> behaviour - and it makes me sad. Whoever you are, if you're reading > this... you're probably smiling and sneering. I don't really care. > I don't expect to appeal to your better nature. But what you're
Rupert, for what it's worth, I doubt these are ordinary people doing this but more spammer types. Domain squatting has been going on since domains existed and it's a totally disgusting something for (almost) nothing trailer-trash activity. Fortunately domain names are cheap, they used to be $50 a year each and you had to have a server resolving DNS to a site of some kind. Nowadays, my advice to anyone who cares about creating an identity - and protecting it by establishing first use by the way - is to take your base name and register all three main ones. Except for .tv, the rest are pretty lame, like .info, .biz, .us but if you have a prime name, for $6-8/year each, go for all. We are experienceing a high level of Chinese slamming now for some of our customers' names. Slamming is even worse than squatting: they take an obvious western trademark like "Cadillac" and the registrar themselves will send you a polite email claiming a customer approached them buy they wanted to give you first choice. While this is just beginning for .cn and .com.cn, it has happened before with European and even .com names. The whole thing sucks, and it's good that you posted it here to help raise awareness of the issue. It goes beyond not getting the URL you wanted, it also puts a foot in the door for stealing your actual concept or brand. /r
