by Adam Strong

The racially sensitive domain name SandNigger.com expired and was auctioned off at Namejet.com today. The domain ended up selling for $840. A quick look at the NSI whois reveals the new owner (who will likely be buying privacy protection very soon. . . .you’re welcome NSI ). Justin over at Namebio posted an open letter regarding this story. He’s calling for the companies involved to donate the profits from the sale to a reputable charity. I decided to feature this story as a way to back Justin’s idea up, but I’m also going to expand on this call to action, so keep reading. . . .

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As reported by Tech Crunch, Citizen Hawk, a “digital brand management” company is now funded with $3 million courtesy of Maveron LLC.

“CitizenHawk helps companies protect their online brands by targeting cybersquatters.”

The interesting angle that goes unmentioned at Tech Crunch is that Maveron already has a history of investmenting in the domain space with their funding of Internet REIT (iREIT).  iREIT has come under fire in the past for owning a vast amount of the same trademark/typo infringing domains that Citizen Hawk seeks to “manage” for their clients.

About a year ago, some of the specifics of iREIT’s holdings were detailed by WSJ writer David Kesmodel. Since then, the company has been among several defendants named in high profile legal battles in the domain space, including the Vulcan Golf and Verizon lawsuits.   Domain Name News has covered some of Citizen Hawk’s tactics previously in this post.

Thanks to ‘Office Naughty’ for the story tip!

Moniker has released the full auction lists for the Targeted TRAFFIC East low reserve and premier auctions.

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The .ORG registry operator, Public Interest Registry (PIR) has sent a letter to ICANN announcing their intention to increase their registration fees by 10% as of November 9th, 2008. The price increase brings the price for registrars up to $6.75 from $6.15 after last year’s price increase by 2.5%. The letter did not cite a reason. This follows VeriSign’s recent announcement that they will increase .COM & .NET prices.

[via AP/Google/Dan]

Elmer Thomas of Thinking Serious, ran into Michael Kovatch at a StarBucks and used the opportunity for a video interview about the domain name IPhone.com.

The name was registered in August of 1995 till he sold it to Apple in 2006.

[via DotSauce]

In a recent letter sent to my inbox, NetworkSolutions.com emailed regarding a domain that will be expiring soon, and they encourage me to place a back-order for the domain name at NameJet.com. The domain name they are emailing about is a .net version of a .com domain name that I own. The title of the email reads “DOMAIN.NET Can Be Yours: Find Out How” ( real domain edited out ) and further along in the email it states: “Since you have registered the same domain name with a different extension, we want to inform you that (DOMAIN.NET) may become available soon through our domain auction provider, NameJet™.”

When the two companies were still working together NSI promoted back-order service provider SnapNames in whois searches and on their site. Since dropping that alliance and forming the Namejet partnership, they have continued their promotions, but previous to now I do not recall an email campaign to domain owners in this manner. NSI seems to be making every effort to squeak more profits from their expiring domain inventory and maintain their market-share.

This tactic by NSI of emailing domain owners when a similar extension domain is expiring seems reminiscent of emails that desperate domainers are often found sending out trying to sell the .com owner the .org, .net or .whatever. The pitch probably works some of the time, especially to an uninformed domain owner who doesn’t know .com from .cm

Read on if you want to see the email in it’s entirety.

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