Category: Domain Names

How to get “googled” even though you don’t have THE name?

My Client Is Writing A Book About A Famous Starlet

So how do you get THE name of the Starlet?  You Can’t, unless you are Bill Gates, and even then it might be unlikely.  But don’t despair, you can still get a name that will work.  Here’s one trick I used to get a dot com name that would be picked up by google.

I can’t use the real name of the starlet at the moment, but let’s say it’s Mary Smith.  Any Domain guy will tell you forgetaboutit if you think you would like to buy MarySmith.com.  My client was going to write a book about Mary Smith, so we had a couple of choices without spending a lot of money.  The first obvious choice is to get one of the many Top Level Domains that are available.  By the way, a lot of the TLDs are really not available for the average guy, they are owned by big corporations.

Click Here to see the ICANN list of Top Level Domains.

However, registrars have a basket of extensions you can use aside from the usual .com or .org, which might already be taken by somebody else.  In my client’s case, he could have gotten something like MarySmith.US, or MarySmith.xyz, or MarySmith.world, etc.  GoDaddy, one of the world’s largest domain registrars, offers over 500 extensions.  These vary in price, with some having pricey renewal fees (watch out for that!), but they work because google searches will offer everything up, although you might not be really high on the list.  Other factors can help you here, like having a lot of traffic to your new site, having good SEO (search engine optimization), and a lot of new material all the time.

But there’s another way that works.  My client was old school and wanted a dot com.  So we simply created the domain MarySmithBook.com.  It could also have been MarySmithTheBook.com.  Shorter is better, if available.  But the point is that google will pick it up, assuming it is an active website and is properly set-up.  I just checked google for my client’s site, by typing in “Mary Smith Book  dot com” (substituting my client’s Starlet name for Mary Smith.  The first page of google had 50 entries, including the ads, the google promos, the “did you mean…” stuff, etc.  My client’s website was down the list past #30, but it was on google’s flowing first page.

So we achieved my client’s goal of getting a decent name .com for a major Starlet at a bargain hand-register price that gets decent results in the google search.  The domain name tells the searcher what is important.  He is looking for Mary Smith.  It tells that it is a book.  It will appear in the search pretty close to the top, at least not down the list around #40,000!  It’s not the best solution, but it is a low-buck solution.  Because most of us are not Bill Gates.

The final step for my client is when the book is published he will have to be aggressive with social media postings and publicity in order to drive traffic to his site.  It’s sort of a financial inverted pyramid.  The less capital you have to invest in that really great domain name, the more time you have to put into social media and publicity to balance things out.

And just in case you want to know, MarySmith.com is a landing page, quite possibly for sale at the right price, if your pockets are deep enough, and you can own the domain even if you aren’t writing a book.

Mysterious Germans Control L.A. Domains From Switzerland

Wanna Buy LA or Los Angeles?

You Can Have Them Both For $8 Million

Is There An American Businessman Who Will Step Up?

 

Living in this quiet Swiss Village is a brilliant German businessman who owns Los Angeles Domains

The drama continues as we discover that a mysterious German, living in Reiden, Switzerland, a small agricultural village in Lucerne Canton, controls the two most valuable domains in Los Angeles, California, and probably among the top 10 most valuable in the nation. Is he (or she) a James Bond/Goldfinger character? An international investor with quite a long reach? A politically astute player who is about ready to enter the political frey in California and change history?

Speculation is burning a hole in my file on the matter. The background is just as fascinating as the possible future outcome. The great domain name, LA.com has been the subject of our articles and tweets for some time. It was originally purchased by the Tribune Tronc boys when they owned the Los Angeles Times empire, before it was dismembered and sold off. They promised a great hub, a portal that was presumably going to connect to the Times, and gather a large presence on the net.

But those promises vanished. The Tronc boys paid about 1.2 million for LA.com A bargain at the time. When they sold the Times to Dr. Soong -Shiong, they didn’t mention the domain, or he forgot to ask. Mr. Shiong was busy. He had paid 500 million for a possibly losing newspaper. He didn’t get the famous iconic building the Times had occupied for about a century, the building had been sold to Canadian developers.

And then there was the printing plant. That property had also been sold, so the Times had to find a new huge warehouse to put their printing presses, as well as find a new home for their staff. That’s how they were run out of L.A., all the way to El Segundo, where their HQ is now. The great L.A. Times, the internationally respected newspaper built by the Chandler family owners, who controlled downtown Los Angeles and its politics for over 100 years, had been sent into exile to a plain beachtown, outside the City Limits.

Looking back to the 1960s, it is worth remembering just how powerful the Chandlers were. Here’s a taste of it. Facing them was a hill, called Bunker Hill. Living on it in the 60s were 20,000 working class Angelenos, the blue collar workers who slaved in low income jobs to keep the great City humming. But Chandler, it was claimed by one historian, did not like all those poor folks living up on the hill, looking down on his City Hall and his L.A. Times building. So he wiped them out.

