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domains iAF.com left to expire closes at $43,000

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equity78

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iAF.com was left to expire at Uniregistry and closed at $43,000 at GoDaddy auctions. The domain name was owned by Mrs Jello LLC, the company founded by the late Igal Lichtman. It’s mind boggling to me that he has been gone for 8 years already. iAF.com was registered in 1995 and was dropped one time […]

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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
is it me or is 43k really low for this name, even just for investors. Those letters are money.
 
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I am kind of disgusted with this, allowing a well known investor's assets to expire and a registrar profiting off this name, and others with obvious value that have been allowed to expire.

Has anyone at GoDaddy or Uniregistry reached out to his family to try and help them out, in at least understanding the value of domains like this or help with brokering them? This type of thing should not be allowed to happen.

The system, as is, is a massive conflict of interest.

Brad
 
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A main revenue stream for Godaddy is profiting off of the dead and their heirs - the many deceased who failed to transfer their login credentials to family/kin. Godaddy is evil - regardless to what Joe and Nick say.
 
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A main revenue stream for Godaddy is profiting off of the dead and their heirs - the many deceased who failed to transfer their login credentials to family/kin. Godaddy is evil - regardless to what Joe and Nick say.
I would love to see these names go back to the Registry and auctioned by the Registry for charity if the heirs can't be located.
 
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I would love to see these names go back to the Registry and auctioned by the Registry for charity if the heirs can't be located.

I have a fundamental issue with "pre-release" auctions on expired domains. None of these registrars did anything to deserve to profit off these these domains.

They did not have the idea. They did not register the domain. They did not take the financial risk.

They have just inserted themselves as the middle men in the ICANN designed expiration process, which was not intended.

At least with pending deletes they are released onto the free market. If a party catches them and wants to auction them, that is different.

Unless there is more to this story, I have an issue with this.

The fact that registrars can make a massive profit off this is a potential conflict when it comes to doing the right thing.

Brad
 
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i fully agree with @bmugford would be interesting to know if the family was contacted.
 
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To add to the list just seen 666777.com is back up at their expired auctions, this time last year the name went for 65k. Including IAF.com yesterday there are two more lll.coms, 6 4n.coms and one really good 5n.com that dropped there in about the last month and a half. They seem to be making a killing off people that are no longer around.
 
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@domainscp any information on the owner of 666777.com ?
 
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@noneisnone none that I have, I just was browsing through numerics today and seen it and remembered it from last year, looks like it expired on the 26th of last month
 
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@Joe Styler @Paul Nicks

Has anyone reached out to Igal's family? Domains of this value should not be allowed to expire.

It makes me wonder about my own assets. What would happen if something happens to me?
Is GoDaddy going to contact my family and work with them?

I am sure you can see the massive potential conflict of interest as registrars make far more off your domains expiring than they do with you renewing them.

Brad
 
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I have a fundamental issue with "pre-release" auctions on expired domains. None of these registrars did anything to deserve to profit off these these domains.

They did not have the idea. They did not register the domain. They did not take the financial risk.

They have just inserted themselves as the middle men in the ICANN designed expiration process, which was not intended.

At least with pending deletes they are released onto the free market. If a party catches them and wants to auction them, that is different.

Unless there is more to this story, I have an issue with this.

The fact that registrars can make a massive profit off this is a conflict when it comes to doing the right thing.

Brad
I have often thought this same thing and completely agree.

I would imagine the registrars cover themselves within their T&Cs to allow them to do this otherwise I don't really see how it's not illegal in some way.

So as far as I know (for those that maybe don't know and for me to be corrected if needed) the process is that a registrar will renew an expiring name themselves and give the registrant 30-40 (depending on registrar) days to renew. If the registrant does renew it is at an inflated cost making the registrar a profit. If the name is not renewed it would normally be allowed to drop and the registrar would get a refund on their renewal. Obviously now instead of dropping the name they auction it and make an absolute killing and at the same time killing off the dropcatching industry.

As with everything else in the domain world its a grey area. There are so many ethnically and morally questionable things happening in this industry its hard to take it seriously.
 
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I have a fundamental issue with "pre-release" auctions on expired domains. None of these registrars did anything to deserve to profit off these these domains.

They did not have the idea. They did not register the domain. They did not take the financial risk.

They have just inserted themselves as the middle men in the ICANN designed expiration process, which was not intended.

At least with pending deletes they are released onto the free market. If a party catches them and wants to auction them, that is different.

Unless there is more to this story, I have an issue with this.

The fact that registrars can make a massive profit off this is a potential conflict when it comes to doing the right thing.

Brad

I agree, I think you are spot on, but when those who make the rules profit from the rules, I doubt anything will change.
 
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I am kind of disgusted with this, allowing a well known investor's assets to expire and a registrar profiting off this name, and others with obvious value that have been allowed to expire.

Has anyone at GoDaddy or Uniregistry reached out to his family to try and help them out, in at least understanding the value of domains like this or help with brokering them? This type of thing should not be allowed to happen.

The system, as is, is a massive conflict of interest.

