Vijay Barve

In Wake of Tragedy, Speculators Snatch Up Profitable Web Names

People respond to tragedy in different ways. Some pray. Some watch the news. Some try to get rich.

Just hours after a student at Virginia Tech went on a killing spree that claimed 33 lives Monday, speculators began snatching up domain names related to the shooting.

Dozens of people registered sites like vatechbloodbath.com, virginiatechmurders.com and blacksburgmassacre.com through companies like GoDaddy.com and Enom, Inc. Several of the names went up for sale on eBay later that day.

The blood wasn't even dry in Norris Hall. In that building, home to the engineering department, Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean majoring in English and living on the Blacksburg campus, fired round after round from his Glock 9 mm and Walther .22-caliber handguns into helpless students and teachers, before turning his pistols on himself and ending the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.

For most people around the country, this was a shocking and grievous moment. For the new owner of vtechkilling.com, it was an opportunity. The domain was registered through Moniker Online Services on Monday, and soon afterwards was up for auction on eBay. The registrant posted an image of an assault rifle with the listing and described vtechkilling.com as the "perfect domain name for any memorandum or other site dedicated to the recent mass killings at Virginia Tech."

The bidding opened at one cent. The "Buy It Now" price was set at $500. In an eBay auction, "Buy It Now" allows shoppers to skip the bidding altogether by paying a lump sum up front. The registrant did not respond to an interview request.

That domain was offered at a cheap price. Another, more ambitious, would-be profiteer asked for $100,000 for five sites he'd registered through GoDaddy, including vamassacre.com and vatechcarnage.com. He covered his ad in American flags and described his sites as "Great Domain Names for a Memorial Fund Development….Our Hearts go out to all the victims and families of Virginia Tech Massacre!"

Matt Owens opened bidding for virginia-tech-rampage.com at $1,000. He set his Buy It Now price at $10,000. On the listing, Owens wrote that virginia-tech-rampage.com is a "great domain name for development!" He posted a photo of an angel in a short white dress hovering next to a cross.

When reached by phone on Tuesday, Owens was surprised that his choice of domain name had provoked a backlash. "I've been getting hate mail," he said. "I didn't think it through. I was just thinking about the money first."

Owens, who has kids in college, said he never intended to cause any harm or make light of the shootings. "I wasn't trying to do anything bad. I figured someone might buy the name and use it or not use it." Owens pointed out that the word "rampage" has been in wide circulation by the media. He said companies should consider taking sensitive names off the market after a tragedy and that eBay shouldn't allow auctions for certain items.

Ebay removed most of the potentially offensive listings from its website Tuesday, but could not be reached for comment.

Not every domain snatched up in the wake of Monday's tragedy wound up on eBay, and it's likely some of the registrants plan online memorials, or acted quickly to keep the domains from falling into the hands of profiteers.

In an interview with Wired News on Monday, GoDaddy's vice president of public relations, Elizabeth Driscoll, said company policy is to allow any name to be registered at any time. GoDaddy intervenes if it learns that a site is being used for "morally objectionable or illegal purposes." Normally, GoDaddy is alerted to bad behavior by registrants when a complaint is filed through its abuse department.

"It's a fact of life that when a major event happens, whether it's positive or negative, people flock to register domain names. ...We don't have the ability to monitor every site."

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Labels: internet

posted by Vijay Barve @ 2:52 AM