It sounds harsh, but it’s all true. He pressured for the largest (at that time) Redevelopment Project in the United States. All 20,000 residents were removed from the hill and everything torn down. Then the hill itself was cut down, I think it was 200 feet. Later, a couple museums were built on it, and the Grand Park, a symbolically occult designed arena, surrounded by the Courts and Administrative State, was build to face the City Hall, which had been designed by a 33 degree Mason, complete with a pyramid on top. It was the finishing touch of the symbol and center of power of the ruling class in L.A.

The Chandlers are long gone, a faded memory of their glory days. Their instrument of power, The Los Angeles Times, is a shadow of what it was in the 1960s. It is a new era. The old ruling class of Los Angeles are either dead, residing in assisted living homes in Arizona, or shaking in their mansions waiting for home invasion thugs to break in and rob them. In its place, vying for power, are radical Marxists, wealthy real estate developers, extreme leftists, the remains of black culture split between traditionalists and the BLM movement. It’s quite a tango, with shifting alliances, stealth democrats, and a small but feisty Republican conservative movement who hope to salvage something of civilization before the radical democrats totally bankrupt and destroy the City.

Last year, L.A.com was put up for sale by the Troncs, the price was $5 million. I thought that there was a good chance that Dr. Shiong of the Times would get it. He didn’t, missing his second chance at the gold ring, and it was picked up by an unknown person. The site has the potential to be the killer of not only the Times, but to give some of the leftist cable channels like CNN and MSNBC a run for their money.

Whoever bought it didn’t have any big ideas. The site sat for quite a while, advertising an elitist email address for only $99 per year. At first I thought it was a joke. Who would pay 100 bucks a year for an email address? Those are free from gmail, outlook, yahoo and others. Besides, cel phones are kings. Everyone is texting, instant messaging. Emails are fading in the marketplace.

Now a new landing page is up. The email fun is gone. Today, it’s strictly business. LA.com is for sale. With it is LosAngeles.com, another power name. Both for only 8 million.

Are these two domains worth it? The answer is complicated. Look at inflation, running around 10% It’s bad enough if you are a working class slob like me, but if you have a stack of bills in the bank adding up to millions, better find a safe place to park it. Stock market? Oh sure, that’s smart. There are only a few choices: Gold, silver, good real estate and great domains, meaning a great .com like LA.com.

The goal would be to have something left in a few years after the stagflation has destroyed value in everything else. If you have $100 sitting in the bank, in 10 years of this insane inflation, your buying power will be really low, like a cup of coffee at Starbucks, if they are still in business.

LA.com also has tremendous potential for a political disrupter. Make it a tabloid and go for broke. The Democrats in LA are pathetic, donkeys with no ears. Crime is soaring. The infrastructure in crumbling, the celebrities are banal. There’s a lot of fodder. The Times is finished, propped up by advertising inserts from Communist China. They are so woke that a lot of folks call it the El Segundo Times, or worse. They are way left of center, running dogs of the woke donkeys, and nowhere to go as far as a money making business. The middle and the right don’t read it because of its slant, young people are getting their news on their phones, and small business is looking for more productive venues to put their money.

Running L.A.com as a conservative but feisty tabloid on the web would bring some sanity back to Los Angeles. And running LosAngeles.com as a cultural/event site with a slightly liberal bent would be a perfect match.

It’s a weird turn of events. A mysterious German, living in an apartment or condo in a village in Switzerland controls the two best domains in Los Angeles. Some Canadian developers are tearing up the old L.A. Times iconic building in downtown L.A., and the Times itself has been shoved into a neighboring beach town. Who’s going to step up and kick up a political and cultural dust storm? Who’s going to pull a few mil out of their Swiss bank account and proclaim themselves the new Ruler of Los Angeles?  A two-headed Kingdom, LA.com and LosAngeles.com.  The beginnings of a new empire.  And if it fails in its mission, you still own the domains.  And it is Los Angeles, even if it’s over-run by a herd of wild donkeys.

LA.com’s Mystery Owners Launching Premium Email Address

LA.com’s New Owners Ready “Portal” For Los Angeles News and Events, Plus a Pricey email address for only $99.

by Domain Buddha

How does [email protected] Sound? It has a certain ring to it!

After years of just sitting in the ownership bin of the Tribune-Tronc crew, LA.com has been sold and is ready to launch under new ownership.  The purchase price was not revealed, but it was listed for sale for 5 million.   I said at the time that was a fair price, although the head Tronc had paid one million for it a few years before.  He was intending to link it to the Los Angeles Times, but things went wild for the Troncs, and they sold the Times and the San Diego Tribune to another rich guy in the Medical business.  Only they didn’t mention LA.com, or he didn’t want it.  Big mistake.