Brad
I personally reached out to his wife when he passed on behalf of GoDaddy. I offered any help I could give her to make sure she had things under control and did not lose any domains due to expiry. It's been 8 years so my memory of it may be a bit off but I am almost certain we offered to renew any domains with us free of charge for a certain period of time until she was able to make a plan to retain the assets. We had several conversations and at that time she had someone helping her with the domain portfolio in the end.
 
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I personally reached out to his wife when he passed on behalf of GoDaddy. I offered any help I could give her to make sure she had things under control and did not lose any domains due to expiry. It's been 8 years so my memory of it may be a bit off but I am almost certain we offered to renew any domains with us free of charge for a certain period of time until she was able to make a plan to retain the assets. We had several conversations and at that time she had someone helping her with the domain portfolio in the end.

Thanks for clarifying that Joe.

It is a shame what has happened to his assets since he died.

Brad
 
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I personally reached out to his wife when he passed on behalf of GoDaddy. I offered any help I could give her to make sure she had things under control and did not lose any domains due to expiry. It's been 8 years so my memory of it may be a bit off but I am almost certain we offered to renew any domains with us free of charge for a certain period of time until she was able to make a plan to retain the assets. We had several conversations and at that time she had someone helping her with the domain portfolio in the end.

I recall that too Joe, I think a nephew was helping out. Names were expiring on NameJet too.
 
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I personally reached out to his wife when he passed on behalf of GoDaddy. I offered any help I could give her to make sure she had things under control and did not lose any domains due to expiry. It's been 8 years so my memory of it may be a bit off but I am almost certain we offered to renew any domains with us free of charge for a certain period of time until she was able to make a plan to retain the assets. We had several conversations and at that time she had someone helping her with the domain portfolio in the end.
BS lipservice, @Joe Styler. @Paul Nicks

Read the following - DO THE RIGHT THING - and contact Michal Lichtman, so that she or her family can renew these names. ICANN was able to find her to serve UDRP (below). You can surely do the same.

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2020-1786

Godaddy is too F'ing lazy and evil to complete the simple research I completed in 2 minutes.
 
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A main revenue stream for Godaddy is profiting off of the dead and their heirs - the many deceased who failed to transfer their login credentials to family/kin. Godaddy is evil - regardless to what Joe and Nick say.

This is absolute bullshit
 
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BS lipservice, @Joe Styler. @Paul Nicks

Read the following - DO THE RIGHT THING - and contact Michal Lichtman, so that she or her family can renew these names. ICANN was able to find her to serve UDRP (below). You can surely do the same.

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2020-1786

Godaddy is too F'ing lazy and evil to complete the simple research I completed in 2 minutes.

We DID THE RIGHT THING when it happened. Joe went out of his way to make sure the family's assets were taken care of within our control and even renewed names for free. This was 8 years ago, when is it no longer our responsibility in your mind?
 
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perhaps someone can reach out to the family for a comment ? just to hear both sides of the story
 
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We DID THE RIGHT THING when it happened. Joe went out of his way to make sure the family's assets were taken care of within our control and even renewed names for free. This was 8 years ago, when is it no longer our responsibility in your mind?
Yeah - phone calls to the law firm that represented them in the UDRP (in 2020) is surely too much to ask. Money focused evil company with evil VP. You didn't own Unireg till last year. How is a phone call NOW, not warranted?
 
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We DID THE RIGHT THING when it happened. Joe went out of his way to make sure the family's assets were taken care of within our control and even renewed names for free. This was 8 years ago, when is it no longer our responsibility in your mind?

I respectfully disagree with you.

You could've auctioned the domains on his behalf (with the permission of the family) and kept a margin for your efforts and gave the rest to the family.

Even if you (for example) take 50% and give 50% back to the family, I'd say that's the right thing.
It's not abut 5 years or 8 years, or 20, it's about value, conscience & trust. I don't think many people know the value of the domains and thus they'd feel it to be a burden.

Anyways, there's a lot that can be said in this matter. May be you've tried to convince them about things like auctions, may be you didn't. As I don't know the whole story, I'd rather not comment about it further than what I've already said.
 
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godaddy is not a charity if what they are saying is true they did their part and more.
 
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I respectfully disagree with you.

You could've auctioned the domains on his behalf (with the permission of the family) and kept a margin for your efforts and gave the rest to the family.

Even if you (for example) take 50% and give 50% back to the family, I'd say that's the right thing.
It's not abut 5 years or 8 years, or 20, it's about value, conscience & trust. I don't think many people know the value of the domains and thus they'd feel it to be a burden.

Anyways, there's a lot that can be said in this matter. May be you've tried to convince about things like auctions, may be you didn't. As I don't know the whole story, I'd rather not comment about it further than what I've already said.

I am not sure about the exact revenue split, but that is an interesting concept.

I think there would be a lot less animosity if there was some equity share in expired domain sales in general.

One party has the idea.
One party registered the domain.
One party took the financial risk.

But then, a 3rd party now inserts themselves in the middle and takes 100% of the revenue.

When the expired process was designed, it did not include these "pre-release" auctions in the domain life cycle.

If might even result in more revenue for GoDaddy, if people allowed more domains to expire. They would likely make more via the auctions than (bulk) renewal fees.

Brad
 
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