domain harvesting

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by John.Karakatsanis

I guess I must have owned about 10 domains at some stage in my life; .co.nz .net .com all for either business or pleasure. Currently I have two, maybe three -clarification later- domains. This article is about people who buy domains with the sole purpose of profiting from them by selling them to owners of similar domains, or by taking advantage of a technical error to renew someone else’s domain, then sell it back to them. Both of these ‘practises’ have happened to me.

I used to have a lovely domain name, mahita.net, it is based on the Maori word for sage, teacher. While I was running this domain for my teaching business, I moved flats. At the same time, I moved my cable service with me, and here began the problems. For a domain you have to provide an email address which is NOT the same as the domain, and NOT one of the many free services; hotmail, yahoo, etc.

I used my ISP-provided email address, and when I moved, that changed to my company version. All the reminders I got went ignored, the ISP didn’t bounce the mails back, and so my domain renewal lapsed. I realised this when the website changed and my mails dried up. Logical. To remind me of my lack of attention, I received an email from the new owner telling me I could buy back the domain at a very special price of 10 times what it would have cost me had I renewed it.

This, I realised, is very common practise. Still it kind of stuck in my throat somewhat. I refused to pay, I didn’t even dignify the offer with a reply. The domain continued as a generic advertising site, just a page with a list of ads, possibly generating revenue for the owner. I purchased a new domain with my company name.

Then recently, I bought this domain here, and I noticed that the same mistake cannot happen again, there are more checks, I can supply more than one email address for notifications. Very good. Suddenly two weeks ago I received a mail from the owner of the .com version of this site. He was explaining how it would be in my interest to own the ‘family’ of names to reduce the risk of losing business when someone accidentally types in .com instead of .net. You’ve guessed it, for $100 I could buy the .com domain which the day before would have cost $9.75.

Not such a problem for me, I don’t want to make fortunes from this site, he can keep it. It got me to thinking about the first domain I mentioned. I checked and it was about to expire. What the hell, I put it on back-order, meaning if it becomes free, my hosting company would try and secure it for me. And they did, I have it back, for $9.75 instead of the $100 I was being asked for.

The practise is legal, as long as they do not infringe any copyrights associated with a product, brand, etc. Is it ethical? Hanging around like buzzards waiting to snap up domains with the sole purpose of selling them on for 1000% profit. I learnt my lesson, be vigilant. And I am happy to have retrieved my original domain back, now I will keep it and find some way of utilising it.

Tags: business, domain, email address, isp, mahita, Maori, profit