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?

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

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!

Cybersquatters aim US presidential candidates!

The bad guys are at it once again! Unscrupulous cybersquatters are taking up domain names that have the name of one or the other from amongst the US presidential candidates!!!

They have registered some really interesting names. Check it out…

The lead up to the US presidential election has seen a dramatic surge in cyber-squatters keen to cash in on the public’s thirst for information.

Domain name management service NetNames said that over 1,900 domain names related to the presidential candidates have been registered as online speculators try to cash in on the heightened media coverage.

Hillary Clinton is the most popular candidate online with 1,080 domain names registered in her name including sites such as Clintonsucks.org.

- VNU Net