Popesquatting
I had written earlier
about Rogers Cadenhead who thought about possible names for the next Pope and registered six of them; one of which was BenedictXVI.com. Cadenhead is being very cool about this, he is very familiar with the web and wanted to get the name before any Popesquatters -- he is trying to contact the Vatican to see what he should do about it and in the meantime, has redirected the URL to his favorite Charity.
Other people are not so altruistic
as reported by Netcraft:
Papal Domains for Auction on eBay, Sedo
It didn't take long for popesquatters to try and cash in on domains related to the new pope, Benedict XVI. The PopeBenedictXVI.com domain is for sale on eBay, with a starting price listed at $100,000, and a "buy it now" price of just $250,000. The domain owner is Total Interest Ltd., a Bahamas-based domain company that grabbed the name in February.
Other variations on the papal name taken by former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger are being auctioned at Sedo, where popesquatters Chris and Linda Dunaway of Gatlinsburg, Tenn. are offering an entire portfolio of Benedictine domains, including PopeBenedict.net, PopeBenedict.org, PopeBenedictXVI.net, Pope Benedict.info and PopeBenedictXVI.info.
At the other end of the spectrum, blogger Rogers Cadenhead says he has no plans to sell BenedictXVI.com, which he purchased along with five other potential papal domains. Cadenhead, who has written several books on Java development, is being profiled in numerous media stories today, including items on The Washington Post, Wired and blogs Boing Boing and Scripting.com.
"I never really registered it with the intent of making money, and I think to crassly auction it would be a sin of some kind," Cadenhead told The Post. "Whatever decision I make will be guided by the desire not to make 1.5 billion people mad at me .... including my grandmother."
eBay has -- to their wonderful credit -- suspended the auction. Some things are such simple ethics problems that there is no question about the correct answer. Sell-Domain (Sedo) is still up and running...
Posted by DaveH at May 2, 2005 10:05 PM