Its that time again, for our second annual Turkeys of the Year awards.
This is how I started off last years post and unfortunately all of its still applicable, so I will repeat it here:
“With so many people out of work; losing their homes, companies out of business and retirement plans wiped out, as an industry, we are very, very fortunate.”
Here are our Turkeys of the Year:
1. Halvarez. First and foremost on the hit parade is the bidder know as Halvarez which was identified as Nelson Brady, one of the founders of Snapnames.com and a shareholder and officer of the company that owned Snapnames.com when it was acquired by Oversee.net for a reported $25 Million dollars.
In the wake of this scandal Oversee is offering refunds which have to total in the millions of dollars, certainly overpaid millions more on the purchase, is going to have huge expenditures for legal bills, and for the administrator of the settlement.
For domainers, Halvarez bid in 50,000 auctions causing domainers not only overpaid for domains for years, but causing many to miss out on many domains as Brady’s bidding inflated prices.
A true nightmare for all parties.
2. ICANN. The year started off for ICANN on a bad note when they acknowledged they lost $4.6 Million in the stock market, then they got called out by Congress on their finances, Of course since all their funding comes from domain registrations and renewals, that’s our money they lost.
Their plan to release an unlimited number of new extensions got pushed back at least a year, they gave standing to a committee which then proposed the Uniform Rapid Suspension rules, which ICANN promptly stated they wanted to apply to existing TLD’s, including .com’s, (fortunately which is now out of the current Guidebook) saw its officers taking high compensation while most people are still trying to make a living, failed to take any action on the warehousing of domains by registrars, although they promised to do so.
3. The Alphabet trio: WIPO, UDRP, NAF
It was quite a year for WIPO, UDRP and the National Arbitration Forum (NAF)
WIPO pushed for changes to give additional rights to trademark holders, and then announced plans to rollout a quick, cheap version of their services starting next year.
The National Arbitration Forum which decides many of the UDRP cases, had its own problems.
One of the NAF most active arbitrators was sued for judicial misconduct and the organization itself was sued by the Attorney General of Minnesota and subsequently, within a week, agreed to never heard another case dealing with a consumer arbitration matter.
Yet they still get to decide domain disputes.
How lucky for us.
Then there were the decisions.
To some it up in one word;
Inconsistent
A Non-resolving page is bad faith; domain awarded without a trademark; domains must have a trademark to be transferred; generic domains ordered transferred, the list goes on and on, but more than ever, anytime you go in front of one of these panels its a crap shoot.
4. The .cm Registry and the Namejet .cm Auctions.
The .rollout of the .cm domains were attacked right away by Techcrunch, the .cm registry’s landrush was postponed time and time and time, again for technical issues, then there were the NameJet.com auctions of the .cm domains that had more than one back order.
Winning bidders pulled out of these auctions en mass, causing prices to fall quicker than the shares of AIG. Nowhere was this demonstrated better than in the case of sex.cm which initially sold for over $50K, and went all the way back into a auction with a starting price of $350.
Congrats to all the winners.
Congratulations to the “winners” — they certainly deserve to be recognized for their “achievements” of the past year.
oh yes congrats…the jigs up.
http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/snap-classaction.pdf
Perhaps a consolation prize to the web 2.0 hype machine (techcunch) that has seen some of its media darlings (facebook, zynga) get caught scamming consumers with fake and misleading ads that have now turned into a class action lawuit. The novely of companies built to actually make money in a legit fashion, not built on hype and funny buzwords.. seems to be a topic they overlook quite often…
George summed up my thoughts exactly.
Hi Mike,
My blog’s reach is not as wide as yours, (I should write more often) but I hope you’ll allow me to bring attention to my Nov 19 blog article requesting domainers’ submissions on their ideas of the “worst scandals” for the domain industry – of any time, not just this year.
I’m not ready yet to reveal the “results”, but based on the submissions already sent me, this report will provide a very unusual but comprehensive list of issues going back at least a decade. I’ll try to discuss how we as an industry interpreted these “alleged and real scandals”, how the companies involved handled the allegations, any criminal/civil actions taken, the results, etc.
I’m getting emails from domainers submitting what they feel are some of the “Domain Scandals of the Decade”, are listing questionable practices that we all probably forgot, but will quickly remember. It’s opened my eyes.
I think the article will be surprising, especially dealing with some domain-related unethical and potentially criminal behavior that I uncovered that have NOT BEEN DISCUSSED in our industry, – YET. They involve some of the biggest names, and show possibly outright contempt for ethical behavior, rule of law, and taking advantage of an unregulated or “overlooked” goldmine of money-making opportunities for those companies who have “figured out the system”.
If any of your readers want to contribute to the “Domain Scandals” article I’m writing, they can reach me at “Successclick *at* gmaildotcom” or just post their comments on my blog.
I think your “Turkeys of The Year” Awards is an excellent ongoing article at the end of each year, so I hope to see your list expand. In that respect, if you want to contact me directly to discuss some of the items I’ve been sent, I’d be glad to work with you for your Turkeys of The Year” Awards updates.
Thanks for your consideration, Em-Bee
Stephen
I look forward to your post on the biggest Scandals.
You right we all tend to forget over time, even what we considered at the time “big deals”.
Just to put this post together I had to go back through all my posts since last November.
Best of luck with it