Network Solutions takes down site against Islam

US based domain name registrar Network Solutions has reportedly taken down the promotional website of a 15-minute film that is said to be derogatory to the religion of Islam.

The domain name and website, which belong to a Dutch lawyer and filmmaker Geert Wilders, have been taken offline after Network Solutions reportedly received complaints about the offensive nature of the film.

The film is said to have described the Islam as “the enemy of freedom” – a statement that is worrying Dutch officials about possible violence, similar to the results of the controversy surrounding Dutch newspapers’ publication of an illustrated depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

I wonder if this move will be able to stop Mr. Wilders from releasing the full version of his movie as he says he will do within a month’s time. If no other domain registrar or web hosting company allows him to do it, he can always put it up on Youtube and other similar sites that have enormous visitors every day.

Supposing that Mr. Wolders does this and even if subpoenas were served to Google for taking down the objectionable videos from its subsidiary Youtube, millions would have already seen the video and that serves the purpose of Mr. Wilders. Not to mention the enormous amount of publicity this issue has already garnered.

Ramp.com sold on eBay for 25k USD!

Premium domain name www.ramp.com sold for US $25,211 tonight!

The domain, Ramp.com was owned by Ramp Corporation which is being liquidated in bankruptcy (U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York case 05-140006).

The transaction will be completed through the debtor’s law firm Snow Becker Krauss in New York (www.sbklaw.com).  The law firm will hold the payment in escrow until a bill of sale is executed and the domain is transferred to the new owner (eBay ID – discountramps).

If you ask me, the sale was a hurried one and the domain could have fetched much more, at least One Million USD, had the law firm made it a longer auction and publicized it a little as well. What do you say, guys?

Casino.de sold for half million dollars!

Another BIG sale of a premium domain, casino.de for half a million dollars! What more could the seller ask for when .de domains are available for as low as $15 per year? He must be today one real happy domainer

The buyer intends to use Casino.de to guide online gamblers through the options available in online casino and poker room choices by offering independent and thoroughly researched information about gambling on the Internet.

The past few days have seen some impressive domain sales in the aftermarket including that of datarecovery.com for 1.7 million USD and fund.com for 10 million USD!

Domaining isbecoming more and more popular as each day passes by!

Fund.com sold for cool $10m!

A New York, USA, based company, Fund.com Inc. (earlier known as Meade Technologies Inc.), has bought the rights to the domain fund.com for reportedly almost $10 million in an all-cash transaction! Another world record of sorts!

The deal was brokered by Clek Media Inc. and the sale of the domain FUND.COM was actually for US$9,999,950.

It is yet another big dollars domain acquisition to make people and take notice of the excitement that surrounds domaining and the profit that the domain has fetched its original registrant.

Such transactions, though few and far between, keep the hopes of us small-time domainers alive! Though I do not have any single word .com premium domain, yet I have a few that my domaining sense tells me will be worth a couple of hundred thousands down the line and till then, I am holding them

150 million+ Domain Names registered

Verisign has issued its latest report on domain name registration confirming that that number of registered domain names crossed 150 million in 2007. The report further states that during the fourth quarter of 2007, our good old Internet grew by nearly 33 million domain names!

Wow…. domain names are sure getting in vogue with more and more people viewing it as a profitable business

I can tell you by experience that registering domain names could become an addiction with no certified remedy if not checked in time!

But at the same time, the major share of the pie is taken by the .com domains and .net domains, which crossed the number of 80.40 million domain name registrations at the end of 2007, representing a 24% increase year over year.

New .com and .net domain name registrations were seen as growing at an average of 2.5 million per month in the fourth quarter 2007 for a total of 7.5 million new registrations.

Whatever anyone says, it is the domain registrar community that is benefiting the most from this tide in domain name registrations!

Domain name disputes on the rise!

Domain disputes are on the rise! What else could you expect when the domaining industry is such a huge money spinner while being a low investment business!

Unscrupulous yet highly intelligent cybersquatters pick up premiuim domains related to any event or celebrities/businesses as soon as they get a whiff of something new and exciting comping up. 

Sample this:

The National Arbitration Forum, an international provider of alternative dispute resolution services, administered a total of 1,805 domain name disputes in 2007, up from 1,658 disputes in 2006. The National Arbitration Forum has been approved as a domain name dispute resolution program provider by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 1999.

The National Arbitration Forum reports at the end of 2007:

• UDRP domain names with common extensions like .com, .net, and .org accounted for 1,775 filings.
• usDRP domain names with the .us extension accounted for 30 filings.
• Of the 1,805 filings, Panelists heard 1,391 cases; parties worked together to settle many of the rest.
• There were 9,916 total domain name complaints filed since 1999.
• Of those filings, Panelists heard 8,006 cases; the parties settled many of the rest.

- PR-USA

I wish the practice of cybesquatting just disappears overnight. What a better place this world would be!

Hmmm… wishful thinking!

Datarecovery.com sells for $1.7 million!

Now, I never thought that data recovery could be sooooooooooooo hot as a topic or a business! Did you?

According to WikiPedia, Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media formats such as hard disk drive, storage tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID, and other electronics. This can be due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system.

Now, a data recovery related website has been sold for a cool USD 17,000,000! Now, who would have thought of that? But apparently, that is the case!

This makes the deal one of the top 10 most expensive domain name acquisitions history.

The buyer, ESS Data Recovery Inc., is a US based company and seems to take its data recovery business really seriously! Kudos!

However, I’d like to see them develop the domain and optimize it for search engines as it has the potential to make it to the Top 10 search results organically.

What do you say, guys?

WikiLeaks gets a new lease at life!

At least, better sense and justice prevail!

A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S.  hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade’s site from the internet.

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet.

The judge signed an order last week that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar.

- Wired.com

For those who came in late, WikiLeaks is a true whistle-blower website that published thousands of leaked documents. The web site was ordered to be taken offline in America after a suit was filed against the site posting allegedly stolen documents containing individuals’ banking records. The documents suggested that a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank was helping customers practice money laundering and tax evasion across the globe.

Now, the banks in Switzerland must be getting the jitters as the pressure on them to be more transparent will be increased!