I am still having fingers pointed at me and I just want to clarify that I AM allowed to bid on any name I wish even if a family member owns it. ... Please actually provide FACTS and show me where I have ever shill bidded because I haven't. ... The fact that people are making accusations towards me without any facts is unfair and slanderous.
I wrote this back on Page 11 days ago ..
Ummm .. moral "opinions" on either side aside .. just for the argument's sake .. is there anything in the rules that prevents James Booth from bidding on a domain
*IF* it were owned by
@andyboothsi (and vice versa)?
This is one reason why what
@MediaOptions said is valid. Because now where do we draw the line of who can/can't bid .. and more importantly .. how do you prove what the person's intentions were.
Obviously we have the right to suspect a brother's role in an auction .. but what if he genuinely wants the domain .. and his brother legitimately wants to get maximum value ... we also can't conveniently overlook the fact that there are plenty of other people very connected to each other in the domain industry .. this sort of thing is impossible to police except in very rare instances like this one (which might not even turn out to be justified I should stress).
The opposite also holds true .. people often team up to buy a domain .. when in fact that act in itself removes potential bidders and technically could be seen as cheating the buyer out of getting the maxing market-value for his domain. Nobody seems to have a problem with this is seems, even if it could have just as marked an effect on the end result.
That's why I said there are shades of grey in this .. what makes it worse is that the domain community is relatively small .. and aside from a few domain super-categories, there actually isn't much liquidity for 95% of domains owned by non 6-figure+ domainers.
Am I allowed to tell an acquaintance about my auction knowing he will want the domain and will bid and effectively drive the price up .. but not actually be able to afford what will likely be the final price? To some that could be considered "manipulation" or shill bidding .. when it clearly isn't to others.
Anyhow .. it would be really nice if
@NameJetGM would give us the details as to how they know it wasn't owned by Andy .. so that we could indeed move past this and actually discuss domain auction theory without feeling guilty about getting too off-topic .. lol
I think a big problem here are the rules themselves. Are brothers allowed to bid on each others auctions? I haven't completely gone through the terms, but based on the discussions the answer is "technically" yes.
SHOULD family members be allowed to bid on each others domains? That is up for debate, as there are many economic instances where family members are not allowed to participate in financial trades, and other instances where it is allowed but sometimes must be declared. But if this currently is not in the rules, then the only thing to accuse
@BoothDomains (James Booth specifically) of is shill bidding
*IF* there is actual proof .. of which to my knowledge going by this thread so far there is not.
People .. just like with Andrew of
@MediaOptions, you need to stop making slanderous assumptions openly like throughout this thread.
*IF* you suspect something, then by all means DEFINITELY go looking for facts like
@Michael and
@Grilled. Even openly ask questions if what you see is very suspicious ..
but that's where you need to draw the line. Not only that .. but even if you suspect .. then instead of being confrontational and assumptive of guilt, be constructive, ask the right questions and share/request data/information.
Personally what I think would be worth taking a look at is not so much the family relationship (although I'm not saying yes/no to that either way for future), but more if you are in business or doing business or have recently done business with the person in question then you should not be bidding on each other's domains.
The problem with that potential small-fix (only a small part) however .. is that all we see are handle/user names. It is conceivably possible that someone bids on a recent business partner's domain without even knowing (obviously that isn't the case here .. I'm just talking about the future, since this obviously isn't in the rules now).
So have a rule stating you cannot bid on a domain listed someone you are in business with, or have been in business within the last X period of time (12-24 months?). Which includes any business (even outside non-domain business), the sharing (co-ownership) of domains, listing of domains and/or brokering of domains.
Such a time limit should not be retroactive, to give brokers and listers a fair chance to choose which aspect of the industry they want to work in. Participation at an auction house should really be either as a buyer/seller OR as a broker. The problem with the domaining industry is that it hasn't been big enough to really justify that delimitation and the stricter regulation we see for Wall Street.
It's either that .. or go the other extreme and allow everything, but in an open transparent way as Andrew and I explored much earlier in this discussion. Which I still think is an option worth exploring .. especially after all this incident in this separate thread:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/le...-of-owners-bidding-in-auctions.1030988/unread
Also, I'm thinking having access to an API account AND a "hand bid" account should definitely be a no-no. It should be one single account per human person. Possibly even go so far as to not allow corporate accounts (like Facebook has it) so it really is one account per person with zero overlap. Fine if you want want to change your username, but have name change history publicly visible.
Sorry if I wasn't clear - they are definitely not the seller of the domains. It is 100% a different seller.
Finally .. it's not just NameJet (
@NameJetGM) who needs to take note of this. NameJet is at fault here for not sharing enough information in a timely fashion. I'd still like to know what exact and detailed information led to the above statement. It is a very bad customer service move and at this point the lack of details is reason enough to suspect unethical trading/bidding/behaviour.
BUT ... We do need to give a lot of credit to NameJet for having visible usernames. That commitment alone shows vastly more transparency than other auction platforms such as GoDaddy. It is the only reason some of you were able to sniff out these questionable bids and hopefully get NJ to clean up it's act a little.
These sorts of things could and likely are happening all the time at GoDaddy, and we are none the wiser. They are currently upgrading their Auction platform .. I'd specifically invite
@Joe Styler to check out this discussion and report back to us if they plan to move towards displaying unique user ID's or some other way of identifying bidders? And if not, then why? (Because in all honesty, there might be a good reason I can't think of, but think we all have the right to know what it possibly could be)
And where the heck is ICANN for all of this? With the countless $$$ millions in their coffers, I'd think this is EXACTLY the type of industry specific issue where policy is actually needed. (Although I guess in all fairness at least 50% of the people here would think ICANN would likely make things worse rather than better! lol)