Article Labels Domainers as “Spammers”

Article in Indianapolis Business Journal tells one side of the story, mislabels domainers

An article in the Indianapolis Business Journal labels domainers, who are people who invest in domain names, as the “equivalent of e-mail “spammers””:

“Domainers,” the equivalent of e-mail “spammers,” run programs that automatically search for unclaimed letter combinations, snatching up everything they find. Then they hold Web sites hostage, hoping to sell them to the unwary businesses that ought to have registered them in the first place.

Ahead of the domain community starts huffing and puffing regarding how this is an example of “old media” trying to descredit the domain name industry, I can tell you with 99% accuracy that this is not the case. What did happen was reporter got lazy. He was probably under the gun to get out copy. A lawyer pitched him on the problem of cybersquatting. He took everything he was told at face value without doing the necessary background research and left out some notable details.

The article by staff writer Peter Schnitzler has a lot of accurate information and good, although tired, points from both lawyers and experts:

Eric Johnson, an information technology professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business at Indianapolis, stated cybersquatting is an area in which the cost of carefully pre-empting problems is low, but the potential for expense from neglect is high.

and…

Bitwise takes precautionary measures for all its clients to shore up ownership of all relevant domain names. Brumbarger stated that’s standard practice these days. The service is bundled into monthly bills.

It’s a shame that the mislabeling of “domainers” as cybersquatters (and in this case putting them on par with e-mail spammers) continues to happen in the press. There is a solution to this. Someone sold the author on writing a story regarding this issue. If a domainer had sold the author on it, the article would have been more balanced.

The domain name industry needs to push its own press agenda.