Domainers are not Cybersquatters - April 11th, 2007 by Jay Westerdal

Darth VaderThere are several types of professional domain investors and not all are created equal. Cybersquatters is a term for domain owners that knowingly find a victim and then register the victim’s name or variations of their name. In the 90’s, Cybersquatters were commonly registering the actual names of corporations. Back in the hay-day, “Laws didn’t apply to the Internet”, or that is what one squatter told me. We have all grow up since then and many court cases have established the rights of trademark holders on the Internet.

Fast forward to today and we find that cybersquatters can’t register a victims name anymore because generally that name was resolved a few years ago. But there are hundreds of misspellings on brands and those corporations have failed to protect these domains. These misspellings get traffic and generate real revenue, making them easy targets, so it is important that Domainers not fall for the dark-side of Domaining. Once a Domainer crosses over to being a Cybersquatter, they honestly can’t be called a Domainer anymore. I have met a few born-again Domainers, they gave up squatting once they found success on generic targeted traffic. Once they crossed back over and dumped their TMs, they felt a lot better. Why worry that the next nock on your door will be a process server giving you notice that you are being sued for a few million. Even if you sniff a TM name for 3 days and hide your identity behind a proxy, you can be found guilty. John Does can be served just like everyone else, and once served they have the power to reveal who is behind that proxy.

Cybersquatters have tried to rebranded themselves as ‘domainers’, but they certainly aren’t. Domainer is a term that is reserved for Domain Professionals that make their living off of quality traffic and good domains.

Can a Domainer own a misspelling? Sure! Misspellings of generic things are fine. New Yorrk.com is a good example of a typo on a place. Places can’t be copyrighted. Miicrosoft.com is an example of a trademark violation which is confusingly similar to the trademark of Microsoft. The term “hacker” got distorted and I don’t want to see that same thing happen to “domainers”. The term “hacker” was originally intended as a description of a skilled computer programmer, but was later redefined to as person with computer skills that were used for bad purposes.

As the futuristic novel 1984 by George Orwell taught us, if you re-define words on your opponent you can defeat them. Be vigilant against people that try and distort “Domainers” as an evil term.Parlamentos <> Mis Dominios <> Jordi <> Herbodietética en Tarragona