Cybersquatting the domain name of a celebrity and selling it for a king's ransom was one of the great get-rich-quick schemes of the early internet. But since courts now tend to favor the star over the squatter, a new kinder, gentler cybersquatting tactic has emerged.
These days, cybersquatters seek to register a star's domain before that person becomes famous, and then develop a business relationship with the new celebrity, offering website hosting or design work.
These so-called soft squatters are registering the domains of hundreds of amateur athletes, musicians and other would-be stars in the hope that one or two of the names will become well-known.
In October 2004, spectator Mike Secord registered the names of numerous fledgling, unknown ice skaters, including kimmiemeissner.com. Of course, after the Winter Olympics in Turin and her 2006 World title, figure skater Kimmie Meissner is no longer fledgling or unknown.
Secord's company, Premeire Website Solutions, has built a low-end site it maintains for Meissner for free. Secord said he has broached the possibility of a business relationship with the skater's camp.
"Hosting is free with no requirements, unless the site gets very busy," he said. "And design work is free, as long as they don't mind our banner."
Similarly, Vince LaVecchia, marketing director for web developer Legitify, who has a background in the snowboarding business, in 2004 purchased the domains of several snowboarding acquaintances.
Among those was athlete Hannah Teter. LaVecchia's company sold the domain to Teter shortly before the Winter Olympics, where she won a gold medal in women's snowboarding. LaVecchia claims he registered the snowboarders' domains to protect them from speculators, but Legitify is still the host for the hannahteter.com website.
"We had services we could offer (to Teter), and we did, but the main thing was that we didn't want the domain to end up in the wrong hands," LaVecchia said.
Case law has often gone against cybersquatters. When individuals can show that their name is important to their livelihood, a simple task for professional athletes and other celebrities, the courts have often demanded those holding domain registrations to surrender rights to the web addresses. Because of that, most domain parkers hand over names quietly when they are approached by celebrities.
"Enough cases have gone through the system to refine a few points," explained Kevin Gray, a Texas lawyer specializing in internet domain law.
Gray took on many cases in the late 1990s for companies fighting cybersquatters. Along the way, he saw the evolution of regulations like the Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy, created by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, a law passed by Congress in 1999.
The law is clear with corporate names and trademarks, but fuzzier with individuals' names, particularly when public figures are involved. But Gray said most squatters have decided a legal fight isn't worth the risk when odds are increasingly against them in court. As a result, there has been a significant decline in the number of cybersquatting lawsuits filed in recent years.
"Early on, the internet was the wild, wild west," Gray said. "But now people have started to see a better definition of what's OK and what's not OK."
One of the most remarkable "soft squats" was performed by Don Chin, an Oregon real estate agent who bought the name of famously terrible American Idol contestant William Hung shortly after his dreadful "She Bangs" cover was broadcast.
Chin set up the small site William Hung, which started to draw enough traffic to crash the GoDaddy servers hosting it.
It was the perfect squat. Within a couple weeks, Hung had gone from anonymous college student to national conversation topic.
While there had never been any reason for anyone, including Hung, to register the domain before, Chin had snatched up the name just before instant fame struck.
So what did Chin do? He offered Hung's parents partial ownership of the site, and operates it for them. The site makes significant revenues, which Chin splits with the Hungs.
"Eventually it became his official site," Chin said.
Chin's primary income still comes from real estate, but he said he has enjoyed the spoils of domain speculation. Chin now owns 40 to 50 domains, including the names of several professional and amateur athletes from around the world.
Chin makes a small amount of money parking the domains at Sedo, which allows hosted sites to generate revenue based on the amount of Google AdWords traffic the sites receive.
Through the use of AdWords, Chin said he typically turns a profit on every site he owns. On ones where he simply parks a domain, he can pay back the $8 annual registration fee for a domain in less than a month. If a fan site is set up, as with Hung, he can turn a net profit of a couple hundred dollars each month.
If any interest in the domain is shown by a rightful party, Chin said he works to forge a deal on friendly terms. "If an athlete ever offered me (just) $1,000 for a domain, I wouldn't turn it down," he said
