Comments on: Okay, Not Free Money After All

By: Norm

Norm — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:37:17 +0000

Though I tend to share the broad concern about the ethics of domain squatting, I fail to see how it’s significantly different than the way real estate works today. It’s a commonly accepted business practice to speculate on plots of land, to buy things that aren’t currently useful in the hopes that some years down the road someone with a lot of money will really, really want it. That essentially what domain squatters are doing – the difference is that they don’t have to pay property taxes in the meantime, heh. And it’s generally an order of magnitude cheaper.

Basically, I may not like domain squatting but it seems to fall well within the realm of what we already accept as proper business practice here in the States (trademark issues aside, I suppose).

By: Acosta

Acosta — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:08:29 +0000

Class act. I figure that in these times, Blizzard could have got the domain with little legal effort if needed, we are not in the wild internet anymore, but it’s nice to check they were truly loyal to the company they admire (hope Blizzard has a detail with them).

And about Diablo 3, oh, come on, of course is coming, does anyone have any doubt about that?

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:37:51 +0000

That’s a fairly genius marketing ploy too. They could have just used Diablo.com or similar. This way it draws even more attention and anticipation for the hype machine.

By: indirectx

indirectx — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:21:58 +0000

They should have demanded that Blizzard announce the game and held the domain to ransom until they did.
If I were part of that diablo community, I’d feel a bit used right now…

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:40:44 +0000

Sod the ethics – I would have taken a big dirty handful of Blizzards WOW money myself.

Maybe a few year’s free WoW subscription at least?

By: Babs

Babs — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:03:25 +0000

Sod the ethics – I would have taken a big dirty handful of Blizzards WOW money myself.

By: radomaj

radomaj — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:20:55 +0000

From their forum:

We are sad to see it go, but glad Mockery and Umaro spent so much resources and time to reserve this domain name — willing to give it to Blizzard anytime they asked for it. Other people would have wanted a ransom for it. That shows you Mockery is first and foremost a loyal fan.

[...]

Mockery granted the domain name in mutual agreement … a fan himself, he was glad to. There was no sale. It was given free.

So… yeah. It’s definately not “free money” as the post suggests.

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:00:58 +0000

You don’t need to pay in this day and age. The WIPO UDRP proceedings are rather effective. ;-)

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:45:22 +0000

Reading down the comments, it doesn’t sound like he’s been paid anything, other than links from Blizzard to their fan site…

By: Duoae

Duoae — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:44:28 +0000

It doesn’t sound like they gouged Blizzard for the site, Jim… but of course it’s impossible to tell either way.