So now LA.com has a new owner.  Who is it?  Not announced yet.  Elon Musk?  Probably not, he’s chasing the little bluebird.  I would have guessed Eli Broad, who had at least a passing interest in owning the Los Angeles Times at one point.  He passed away last year, so we can rule him out, unless he’s running it from the spirit world.  Any clues? Not much.  The logo for the new email service looks kind of like a sports patch,  like a baseball patch for the St. Louis Cardinals.  Hmm, a whole new dimension could be around the corner.  Could the new owner be a rich retired sports guy?

The new site is billed as a “Portal”, with a focus on local news and events.  That sounds like PR talk for a site that will flood out corporate news releases and put an event calendar full of happy-talk wine and cheese meet-ups and lectures on metaphysics and woke-ism.

The main push right now is for all of Los Angeles elitists and Hollywood high-lifers to pop for the exclusive $99 per year for your new, very “in”, very cool, email address:  like “[email protected]” for example.  If you act now, you can get it for half price.  (Even Hollywood folks like a bargain once in a while).

But who cares that much about email?  Everyone is now on their phones, messaging or using signal.  Email is fading.  Everybody has an address, but so does the post office.  Who writes and mails a letter anymore?  Not many folks compared to how many are using their iphones for messages.  I’m not saying email is dead yet, but it is not what it was.  The phone is the thing.  Is this a grand old time to launch an elitist email service?  G-mail, Outlook, and many others are free.  Is it an “ad-free” service?  No details were posted on LA.com.  With the economy turning down and raging inflation, is the bottom 99% going to blow about a hundred bucks a year for an email address?  How does the new owner expect to make back his 5 million purchase price by selling an expensive email service?  And then there was the big London email and phone scandal a few years ago, but I digress.  The important thing about email is privacy and security, meaning no snooping by anyone.

The big picture is that LA.com could become the go-to site for big news, scandals, Hollywood, entertainment, etc.  A big city tabloid on your phone (or ipad or computer).  The trend is that the new powerful phones are what folks are using.  Even laptop use is somewhat fading.

Stay tuned for more information on LA.com.  Hope it’s not going to be a cross between the old L.A. Weakly during it’s last 5 days and Friday’s Calendar section from the El Segundo Woke News.  We don’t need that great name to be wasted on a Portal to Ho-Hum land.

Is LA.com Really Worth $5 Million?

Tribune Holdout From L.A. Times Sale Finally Comes Out of Hiding.

The good old days when everyone was talking and reading about the LA Times – Cover of “Billion Dollar Blackjack”

When the Tribune boys sold the L.A. Times to one of its shareholders, Patrick Soon-Shiong,  there were a lot of goodies left out of the deal.  Remembering back to that time and the chaos surrounding the events, it’s a wonder things didn’t get really berserk.  Here’s some memories:

Tribune had changed its name of the Times group to Tronc.  Oh God, what a field day we all had making fun of that lunacy.  The worst corporate re-name in history.

The Times was losing dough, and beset by union problems, staff bailing out, pension buy-outs and financial troubles.

The Tribune guys were ex-medical business guys, fat with cash from a sale to IBM.  They dumped  the Times and San Diego Union on one of their shareholders, another really wealthy medical business guy.  Did any of this group even have a paper route when they were kids? Don’t think so.

The building didn’t go with the deal. The paper boys had to move west.

What didn’t Mr. Soon-Shiong get?  No real estate.  The Times iconic HQ was sold to some Canadians.  The property where the papers were printed had been sold in 2010.  And the biggest sleeper of all, LA.com, which the Troncs had purchased for a reported million dollars, was held back.  The buyer got the Times for $500 million, but it was the newspapers only.

For 500 million (roughly the debt that the Times had accumulated) he should have asked for  LA.com to be thrown in the deal.  A missed opportunity.

The Tribune/Tronc boys had put up a landing page, but did nothing with the digital property.  Now it is for sale for $5 Million.  Is it worth it?

Well, let’s see.  It is the greatest two letter name for one of the greatest cities in the world.  Forget about the recent lunatics who temporarily occupy the government.  They will eventually be gone, along with the miles of homeless camps, nut cakes and dopers who now occupy the streets.  A new regime of competent business guys with common sense will solve the problems, really help out the homeless, put the criminals into rehab or jail and get the city back on track.  So yes, the price for the .com is fair. The sale is being handled by MediaOptions.com, one of the great domain brokers.

One more word about the price.  In Santa Monica real estate developers are buying up houses for 2 million, tearing them down, and building mega-mansions for sale at 10 million   So the greatest dot com that you could ever get for Los Angeles could easily be worth 10-15 million right now.  The price of a new mc-mansion.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, executive chairman and chief executive officer of Abraxis BioScience Inc.,speaks at the World Health Care Congress in Oxon Hill, Maryland, U.S., on Tuesday, April 13, 2010. The meeting of chief executive officers and senior executives from all sectors of the health care industry runs until April 14. Photographer: Jay Mallin/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Will Patrick Soon-Shiong step up and buy this?  The Times moved its HQ to El Segundo, a pleasant beach area town.  It is so lame that it is now referred to as The El Segundo Times.  It is pathetic.  Money comes in from Red China every week as a complete propaganda section of several pages to prop up the advertising.  The paper is a shadow of its former self of the 1970s when it had great foreign correspondents around the globe.

