Profiteers snap up shooting domain names

[Randall]

Within minutes of the Virginia Tech shooting massacre, online domain names related to the tragedy were snapped up by people hoping to sell them off for a profit or use them to link to advertisers. The cost of registering such domains is generally less than $US10 ($12), but some are now being auctioned off for thousands - a practice experts say has become commonplace.

Full article: http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=30&ContentID=28197

Now this is something that I really hate. There are thousands of domain names still available and that can be branded with little effort. But people just want to make profits on others grief.

I hate to call myself as a domainer when this kind of issues do happen.

 

[Roogle]

But who would be interested in buying a domain name for that amount of money based on a current event?

I have not worked with domains, so I'll ask other users: are media outlets responsible for bidding high numbers for those types of domains?

 

[Chocokriz]

That's very wrong. The domain names that he made are really distasteful. I also doubt he's going to make a lot of money, or at least I hope he doesn't. It's unfortunate that people would do that just to get a dollar. My heart goes out to the people from Virginia Tech.

 

[Roogle]

I found an article on Wikipedia regarding this practice.

Interesting read. It doesn't mention the latest registrations from the Virginia Tech massacre, though.

 

[Randall]

Yes I did wrote some articles on cybersquatting The thing is that the line of difference between a domain name investor and cyber squatter is very thin. And when this kind of things do happen we can get a glance in the minds of the people who are not just investing in domain names as a regular business but are looking for profits on someone else's grief.