One of the unclassified emails from the Hillary Clinton fiasco shows she or someone at the Department of State had an interest in a domain name around the term “World We Want” but seemed to pass on buying the bang on domain which was priced at the time a whopping $1,195 at HugeDomains.com.
The Memo goes on to chat about alternative domain names 3 of which are registered as we discuss below
Anyway its an interesting look into your tax dollars at work.
The email is from the US Department of State and dated January 5, 2012 during the time that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State
The memo was sent by a Robert B. Barnett from a Sarah F. Teich. It is not clear from the unclassified email if Sectary Clinton was interested in the domain and had staff members research it for her, or what the connection of the domain names had to the Department of State.
Here is email:
“”Domain Names: “The World We Want”
Per your request, I have investigated the availability of internet domain names derived from or related to the phrase “The World We Want.”
By way of summary, the most desirable names related to this phrase are already owned. However, at least one owner is plainly willing to sell and others appear to be potentially receptive to purchase offers. One of the most desirable domain names would be Worldwewant.com
It was purchased on September 21, 2011 for only one year, and is owned by a company based in Denver, Colorado called Huge Domains.
I looked up the website for Huge Domains and learned that it is a company whose entire business model revolves around purchasing domain names en masse and then reselling them to others at premium prices.
By searching the company’s website, I found that they have the domain name worldwewant.com listed as being for sale for a purchase price of $1,195.”
“They do not appear to own any other closely related domain names. It appears that the domain name could be purchased simply by providing contact information and a credit card.
The other most desirable domain name would likely be TheWorldWeWant.com which is owned by a Canadian company called David Lavin Agency, Ltd., and its registration is currently set to expire on April 29, 2012. However, this registration was originally purchased on April 29, 2003, and I would infer that after holding the domain name for nine years, the owner is not likely to let it expire this coming April.
Based on its website, the Lavin Agency is a speakers bureau, which provides and manages speakers on a range of topics.
The domain name appears to be related to one of Lavin’s speakers—a Canadian woman named Jennifer Corriero, who focuses on topics related to the powerof technology in the modern world. One of her speeches is titled: “Taking Our Place In the World: Young People, Technology and the World We Want.” The domain name itself is not being actively used by either Lavin or Corriero, so it appears they are holding on to it because the phrase is used in one of her standard speeches. Because the owner of this domain name is known, we could contact them and offer to purchase the registration. In all likelihood, Lavin and Corriero would seek assurances that the domain would not be used to compete with or disparage Corriero. My guess is that we would not succeed in reaching a deal unless we disclosed the identity of the domain name’s owner and purpose—or at least disclosed enough information to provide the current owner with whatever assurances it wants. I think it is reasonable to assume that this would be
the most expensive name to purchase, in light of the owner’s substantive use of the phrase and long-standing ownership of the domain name.”“Two more domain names are owned by a person in France named Marc Bretonniere. Mr. Bretonniere appears to be an actor who has appeared in a number of unremarkable French television shows and movies. (He also appears to specialize in doing voice-overs for American movies that are re-recorded in French.):
He owns the-world-we-want.com and theworldwewant.net
He is not actively using either of these domain names.
It is not clear whether the blog / domain name is owned by Mr. Karoff himself, TPI, or fans / advocates of his work. The writing on the blog does not appear to be by Mr. Karoff, but rather is commentary and support for his writing. It is hard to predict how receptive the owner of the domain name would be to an offer to purchase. While the blog is now used extremely infrequently, the fact that it is still used and is used to promote sales of the book lead me to believe that we would have a difficult time persuading the owner to sell.
The following domain names appear to be available for purchase: worldwewant.net; worldwewant.biz; worldwewant.us; theworldwewant.us; theworldwewant.info; theworldwewant.co; theworldwewant.biz; world-we-want.com; the-world-we-want.net; the-world-we-want.org; the-world-we-want.us
Also available are all variations of world-we-want (i.e., dot com, dot net, dot co, dot org and dot biz). None of these are likely to be
the most ideal candidate for a primary website, but we could purchase any one or more of them”We checked out the domain names mentioned in the memo:
The domain TheWorldWeWant.co was registered under privacy in 2014 and now forwards to TheWorldWeWant.today however the domains seem to be owned by a Gary Drews (according to his Linkedin Page) along with THEWORLDWEWANT.INFO which is going to a Godaddy placeholder.
