Some stars say they don't really see themselves as famous until the day they find out they have a stalker. Well, on the internet there aren't as many cases of stalking (unless you're Jenni or Jamie) but I've discovered an equivilant.

I found out today that somebody has cybersquatted AOLiza.com. They registered the domain on August 29th, the same day that the ABCnews and CNN articles came out.

As regular readers of the site know, I'm all for the rights of domain name holders who have legitimate purposes for their sites, even if they happen to conflict with the trademarks of large companies, but this is just mean. The word "aoliza" didn't exist on the net, not even once, prior to my putting up the site in mid-August, and they go and grab the domain for what? To get the mis-hits when people try the domain? To bribe me with it? Grumble, grumble.

Actually, looking into the service, namedemo.com, a division of the internet registrar Register.com, they'll let you get use to any one unused .org .net or .com domain you choose for free, but their agreement states:

"As part of the NameDemo.com service, NameDemo.com grants you a limited, non-exclusive, personal, non-transferable, non-assignable, revocable license to use the .com, .net, or .org domain name selected by you solely in connection with the NameDemo.com service. You acknowledge and agree that NameDemo.com, not you, will be the registrant of the domain name selected by you, and that your rights to that domain name are solely those of a licensee. You also acknowledge and agree that there is a one domain name per user limit. You further acknowledge and agree that your NameDemo.com domain name is subject to the terms of this Agreement."
--Excerpt from namedemo.com terms of use

Basically, this is legalese for "You can't give or sell the domain to anyone. We own it, we'll let you use it until we don't want to anymore, and if we want to let someone else use it at the same time, we can." The only rationale I can think of for a company to do this (and an ICANN authorized domain name registration company, to boot) is if there's a clause in their ICANN agreement prohibiting them from simply doing a domain-name grab for themselves. This way, they're ostensibly doing it at the request of their legitimate customers (who aren't paying anything), and if they find a use for the domain, they can take it away from the customer for any reason. Further, the terms of service ensure that the customer can't move the domain to another registrar (or even ISP), as namedemo.com is listed in Whios as the registering party and domain name owner.

I'd wondered before what would stop one of the domain name registrars from simply grabbing a huge number of domains and hold them. Now it looks like we've found one that found a way to do just that.