Earlier this week Scott had wrote that Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said that Domainers/Domaining were Bad. Now Mr. Twomey had said in a reply to this, this was NOT the case and was a misunderstanding.

Now today Scott wrote another article Knocking domainers and to Prepare for battles over domain names.

The problem here that I see is, I do not think Scott understands the difference between a "Domainer" or a "Cybersquatter"! I think many do not know there IS a difference but sadly for domainers, the bad apples known as cybersquatters are added into the domaining community!

In a quote from the recent article, "Domainers in general buy domain names, such as buy.com or hotel.com. Often, they buy them in mass on the basis that domain names they purchase have value. That per se isn’t bad, but sometimes the real value comes from waiting around for the guy who wants the domain more."

Now the part that upsets me, is the last part. "That per se isn’t bad, but sometimes the real value comes from waiting around for the guy who wants the domain more."

The last time I checked, the term Investing means…

To commit (money or capital) in order to gain a financial return:

Now this is the very same as investing in local Real Estate, purchasing Stocks or Bonds and so on. You have to HOLD something, so it can Gain Value. If there is interest in something, that creates value. The fact is, people want domain names and Need them for business! Sometimes these people do not notice they Need the domain, until some time passes since the domain owner invested in purchasing the name.

Now Scott also included this little part right after saying it was OK to buy generic domains, and followed with the crazy line that is wasn’t ok to "Hold" a domain for investment…

And I quote "One of the silliest legal cases from the last ‘90s involves the domain name panavision. Panavision is a brand of movie camera equipment which is trademark protected, but some some smart guy registered the domain name Panavision, claiming he wanted to build a website showing Pana, Illinois.
When Panavision came calling, the defendant happily agreed to sell the domain for $13,000. When Panavision refused to pay, the defendant then registered Panaflex.com, another trademark held by Panavision. The court ruled the defendant had violated the trademark and awarded Panavision both domain names."

Now the first part of this story was a Domainer and had purchased Panavision for an investment. Now the second part brought the owner to be a Cybersquatter.

What I think he is trying to say is, YES, Domainers buy Generic Domain Names that ANYBODY has a right to buy/own. Just because Papa John’s runs a pizza shop does not give them the right to own Pizza.com. Anybody can own this generic domain name. Just like an asset, if Papa Johns wants to own and use the domain Pizza.com they have to purchase it from the current owner.

Now if somebody had registered PapaJohns.com and was putting up Pizza Ads and so on, that is Bad Faith and Cybersquatting due to trademark laws!

Now here is the difference between a "Domainer" and a "Cybersquatter"! These are TWO different industries as I see it.

A domainer is an investor in Virtual Property (domain names) that consist of Generic Term(s) or a name that can be considered "Brand able". Also known as a "made up" word. The virtual property must contain Generic terms that are not already trademarked or already used in business in a stated field. The term(s) can be one word, two word combinations or simply up to 67 characters long. If an entity owns Trademarked term domain names, they are NOT considered a "domainer".

A Cybersquatter is an entity that owns domain names that contain terms that are Trademarked and are putting up ads or misleading information that pertains to the certain field the trademark is registered for. This includes typo errors and again, display’s ads or content that match a trademarked term.

Jamie Zoch www.DotWeekly.com