Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Aged “just” 74 years and six months, senator Jay “John” Rockefeller is still keeping America safe from its natural enemies.

In a letter published at the Talk Radio News Service, senator Rockefeller made this statement:

“I’m concerned that this expansion of generic, top-level domains, if it proceeds as planned, will have adverse consequences for the millions of American consumers, companies, and non-profit organizations that use the Internet on a daily basis,” Rockefeller wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary John Bryson and NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling.

Senator Rockefeller is unique, in the sense that he’s the only Democrat in a long family line of Republicans, including his great-grandfather, self-made oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller.

And that’s where the party ends, I’m afraid.

There is no way to stop progress and the Internet will have to expand, despite the narrow minds of some. New gTLDs will be introduced and new methods of accessing and sharing data and information. The river cannot reverse its flow, as they say.

With the involvement of aged politicians, being lobbied by corporate conglomerates to implement satanic instruments, such as the SOPA bill, we should realize that having our grandfathers run the show isn’t a smart idea after all.

Jamie over at DotWeekly posted an interesting story about a domain he sold and which was let to expire and which he re-registered.

My story is similar, yet different – so Jamie’s post brought back some interesting domaining memories.

Eleven years ago I registered a two-word .com domain that I thought it was cool and unique.

In retrospect, I’m glad someone else thought of it as appealing and bought it five months later; to this date, the domain sits undeveloped and there are 125k results in Google for the terms, in quotes.

My sale was significant for those early days – mid four figures. The buyer was from the UK and we used GoDaddy.com and our good faith for the sale.

Here’s an email from GoDaddy during that exchange:

We are aware that you have purchased a transfer of ownership for your domain name.  As of today, we have not received your transfer documents.  Please complete the agreement with notarized signatures from the current registrant and the new registrant and send the original with copies of your photo ID’s to:

Go Daddy Software
Domain Services
5320 E Dynamite Blvd
Cave Creek, AZ 85331

Once the documents are received your ownership transfer will be processed immediately.

Thank you,
Go Daddy Software
Domain Services

The sale went smoothly and the domain ended up with the new owner.

In early 2004, I so happened to look up the domain and I was shocked to see that it did not exist anymore. So I emailed the buyer informing them of this.

As it happens more often than you think, the buyer had forgotten to renew the domain and it had lapsed and vanished from the face of the Internet

He thanked me and re-registered it; to this date the domain is not developed in the general sense, although there is contact information on it.

Moral of the story: sometimes it’s good to simply alert the buyer that their investment is in danger and give them the opportunity to reclaim it.

The ‘SOPA’ buzzword will remain alive through the holiday season and beyond, especially since the Congress has yet to decide on the fate of the bill by the same name.

The “Stop Online Piracy Act” gives controversial authority to the US Government to take down any web site and content it deems infringing or unlawful, without a due process.

It seems that SOPA.com is owned by a great gentleman of a domainer that I had the pleasure to engage in business with and whom I commended in a prior post.

Vincent owns SOPA.com and has plans to build it into an informational web site and to give visitors the opportunity to raise their concerns about the SOPA bill and its ramifications for the Internet and the domain industry.

With large corporations like GoDaddy flip-flopping on the SOPA issue, there seems to be a need now, more than ever, for a centralized point of defense against unconstitutional legislation – and SOPA.com is the right URL to do it from.

For the third year in a row I will commend Sedo’s performance in the domain aftermarket.

Sedo has been absolutely stellar for me in 2011, resulting in a record number of sales.

While the PPC performance has dropped, it’s the same across the board with other PPC companies, thanks to Google’s “tweaking” of the rules. Got to love monopolies!

Even today, in the middle of the Holidays, Sedo employees worked to complete transactions, answered my inquiries and ensured my payment is released.

Many thanks to Lisa Allen, you’re the best.

Thank you Sedo, and many wishes for a wonderful and successful 2012!

Using TDNAM can lead to some great acquisitions on the cheap; while their auction interface lacks the live updates like that of NameJet, there are still some great deals to be found.

Unfortunately, I had a taste of the pitfalls of the GoDaddy TDNAM system recently, when an auction I won ended up with the renewal of the domain by its owner, four days later.

While GoDaddy offers a full refund, it’s not yet clear if it’s in the form of GoDaddy credit or a return of the funds to the originating source. The funds are returned within six days, according to GoDaddy.

When the money at stake is in the thousands of dollars, this can be really problematic.

In essence, I would not recommend spending thousands of dollars on a TDNAM auction and risking the clawback of the domain within the seven day timeframe that follows the end of the auction.