Demand Media squats on KhanAcademy's domain name, to make a measly $2K (after asking for 6-figures!) -- another reason to root against the Demand Media IPO.
I think that the problem people have with that is that a lot of the people making those sleazy decisions right now, probably hold a bunch of stock (i.e. they will make a ton of money off of the IPO if lots of people buy into it). Changes to the company after that are immaterial to them.
Super job, Demand Media and enom are to be shunned like the plague.
Enom now owns bulkregister so that's another party to avoid, when they bought BR out I moved all my domains elsewhere.
It would be great to see (lots of!) pressure put on enom and demand media to refund the rest of the money as well!
Maybe an email to enom/DM that if within 30 days they have not paid Andrew back that you will take all your business elsewhere ? (and follow through on that).
Press people, please take note of this and write about it!
So if anyone at Demand Media is reading this and wants to do an interview about your company's business practices, email me. I will keep your name/voice/identity completely private.
We can't use the interview to attack Demand Media. I'm just curious about how the company operates.
(These requests on HN have worked before. There's a 50/50% chance this will work.)
Taking money over the back of one that does nothing but good to me is pretty vile. I'm curious too but that does not temper my anger. The .ly registrar pulled a similar trick on a YC company and I thought it was just as vile. 6 figures (initial offer) from a guy that spends his time teaching people is absolutely outrageous.
But if someone takes you up on your interview offer I'm definitely interested, it should give a unique insight in to the psychology of people like this.
Did you bother reading the article? Andrew did not put them in touch. John, of DomainNoob, was already a fan of Sal Khan. He somehow ended up watching Sal's interview on Mixergy where it was brought up that .com domain was not available. After watching that interview, John decided to look into the matter and actually went through the whole ordeal to get the domain for khanacademy. Sure, Andrew publicized the issue but all the leg work was done by John.
Is there a site somewhere that lists which registrars are owned by enom and/or Demand Media? I want to make sure I don't unwittingly use or recommend anything owned by these companies.
In my opinion, domain name (tld) are overrated in general. Because great content will always find its way to the users no matter how weird and long the domain name is.
To play devil's advocate, especially in a situation like Khan's Academy, $3,000 will end up being a very small sum compared to all the benefit new users who may not have found it another way will derive from its existence.
I watched a close friend of mine log into her gmail the other day. To do so, she clicked the Home button in an open browser window and then typed gmail into Google. Obviously, this made my head explode.
But as someone who remembers trying to finagle Yahoo, Astalvista, and Excite into giving me the address for something I knew existed (let alone something I was trying to find for the first time), I'm indescribably happy that just about everyone with internet access can find what they're looking for 99% of the time on the first try.
Like you pointed out, things we used to take for granted as important in many cases aren't anymore. And the internet is a better place because of it.
I watched a close friend of mine log into her gmail the other day. To do so, she clicked the Home button in an open browser window and then typed gmail into Google. Obviously, this made my head explode.
I've had a similar reaction in the past when people use Google to find sites they frequently visit. However, I've become so disenchanted with the 'net by domain squatters and typo spam/porn sites that I will type a company name into Google now before I try CompanyName.com, just to avoid potential typos or squatters (Dropbox would be the first example I would cite if asked).
AcquireThisName is eNom as far as I can tell. It seems to be one of many companies they own (eNom and Demand Media being th parent). Names that expire that they retain often end up with AcquireThisName being the owner.
NameJet is an expired names company that also do pre-release. They are partnered with quite a few registrars to get inventory to auction, not just demand. Pre-release being auctioning off names that expired but didn't go through the regular expiry process but are renewed by the registrar after some period of being on-hold pending the original owner's decision to renew.
This is unfair and unjust, I don't really understand why there hasn't been a better regulation put in place for so long.. (even if the initial distribution of ownership rights doesn't affect economic efficiency)