The domain WorldWeWant.com is still owned by HugeDomains.com but now priced at $2,495.Clinton
The domain TheWorldWeWant.com is still owned by the Lavin Agency.
The other alternative domain names suggested in the email are still unregistered:
worldwewant.net
worldwewant.biz
worldwewant.us
theworldwewant.us
theworldwewant.biz
world-we-want.com
the-world-we-want.net
the-world-we-want.org
the-world-we-want.us
I have no idea how much time was spent on researching the issue, but as we said above the .Co domain TheWorldWeWant.co that now forwards to the new gTLD theworldwewant.today which although under privacy seems to be owned by “Gary Drews, Founder, CEO Mission-Driven Advising, Non-profit Strategy Consulting, according to Mr. Drews Linkedin page.
Mr Drews was the Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director (Interim) of “Colorado’s Health Insurance Marketplace/Exchange initiated through the Affordable Care Act a/k/a Obama Care.
According to the Linkedin Page Mr. Drews “”Responsibilities include leading the organization through a period of significant management change and market disruption, aligning governance and strategy, building organizational and technology capacity, strengthening constituent partnerships, and navigating political headwinds.”
Here is some more information on Mr. Drews.
Hum
In any event I don’t see how this project was for the benefit of the US taxpayers, so have no idea of why the taxpayers paid for the research or why the Department of State was involved.
Of course Mr. Drews could have come up with this concept, “The World We Want” without the help or assistance of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of Department of State, but it’s interesting.
What’s amusing about this.
The marketing consultant probably charged about $50 K for this “report”.
The Clinton Media campaign paid a marketing agency in Portland to come up with a Hillary’s Playlist (her favorite songs, and to be played at rallies) — the price for this $90 K (as you can probably guess, the playlist comprises Rock n Roll classics, Katy Perry and songs that resonate with her voter base) 90 K
Big Politics is Big Business — bigger than Google, Apple, Exxon combined.
“By searching the company’s website, I found that they have the domain name worldwewant.com listed as being for sale for a purchase price of $1,195.”
“The domain WorldWeWant.com is still owned by HugeDomains.com but now priced at $2,495.”
I guess if you keep visiting the landing page, they raise the price.
Pretty odd. After that fairly thorough research, they passed on the .com domain they wanted for just $1195. This suggests none of the people involved in the review of options understood much about domain pricing. In the past, quite a few campaigns and candidates have gone the .us route which was available at reg fee.
Funny too the owner profiles they generated:
“Mr. Bretonniere appears to be an actor who has appeared in a number of unremarkable French television shows and movies. (He also appears to specialize in doing voice-overs for American movies that are re-recorded in French.)”
Interesting to see that in-house approach – which lines of research they pursued, which domains, which course of action they lightly recommended. As a buyer’s broker I often find myself writing such summaries for clients. So, reading that memorandum, it was hard not to “interrupt” the writer in my head with what I’d have said in her place.
HillaryCl.it is available …
Huge Domains also have hillaryrclinton.com for sale.
The fact that they actually considered using a .biz or .us instead of getting a new gtld (which would have been on the horizon) doesn’t say much for the new gtld program.
Reading the report you should get an idea, that they don’t really know what they are doing. I doubt GTLD’s are even on their radar.
“I looked up the website for Huge Domains and learned that it is a company whose entire business model revolves around purchasing domain names en masse and then reselling them to others at premium prices.”
OMG, that could be a whole industry, just buying and selling domains…… who would have thought?!
If they did know what they were doing they could have used a dot democrat that’s in GA.
I checked, its available from name.com :
Your domain is available! : hillaryisawarmonger.democrat – $24.99 – Renewal: $24.99
Remember, guys, we’re talking about correspondence from January 2012. The nTLDs were barely a glimmer in ICANN’s eye back then. At the time, few end users looking to use a domain would want to wait 2-4 years to register one. It’s no surprise that nTLDs weren’t considered.