released the competition for it generally
limited to these 5 and me (there maybe 5 more that do it to a lesser
extent).  I lost a few domains before I figured out the game.  I also
started offering a service to try to register domains to other people.  I
charge $125 only if I get it for them.  One person signed up and I was able
to get him a 2-letter .net domain (his initials) for this fee.  GlobeComm
had it and didn't pay.  They were asking for offers of minimum bid $1,000.


Russ Smith
http://consumer.net




>RUSS:
>i visited HELP>ORG

>It seems they bought up and sell domain names- how do you reconcile this
with
>your position?
>thank you steve witkin