The only way out of this mess is for Mr. Soon-Shiong to buy LA.com and turn it into the major, dynamic website of the City.  Get rid of the agit-prop crew that writes the current nonsense and hire some writers and editors from the New York tabs.  Get the Paparazzi on the payroll.  Blow the City wide open.  The corruption, the celebs, the lunacy, is all there, waiting to be featured on LA.com.  Put the Times back in the center of the action.

And one more thing.  Don’t wait too long, there’s plenty of aggressive dudes waiting in the wings looking for adoration on the way to immortality.  And maybe one of them even had a paper route back in the day.

Embed from Getty Images

ICANN Publishes Updated Domain Name Marketplace Indicators

The Shine Is Fading:  New gTLDs Drop From 2018 to 2019

Say It Aint So Dept……

The latest information from ICANN reveals an interesting statistic.  The number of NEW Top Level Domains in service actually fell by 444,747 from 2018 to 2019.  This is not a good sign, and indicates folks are wise to the fact that a lot of new TLDs have no set renewal and some have skyrocketed in price upon renewal.  The Legacy TLDs, like .com, .net, and .org, actually increased by 2,544,947 from the same time period.  The country code TLDs also showed a healthy increase.

Below is the news release from ICANN, with the links so that you can download their spreadsheet file and study it yourself.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LOS ANGELES – 9 December 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the release of updated industry metrics as part of its Domain Name Marketplace Indicators initiative. The initiative presents statistics related to generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with the aim of fostering greater transparency for reputable information on the evolution of the domain name marketplace.

View the updated metrics here.

The metrics released as part of this initiative encompass three categories and six dimensions:

  • Robust competition: registrant choice, registrant domain adoption, service provider marketplace entry, service provider competition.
  • Marketplace stability: service provider contractual compliance.
  • Trust: industry safeguards.

ICANN plans to continue to expand the initiative’s coverage of shortlisted indicators and publish these statistics twice a year in order to track progress against its goal of supporting the evolution of the domain name marketplace to be robust, stable, and trusted.

A community Advisory Panel worked with ICANN to identify relevant indicators that form part of the current schema. Concurrent to the release of these Version 1.0 marketplace indicators, the ICANN organization will continue to work with the community and the Advisory Panel to evaluate additional enhancements that might be incorporated into this initiative in the future.

About ICANN

ICANN‘s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.

Domains For Sale For 2023

 

We Are Posting Some Domain Names For Sale in Categories.  Available Feb. 1, 2023

Tech

Ramtronic.com  $4,000.

Electrotronic.com  $2,000.

Media Related

StreamCannon.com  $35,000.

StreamTiger.com  $25,000.

StreamHollywood.com  $50,000.

StreamKitty.com  $20,500.

Streamia.org  $10,000.

VideoFolks.com  $2500.

Radio/Podcast

BigTentRadio.com  $10,000.

RantHell.com  $2000.

Restaurant

SingingPanda.com  $20,000.

FatCoyote.com  $5,000.

Finance

LoveCreditUnions.com  $1500.

BeatBankers.com  $12,000.

Business

LogixAmerica.com  $3,500.

PsychicMechanic.com  $2,000.

AdBounce.com  $15,000.

MyRoomi.com  $1,250.

Fun/Tourist/Travel

Calif4nia.com  $800.

LoveCalif4nia.com  $500.

Calif4niaRocks.com  $500.

TravelCalif4nia.com  $400.

Religious

LoveGodLoveJesus.com  $750.

LoveGod-LoveJesus.com  $550.

Wedding

LovelyWeddingPhotos.com  $1,200.

LovelyWeddingVideo.com  $1,500.

BrideandGroomVideo.com  $2,500.

If you are interested in any of the above Domains, please email us: [email protected]

 

 

 

Get a Domain That Fits Your Business

If You Do Nothing Else, Get a Great Name That Fits Your Business

Business management challenges concept with a businessman holding a cube trying to make it fit in a round hole as a symbol of overcoming obstacles and adversity through strategy and strong leadership.

Names and Logos have MEANING. Behind many of the powerful names today there are hidden factors of numbers and Gematria.  We will help you with your most important asset, YOUR NAME.

We can have a conversation with you about your new domain.  Should you stick with “dot com”?  Or go with the new “top level domain extensions”?  There’s a lot to consider.  For instance, some of the new domain extensions have a reasonable price to obtain, but a huge yearly fee.

