

How Wedgies.com Sidestepped a Domain Squatting Felon to buy their dotcom - porterhaney
http://pandodaily.com/2012/07/12/how-wedgies-sidestepped-a-domain-squatter-to-offer-sharable-online-surveys/

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richardv
Isn't the title misleading?

\- The guy wasn't domain squatting at all.

\- They weren't Wedgies.com (they were Wedgi.es)

\- They didn't sidestep him at all. They negotiated fairly.

If you like domain stories, check out Klouts.. (Which I actually prefered to
this story). I kind of felt mislead after reading this artciel (albeit it was
an enjoyable story).

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/29/how-klout-got-klout-com/>

~~~
drharris
The title is also misleading because it claims they "sidestepped" the owner.
They did not sidestep the owner at all; they tracked him down and paid for the
domain.Sidestepping would have been filing a complaint with ICANN about the
lack of proper contact information. Which would have been cheaper and possibly
quite effective.

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mistercow
>In a final twist, the rental fee on his ankle tracking bracelet was up, and
he needed money in a hurry to avoid being sent back to jail — hence the
frantic request for $500. This was getting weirder and weirder.

So let me get this straight: the government requires ankle tracking bracelets
for parolees, outsources these bracelets to the private sector, and then
requires the parolees themselves to pay the rental fees out of pocket. And
since the parolees themselves have virtually no bargaining power, this is a
privatization scenario where market forces are almost entirely absent.

Just brilliant.

~~~
nowarninglabel
Yes, quite true, this is all before trial too, at least was the case with a
friend.

~~~
mistercow
Well, in this case, it was after trial since he's a parolee, but still. Parole
is not some special gift we give to inmates out of the kindness of our hearts;
it's an institution that we have because it provides benefits to society to
gradually reintegrate felons into society, and this kind of braindead policy
allows private companies to parasitize that institution.

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talmand
Is anyone else disturbed by the idea that the host provider offered to "turn
off the DNS to the site" for some person just because they contacted him? Then
passed along the domain owner's personal info to that person? Hopefully they
asked for permission before handing out personal info. But how did they
explain the outage to their customer?

"Oh, we shut you down because somebody we don't know wants to talk to you. Do
you mind if we give him your current email address? By the way, what is your
current email address?"

Seems it might be of service to several people to know who this provider is.

~~~
hnwh
unless they transfered it elsewhere, looks like Godaddy..

getting someone else's domain shut down though is unbelievably fuk'd up.. this
alone turns me off of the site

    
    
       Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
       Domain Name: WEDGIES.COM
          Created on: 19-Feb-99
          Expires on: 19-Feb-14
          Last Updated on: 04-May-12

~~~
talmand
Since the domain changed hands we can't assume they are the original host
(correct term? registrar?) in this case. If I had bought a domain and the
provider had done that then the first thing I would have done is switch it to
someone else.

------
jawns
“We’ve already found that people who don’t know each other ask the same
questions,” says Jacobson. “Tupac vs Biggie, East Coast vs. West Coast… What’s
more interesting though, are the answers to the question, ‘Of people who
prefer Tupac, do they prefer skiing or snowboarding?’ These are the nuggets
that marketers dream of.”

That's basically what <http://www.correlated.org> does.

But I don't think they'll find that marketers are clamoring for this type of
data. And I think Correlated does a good job of showing why.

~~~
mwexler
Hunch also did something like this... and sold for a pretty good amount. So
perhaps, depending on how it's implemented, it may meet some folks' needs.

------
joshstrange
Between "Unfortunately, the domain was harder to come by than a tequila shot
at an AA meeting" and "This is the digital version of “smoking him out” (like
you would a rabbit in a hole, not a pothead in a dorm room)." I couldn't stop
laughing.

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theyCallMeSwift
Online surveys need to be "less boxer and more brief". Wedgies is doing a damn
good job of solving that if you ask me.

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ludicast
Good time meeting these guys on the doer bus. Wedgies has some legs to it.

------
lnanek2
explanation of their service reminds me of thumb: <http://thumb.it/>

although I guess thumb is targeted at everyone, wedgies more
business/marketers

------
jjacobson
Is what we did terrible?

~~~
grecy
If you got the DNS turned off on one of my domains for no good reason, I'd be
more than a little angry - at you and at my host.

~~~
jjacobson
Agreed. However, the domain pointed to basically a landing page that said "I
want to sell this domain, contact me"

~~~
pavel_lishin
Who puts up a "Please contact me" page without any way of contacting
themselves?

Although this does somewhat excuse the smoke-out; although, couldn't the host
simply have contacted the person themselves?

