I like the fact that Rick Schwartz is raising awareness through an appropriate domain, HallofShame.com.
As you can see by taking a look at the website, he basically calls out companies that want to unethically obtain an asset that doesn’t belong to them instead of simply negotiating and trying to buy it from the owner.
The domain is appropriate because if you want people to understand just how unethical this practice is, you can’t just limit yourself to saying they’re guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and leave it at that.
You have to explain what Reverse Domain Name Hijacking is to the general public in an easy-to-understand manner, you have to explain that it’s a form of corporate bullying that has to end.
And once companies understand that unethical business practices will have negative long-term consequences when it comes to the credibility of their business, they will think twice before starting to make threats.
If you want someone’s house, make him/her an offer.
If you want someone’s car, make him/her an offer.
If you want someone’s domain, you guessed it, make him/her an offer.
I hope Rick manages to successfully educate people as well as companies in this respect and encourage all of you to spread the word by writing about HallofShame.com on your website, by mentioning it on the forums you’re active on, by tweeting about it, by mentioning it on Facebook and so on.
September 8th, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Self Domain Name Hijacking is as serious a crime as RDNH and I hope that domain buyers and investors are more educated about this discreet form of domain hijacking.
Self Domain Name Hijacking is a term that indicates when a domain owner transfers his domain to someone he knows with the direct intention of showing that the domain name was sold for a very high price.
In this way, the new domain owner can then list the same domain on the market at a price slightly higher than the price he paid for it.
Also, there are some marketplaces online that use SDNH quite frequently to pretend that they have helped sell more domains when in fact those domains they sold (that were SDNH) are still actually owned by them but under a different person or entity’s name.
Few domainers I spoke to about this in India at a conference recently had no idea that SDNH existed nor did they know that several established domainers in the industry are “possibly” guilty of practicing it.