Some businesses have a lot of latitude for a name.  A restaurant could have a flippant or flamboyant name.  But if you have a pizza restaurant, it would be best to have the word “pizza” in your name.  Every case is different, and we are here to help you.

We Can Help You Build Your Website

The most important thing is to do a lot of advanced planning.  Think about your web page, what is it that you want it to do?  Looks and design are one thing, but the important matter is to have it function in a way that brings you business.  Chat with us to get started.

Video Marketing For Your Site

We’ve got cameras!  We know it is not for everyone, but marketing using video can be effective.  You may not need a feature film, but some customer testimonials can’t hurt.  We have figured out many ways to use video, and you may want to explore this ever more important way to promote your business.

Domain Name Games – Part 3

The California Credit Union Domain Story Unfolds Into The Internet Void.

by Ed Murray

Once again a major Credit Union has failed to secure its name and all aspects of the name, suffering among other things, an invisible assault by the Internet Buccaneers. High weirdness as the trail of the Internet Buccaneers leads to the Hermit Kingdom.

 Los Angeles Teachers Credit Union

California Credit Union began in the mid-1930s as the Los Angeles Teachers Credit Union. Today it has about 70,000 members, 13 branches, and $1.3 billion in assets. The membership is open to public and private, current and retired, educators and school district employees in California. It is also possible to qualify for membership if you or your children attend school in California. It is a strong credit union, but if you look at their all-important internet domain situation, their web marketing strategy comes into question. Although a well-established operation when the internet came along, they missed both the early opportunities and the more recent ones. Most of the best net domain names were snatched away, including the ones of their very own name. Were they sleepwalking through all these recent years as the internet exploded on civilization? Many companies were, much to their own distress later on.

 

In previous parts to this series, it has been shown that the internet buccaneers cruise the internet ocean looking for opportunities to obtain names that business organizations have failed to get and register for themselves. Sometimes businesses, in this case credit unions, have failed to get even their own names, which others have grabbed. The internet buccaneers will set up “pay-per-click” web pages and actually direct traffic away from the place it would ordinarily go, and making some money along the way. Let’s look at the situation at California Credit Union. Although they have been around since 1933, they must have slept through most of the dot com boom. Their website is CaliforniaCU.org. They registered this site on November 23, 2000. They also registered CaliforniaCU.com, although it is only used to “redirect” traffic to their main web site, CaliforniaCU.org. At that time, in November 2000, many possibilities existed to protect their name, including domains of their own name: California Credit Union. Why they did not at least protect their full name is a mystery. Maybe they wanted to get the shortest name they could think of, and the heck with the rest? If you have been following this series of articles, you can guess what happened.

The Internet Buccaneers Discover California Credit Union

You remember the Brisbane Blokes? The Aussies from Fortitude Valley (Brisbane area) who took a bite out of the Lockheed Missile FCU that became Star One Credit Union? The Brisbane Blokes found California Credit Union.com available and floating on the internet sea untethered on November 22, 2001. This was one full year after the “real” California Credit Union started their website as CaliforniaCU.org. The blokes got busy and put up a “pay-per-click” page, where there are links on the main page, which go to other links, which continue to other links, an inverse pyramid of hundreds of “click through” links, providing them with a stream of income from anyone clicking on a link. The main page links are distinctly finance related – banking, mortgage, offshore banking, internet banking, and much more. This is all legal, and anyone trying to find California Credit Union by typing that name into a browser with a dot com on the end will be taken to a website set up by the “Brisbane Blokes”, as I call them. Imagine how many folks have tried to find the “real” California Credit Union since 2001, over ten years ago, and been directed elsewhere? We will never know. For California Credit Union, it’s like throwing away money and customers. The main I.P. server is not in the United States, and CaliforniaCreditUnion.com is holding forth up north, in Burnaby, Canada, at IP 72.51.27.51., The story, unfortunately doesn’t end there.

California Credit Union Gets A Trademark But UnableTo Protect It With A Domain Name

On June 4, 2007 California Credit Union filed for a Trademark. The logo showed an orange, with the words “California Credit Union.” This was already six years after the Brisbane Blokes had found their domain name unprotected and snagged it, so although they had a trademark filed, they could not use it to acquire the domain, because the trademark was so long after the date of the domain filing. The trademark was finally registered on November 4, 2008 and it does offer some protection, but as far as the domain names, it was too little, too late. They had lost their own name, and unless they want to pony up some substantial cash in the future to buy it from the Brisbane Blokes, they will never get it as cheaply as they could have back before November 22, 2001. A lesson learned? It does not seem so.

