I whole-heartedly agree with your reprimand of the subject practices and the sentiments of your post in general. I would point out though, that the threat you have identified was created by domain name businesses – not domain name investors. No investor would buy those names.

The distinction between a domain name business and a domain name investor was faint a decade ago when a rare few domain names were even selling. The few thousand (or hundred) dollars that were passed around then insured that almost everyone selling a domain name was an individual owner.

Today domain names are often little more than inventory that’s valuated on the basis of a formula – a formula that uses as its primary consideration the amount of advertising revenue generated from one-way relationships with mega digital media companies such as Google and Yahoo.

As much as the infringement issues you have addressed, formula treatment of domain names has created a threat for domain name investors.

It’s way past time to stop mixing the apples with the oranges. For the domain name investor, there is no benefit in being clumped together with domain name businesses. Investors clearly do not share the same goals and objectives as domain name businesses and there should be a wider understanding of that fact.

As an example, look at the ICA. While it appears to be a fantastic idea for domain name businesses, I believe it serves as a poor representative for domain name investors. By their own account the ICA is “a business organization made up of individuals and companies that own, buy, sell, resell, host and manage Internet traffic which comes from search engines, domain names and Internet links.”

Similarly, their stated issues make clear the organization is focused only on domain name businesses (which makes sense, since their middle name is commerce).

Issues like Accelerated Depreciation and Elimination of Click Fraud don’t interest pure play domain name investors. Specifically:

- Depreciation is usually only calculated on assets used for professional or business purposes and pure play investors don’t use it.

- Click fraud is actually a good selling point for convincing a company to go ahead and buy good domain names instead of paying click businesses for links on them.

- Direct navigation pay-per-click/action schemes always represent the least valuable exploitation of a good domain name. So, of course, any trend to use the profits from such schemes as the basis for a domain name’s value would be harmful to domain name investors.

Just to be clear; I don’t mean to pick on the ICA – I’m sure the have a great organization. But so does the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Internet Local Advertising & Commerce Association (ILAC). In fact, many of their core objectives appear to be similar to those of the ICA.

My point is only this: none of these organizations have investors as a priority constituency, and therefore, domain name investors’ time and resources may be better spent on finding or creating an organization that considers domain name investors to be a top priority constituency.

But that’s just me.

Thanks for the kind words.

I think 2008 will be a pivotal year in regards to the trademark issue.

I hope we can get the ICA or someone else to step up and right the ship before congress steps into do it.

There are not 10 Honda dealers placing bids on that domain.

The other names cannot be used legitimately and when you see all of them on one domain registrars drop list, Houston we have a problem.

Thanks

Please keep the spotlight on this issue