Former eBay chief's political bid hits cybersquatter snag

The Scaramento Bee ^ | Monday, Nov. 03, 2008 | Shane Goldmacher

[nickcarraway]

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, hasn't said whether she will run for governor of California in 2010.

But the woman who guided the growth of one of the Internet's biggest success stories has run into an early online stumbling block: a cybersquatter has snatched up a series of potentially valuable domains such as whitmanforgovernor.com, meg2010.com and whitman2010.com.

Now, the former eBay chief is petitioning the equivalent of an international Internet court to get those domain names back - a sure sign the potential politician who's played coy about her own political ambitions is taking a serious look at the race.

On Oct. 15, Whitman filed a petition with the World Intellectual Property Organization to claim rightful ownership of five web addresses, known as URLs. They are: megwhitmanforgovernor.com megwhitman2010.com meg2010.com whitmanforgovernor.com whitman2010.com.

The domains were purchased by Thomas Hall beginning on Jan. 28 - only three days after the first news report that Whitman might run for governor.

Hall said he bought the domains "on a lark."

"I completely forgot that I even owned them," he said via e-mail.

That changed in June, Hall said, when Whitman's attorney's contacted him.

"They demanded I turn over ownership to them," he said. "They have since offered to buy them, and to be honest, because of the way I have been treated, I don't want to sell."

So Team Whitman is taking Hall to an Internet court, of sorts. The pursuit of those domains won't be cheap say Internet dispute experts.

Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a coalition of companies dedicated to maintaining rules to govern the Internet, said appealing for ownership of a domain name "costs $6,000 and more typically $10,000" through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, or UDRP.

[ßuddaßudd]

Cybersquatting is soooo 90’s...
I’ll never forget what Morgan Stanly Dean Whitter did to a teenager to get their URL.

[SJSAMPLE]

I don’t remember that one.

Microsoft did it right.
They had a kid named Mike Rowe with a site “www.mikerowesoft.com” and they wanted the site closed.

Instead of legal action, they offered him $10K and the kid figured he’d get more, so he counter-offered.

That, right there, was proof of “cyber squatting” and Microsoft got the site without paying him a penny.

[ßuddaßudd]

Some kid already had/owned? MSDW.com or something like that for his mountain bike website. Morgans Stanley wanted it, and got it in the end by judgement I beleive. The kid was robbed!