Strange Connections Revealed

Five years after the Brisbane Blokes found the unprotected CaliforniaCreditUnion.com, the other group from the Land of Oz, the ones I call the Nobby Beach Boyz, grabbed CaliforniaCreditUnion.org. This was created on November 17, 2006. The web page on this currently is re-directed to CaliforniaCreditUnion.com. The bewildering network of IP servers, registrants, and hidden ownership continues to look like a larger and larger spider web, impossible to determine who is the actual owner. Consider this: Although CaliforniaCreditUnion.org was registered to the un-named group or blokes from Nobby Beach, Australia (The Nobby Beach Boyz as I call them), the main server is listed as 208.87.34.15, in Nassau, Bahamas. This is the same server that the “Panamanians” were using to house PremierAmerica.org. The same IP server that houses all the “craigs list” misspellings (see Domain Name Games – Part 2 to follow this). So we have some links, the CaliforniaCreditUnion.org, (the Nobby Beach Boyz), have redirected their site to CaliforniaCreditUnion.com, the Brisbane Blokes site, but their stated IP is the same as the “Panamanian’s” PremierAmerica.org IP server. Do the connections mean the owner(s) are the same or are they business partners? Hold on, it gets stranger.

The Buccaneer Trail Leads To The Hermit Kingdom

Remember that the California Credit Union began as the Los Angeles Teachers Credit Union. And remember Big Jim’s stern instructions to always protect all your names, past and present, with domains. Because you never know. Here’s some interesting things that have happened to the old Los Angeles Teachers Credit Union name over the years. The short version or abbreviation would be LATU, that would be the best name for a dot-com domain. So who got LATU.com? Just a few years ago, May 30, 2005, LATU.com was registered by an outfit called MediaBlue, a domain registration company in Gwangju, Korea! If you go to LATU.com you will see a familiar page layout with things to “click” on, in this case a lot of links to getting a PhD, an online Bachelor Degree, Psychology School, an Accounting Associates Degree, and similar online educational opportunities, with links that go to links which go to other links. The listed server 208.87.35.107 is in Nassau, Bahamas, the same IP server that hosts StaroneCreditUnion.org, registered to the “Brisbane Blokes” (see Domain Name Games Part 2). What does this new revelation mean? Is MediaBlue shielding the group that is really behind all these faux sites? Are the Koreans the real owners of the domains registered in Panama, Nobby Beach, Australia, Fortitude Valley (Brisbane), Australia, Burnaby, Canada and other offshore hide-outs? Could it be that it is actually a shadowy group of Korean businessmen, not “Aussies”, or “Panamanians” or “Canadians” behind this web of “credit union” sites? A world-wide net of off-shore IPs housing these hundreds of websites? We may never know. Until now, it is an important clue, a startling link from the Hermit Kingdom of Korea to the IP server in the Bahamas hosting StarOneCreditUnion. Again, as Dave Emory is fond of saying, “Food for thought, and grounds for further investigation.”

LATU names Grabbed Up.

While we are exploring the old LATU name, let’s look at a couple of other extensions. We observe that possibly a mysterious group of Koreans got LATU.com, but who got .org? The LATU.org was created on February 5, 2003 and registered to Alliance for Development in North Carolina. It currently hosts Mountain Shepherds, a community owned travel company designed for South Indian tourists and travelers choosing to explore the Garwal Himalayas. Their web page says “North Welcomes South”.

LATU.net, the other logical extension that was up for grabs, was created on April 7, 1999. The registrant is Lance Turner of Winter Park, Florida, with the main IP server in Hernden, Virginia. The site is for creative development of web-based modules for ecommerce stores.

More Names Go South and East

Some other names and abbreviations that were not protected include the great abbreviation CCU.org. This was left on the table by the California Credit Union, and was picked up on October 31, 2000 by a Mr. Tim Flannery, and registered in Drums, PA. (The same town where Premier.com, the Pet Products company is registered. ) CCU.org is now Colorado Credit Union. This credit union started in 1973, as a small cu for Johns Manville employees. In 2009 they merged with the Brighton, Colorado, Federal Credit Union, and expanded their membership. Their 2010 annual report states assets of $100,978,656. So at least in this instance, another “real” credit union benefited with the great name left by California Credit Union.

But what about CCU.com? This site is possibly for sale, and if you type the name into your browser you will go to a familier looking links page, that lists “checking accounts, loans, credit union online, online map, and credit union credit card” links to click on. More of interest, something I hadn’t noticed on any other “link” sites, some of the links are in other Asian characters, Chinese, Korean, etc. Although I printed out this page, the next time I went to it all the names were in English, and the Asian links had vanished. This site was registered on May 16, 1995. A long time ago in internet terms. The registered owner seems to be a group in Washington, DC, called Telepathy, which states to be the parent of a company called State Ventures, the publishers of website regional guides. They operate such sites as Pennsylvania.com, Maryland.com, Annapolis.com, etc. The main IP server is 208.87.35.107, and is located on a server farm at Nassau, Bahamas. A familiar site. As described in Domain Name Game Part 2, the “Pompano Beach Surfers” were operating PremierAmerica.com from the same IP server in the Bahamas. It is also the same IP server farm housing LATU.com, the MediaBlue-Korean connection. More connections than a switchboard. The “Pompano Beach Surfers” now connected to Washington DC and the Telepathy group? And did the momentary Asian links on CCU.com mean a connection back to Korea?

