Lately I’ve been working my way through some of my old bookmarks with the goal of cleaning them up … do you know that automatic link-checkers like AM-Deadlink have almost reached the point of uselessness in the face of the chaos that ICANN has allowed to descend on the internet? There’s no such thing as a dead link anymore!
Of the links that don’t work in my favorites list, ever one of them has fallen into one of three categories:
- The original domain owner has vanished
- They forgot to renew, and someone squatted, and they’ve now set up shop at a new domain (rather than pay squatters hundreds of dollars, or go to court), forcing me to do web-searches to track down the new domain.
- They simply vanished, and their domain is now a squatter encampment serving up overture-supplied links to various nefarious commercial entities (like eBay). I, of course, waste valuable time trying to track down a new location for the original site, to no avail.
- The original page has vanished. This is common on commercial sites when content is outdated, or “free” software I had bookmarked is no longer free (_particularly_ on the Microsoft domains, where dead links are a dime a dozen)
- The original page has moved. Unbelievably enough, dozens of 404 : Not Found errors have cropped up just because people changed their file extensions from “html” to some scripting extension (php, asp, aspx, cfm … ) or from one scripting language to another. Maybe they haven’t heard of 301 : Moved Permanently ...
Honestly, I’ve been thinking that there have probably been a lot of moved pages on my web sites, and I’ve been thinking I should probably pay more attention to this, considering how easy it is for me to “move” pages (accidentally or on purpose).
However, the real problem are these squaters. Shouldn’t it be against the rules for people to grab your domain for no purpose but to put ads on it? And it’s not just expiring domains either, I checked the other day, my domain as a .com and .net have both been registered by nefarious squatters like DomainPals.com who are using them as advertising entry points to seeq.com and are offering to sell them to me, and although we own GeoShell .org and .com, .net is in the same squatter camp: the guy offered to sell it back to me for several hundred dollars.
I think we should fix ICANN by adding two rules:
- If I had a domain, and forget to register it, park such that ALL pages on it will return 410 : Gone (or a new 510: Server Gone) for at least six months, during which time the original registrant (or the executors of the estate) can re-register it.
- Simplify the dispute rules and put the burden of the dispute fee on the squatter. If I’ve owned a domain for years, and a squatter sits on a similar domain, we all know (from Googel and GeoCiities ) that I would win a dispute … why should I have to pay money (and maybe even hire a lawyer to figure out what paperwork I have to submit) to get it straightened out?
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I wholeheartedly agree.
The googel and geociites cases that you’ve linked to both consist of three points a) confusingly similar name b) no legitimate interest in the domain c) using the domain in bad faith. It’s obvious to me that domain squatters, whether they grab domains that have expired or domains that have different TLDs than yours, fit exactly that profile.
I would suggest a suitable remedy, but it’s not fit for printing on a family-friendly website.
“Honestly, Ia??ve been thinking that there have probably been a lot of moved pages on my web sites, and Ia??ve been thinking I should probably pay more attention to this, considering how easy it is for me to a??movea?? pages (accidentally or on purpose).”
You are guilty as charged