The Darker Side Of Domaining

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Whenever a celebrity dies the media has a “feeding frenzy” and sales of anything related to the departed go through the roof. It happened with Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Patrick Swayze .. the list goes on and on.

When Amy Winehouse died a few weeks ago the same kind of thing happened. Every single media outlet, both online and print was covering the story. As things calmed down a bit the family of the artist decided to setup a foundation to help young people deal with substance abuse.

At this point things turn quite sour, as one little “charmer” (and possibly others) decided to register the obvious domain names.

The Irish Times covered the story yesterday, while the Sun managed to trackdown one of the squatters.

I’ve defended domain investors in the past and I will in the future, but this guy’s antics are unethical and morally reprehensible. His actions have a negative impact on the entire domain name industry. (Insert expletives here)

(Hat tip to Kevin from DomainIncite for spotting the Sun article)

Related articles

• ArtsBeat Blog: Amy Winehouse’s Father Returns Donations for Planned Foundation (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Amy Winehouse’s Father Turns Away Charity Donations (rollingstone.com)
• Amy Winehouse’s Father Cancels Planned Foundation Because of Cyber Squatters [Charities] (gawker.com)
• Amy Winehouse foundation: Mitch Winehouse forced to return donations (guardian.co.uk)

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