RE: [ga] Help with research into domain reregistration - submit examples of unrelated reregistrations

["Ben Edelman" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>]

Thanks to all who have already submitted specific domains believed to fit
the bill here.  They're very helpful.  Thanks also for the specific
suggestions on methodology -- many of which I'm already using, and others of
which I'll certainly investigate.


Dan Steinberg wrote:

> ummmmm Ben, could you give us a defintion of "content unrelated to the
> most obvious implications of their respective domain name," please?

You're right to flag this as a problem.  As I think about it, it's a problem
in two different ways.  First, that I as yet have no compelling & concise
way to describe the behavior at issue.  But I do know what I'm after -- a
full list of folks doing things like re-registering bicyclebills.com after
Bill lets it expire.  Certainly the final wording of my research on this
will be somewhat more careful and, I hope, also somewhat more precise.

Second, it's a problem in that it can be hard to know in any particular
instance whether any given domain is in fact an instance of the behavior at
issue.  Maybe bicyclebills.com is a perfectly sensible domain for "Tina's
Free Live Cam," and maybe Tina registered the domain "first" (before anyone
else) such that anyone reaching the site either 1) is typing URLs randomly,
or 2) actually wants Tina's cam and knows it's available at that address.
But I doubt it, in this instance, and I doubt it in general too.  My work --
my automated systems, and the reporting of my results -- will seek to
document what's going on in a way that makes it clear when folks are indeed
registering scores of expired domain names for the purpose of, in general,
displaying advertising, sexualy explicit content, other links, etc.

To be clear, the "problem" here (if you in fact think it's a problem) is
that when, for example, bicyclebills.com expires and is subsequently
reregistered by Tina, a broad class of folks will continue to go to the
domain expecting to buy a bicycle rather than be shown pornography.  To the
extent that links, search engines, letterhead, advertising, etc. are slow to
change (as we all know they are), this can be a serious problem -- even if
it's on some level a problem that the registrant caused himself by failing
to properly renew the domain.



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