Banks get domain names grabbed

[WhoNet]

Banks get domain names grabbed

WWWhat's going on?

John Daly @ Thursday, September 18, 2008 5:42 PM

Some supposedly clever and witty person thought it would be a strikingly brilliant idea to grab the domain names Merrillbankofamerica.com, along with the appropriate .org, .info and .net domains.

Said clever person is selling them for the discount price of $150. So far, nobody has deemed the idea worth spending money on, so it seemingly wasn't all that witty to start with. Further domain names for Lloyds TSB/HOBS and Barcleys Lehman have also been grabbed by cybersquatters speculating on various possible bank mergers.

Some of the sites are running Google ads, which means their owners might generate some sort of revenue. Considering banks have - or at least, had - huge big pockets and might unleash lawyers to kick cybersquatters in their shins with Church's shoes polished by a poverty-stricken pauper on Fleet Street and to send out intimidating letters of some sort, said squatters will need a bit of cash. That is, however, if the banks finding themselves out of money and thus out of business are indeed grabbed by their healthy competitors who can actually still pay lawyers.

It is rumoured that the actual reason behind the current conundrum Wall Street is facing were overtly intelligent goblins from Gringotts who went short on the US Dollar, earned billions of galleons, sickles and knuts and thereby somehow nearly knocked out the credit default swap market thanks to some interdependency trickery most humans have no clue of.

Domain Name Investors Blog

 

[weblord]

Won't do cybersquatters much good since most banks mentioned are filing bankruptcy left and right

 

[GF]

Yet another black eye for our industry.

Instead of cash, they will get a nice attorney's letter in the mail, if not worse.