And then there is the name of California Credit Union that was turned on its head to become CreditUnionCalifornia.com. This website was created recently, July 4, 2011. How could that happen, you ask? July 4th is an American holiday. Yep, but not in Panama. That’s right, CreditUnionCalifornia was registered at Fundacion Private Whois in Panama. It’s like the PremierAmerica.org site, also registered in Panama, the unwanted “child” of Premier America Credit Union. My, my, what a tangled web gets weaved when we leave our names floating out on the internet sea. CreditUnionCalifornia.com is just like all the other “pay-per-click” sites, with “credit union” links you can click on that take you to hundreds of other links, a forest of links. The main IP server is in Nassau, Bahamas, a familiar address, 207.87.34.15 to be exact. It is the same site that hosts PremierAmerica.org that we explored in Part 2 of this series, and also hosts CaliforniaCreditUnion.org, owned by the Nobby Beach boyz Buccaneers.

The Strange Case of the Reverse Hijacking.

On April 8, 2010 a somewhat strange complaint was filed with WIPO, which is the World International Property Organization. This is the organization that handles domain name disputes. A company from Tulsa, Oklahoma filed a complaint to obtain a website called “freebird.com” from the companies that owned it, mediablue of Gwangju, Republic of Korea, and DomainCA of Seoul, Korea, a “Whois Protect Service”. (Remember that mediablue had registered LATU.com) The claim was that the Tulsa company, called Blue Financial Corporation had received a trademark on October 17, 2006 for the name “FreeBird”. They said that the trademark was for providing temporary use of on-line non-downloadable software for use in electronic authorization, processing and management of card present and card not present credit card, debit card, electronic check transactions and payments conducted via global computer networks.

Blue Financial further claimed that the other party had no rights to use the domain name because Blue Financial had a trademark, and that the domain was being used as a pay-per-click website and that it was being held in an effort to resell it. Looking back on this case, one wonders if these guys from Tulsa and their high-end lawyers knew what they were up against. Probably not, or they might not have bothered to waste their time and money. As it turned out, they were facing not just a little internet domain company, mediablue.com, but one of the most powerful forces in the world engaged in internet technology.

The first thing that happened was that the respondents, mediablue.com, joined by a company called DomainCA, asked that the proceedings be in the Korean language, as the original registration for freebird.com was done in Korean. The Tulsa boys wanted English. The panel allowed the proceedings to be in English, but the respondents could file in Korean. Mediablue and DomainCA further said that the disputed domain name dated back to June 22, 1997, way before the Tulsa group filed their trademark. They said that the complainant was “trying to hijack the Respondent’s domain name.” WIPO found for mediablue and DomainCA, saying that the domain existed six years before the Tulsa group started to use freebird to obtain a trademark. WIPO said that “circumstances warrant a finding of reverse domain name hijacking”. The Koreans were victorious, and the case shows how hard and potentially expensive it is to get names that are registered in foreign lands. Freebird.com remains in the custody of the DomainCA organization to this day.

The View From The 16th Floor Must Be Exhilarating.

Tracking mediablue.com is difficult, it is protected behind high security, but doing so provided some worthwhile information. The registrar of this website, created May 14, 2002, is one of the most powerful internet technology companies in Asia, the Korea Information Certificate Authority (KICA), doing business as DomainCA.com. The KICA was established in 1999 and is accredited to act as a licensed domain certification authority by the Korean government. Over the last few years it has worked on various electronic and internet projects in Costa Rica, Cameroon, Vietnam, the Philippenes, Mongolia, Indonesia, Iran, and Panama. It is highly involved in such things as Public Key Infrastructure to insure secure electronic transactions in many countries, as well as electronic commerce, banking, and stock trading. It’s major shareholders are some of the largest technology companies in the world: Daoutech, Inc., SK Planet Co., Samsung, LG Electronics, Korea Telecommunications, and others. With its subsidiaries signgate.com, and DomainCA.com, a whois protect service, it occupies the 16th Floor of one of the most unique and futuristic building complexes in all of Asia, and perhaps in the world, at 1605 Sangam Dong, Seoul, Korea. The building complex is a gigantic media center, and is referred to as the Nuritkum Square Building.

Nuritkum Square, in Digital Media City, was designed by an American architect, Paul Davis and his partner Steve Ryder. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Davis divides his time between Los Angeles and Seoul, Korea, which he refers to as “the Paris of Asia.”. His project includes a 500,420 square foot 22 story business tower and a 15 story research and development facility. Contained in this are a production studio and editing suites, a digital pavillion for product exhibition, retail space, a 1,052 stall car parking structure and a central plaza. A bridge spanning between the two towers contains exhibition and meeting spaces. You can “Google” photos and search for Nuritkum Square in Seoul, Korea to see photographs of this stunningly beautiful complex.

Built for, and owned by the Korean Information Technology Industry Promotion Agency, the complex is designed for up-and-coming information technology businesses and provides a space for industry collaboration and interaction with the public. From their perch on the 16th floor of this magnificent structure, the KICA lads surely must have an exhilarating view of the surrounding area, and some of the windows must be able to see the beautiful Hangang River Front, a short distance away.

The Four Clues

What in the world does the reverse domain-name hijacking case, the KICA, mediablue, and freebird.com have to do with all this? How are they all connected to the orphaned credit union names and how do they tie into the Internet Buccaneers? Throughout this trek, four interesting clues appeared:

1. A clue, a faint one, appeared on the web page of PremierAmericaCreditUnion.com. The site that advertises the Micro Bikinis. The English on the page is just not 100%. It’s like a very well-educated foreigner would write things that are almost perfect, but just a little off. When I listed the link categories that appeared on the page, I copied them exactly. Here’s one: “Women Fashion”. Not quite right, it should have been “Women’s Fashion”. Another example was “Bikini String”, which should read “String Bikini”. And then there is “Employment Jobs” wedged between McDonalds Jobs and Walmart Jobs. What kind of a “job” would it be if it were not “employment”?

2. The next clue is from the website CCU.com, the abandoned abbreviation from California Credit Union that was picked up by Telepathy in Washington, DC. The first time I visited the page, half the links were in Korean script. The next visit, which was a day later, it had all reverted to English. The curtain parted for a second, and who was visible behind it? You don’t have to be psychic to guess.

3. Clue #3 is mediablue.com, which was listed as the owner or operator of LATU.com. MediaBlue had its IP server in Gwangju, Korea, but as the reverse-hijacking complaint showed, mediablue.com was tied into KICA and its dba DomainCA.com, operating out of the 16th Floor of the Nuritkum Square IT Complex in Seoul, Korea. A Whois search led to the fact that DomainCA is the registrant (owner) of mediablue.com. DomainCA.com and its parent are the very powerful Korean internet technology companies.

4. The last clue is also from the reverse-hijacking case. The dot com that was the center of the fight was called FreeBird.com. This was at the time owned by mediablue.com, a defendant (respondent) in the case. FreeBird.com is now claimed openly by DomainCA.com. A visit to the FreeBird.com website reveals some interesting things. First, it claims that it is “the Leading Free Bird Site on the Net.” This would be hard to argue. The website page is the all-too-familiar pay-per-click links, half of them for Tablets, PC Tablets, Tablets dorid (sp) and Airline, the other links are for Bird Net, Bird Photos, Bird Sitting, and Oriole Bird. Note the similar “stilted”, not quite right names, Bird Net should be Bird Netting; Oriole Bird should be Oriole Birds; Tablets dorid should be Droid Tablets, etc.. There is no mystery as to the owner of this site, it is the mighty Korean technology company. It is hosted on an IP that is well known by now to the readers of this series, 208.87.35.107, the server farm in the Bahamas that is also hosting CCU.com, Telepathy.com, LATU.com, PremierAmerica.com, and StarOneCreditUnion.org. It’s where the DC Telepaths, the Pompano Beach Surfers, the Brisbane Blokes, and the Mediablues all rub elbows. What a coincidence!

The Vanished Galleons of the Internet Buccaneers.

The Internet Buccaneers. Imagine them dropping anchor in the Bahamas, at the old port of Nassau. They troop into the town, settling into a sleazy pub. The Brisbane Blokes, the boyz from Pompano Beach, the Panamanians, the Nobby Beach bunch, they all sailed the Internet Spanish Main, attacking the big Galleons. In the pub, they’re drinking and wenching, swapping tales of the domain treasures they’ve wrangled from galleons like Star One, Premier America, California.

But these are just imaginations. The dreams of today with the trappings of yesteryear, the romantic times of old on the Spanish Main and other places where the waters of the seven seas lap up against distant lands. The dreams fade as the morning of a new day comes. As the dew on the grass gives way to the morning sun; the laughter in that old pub in Nassau slowly goes silent. The mighty galleons of the Buccaneers become fuzzy, the image starts to dissolve, then fade in the new day.

The stark new day.

Should Credit Unions Read The Good Book?

Maybe the Credit Unions should read the good book once in a while. Especially Ephesians 6:12. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers….” The flesh and blood Buccaneers are one thing. They are nothing now but a dream, and in their place could be something far more ominous. A powerful corporation, world-wide in scope, with intimate ties to a major government, owned at least in part by some of the largest and most powerful technology companies on earth. Partnered with smart techies from the finest foreign universities. A network that reaches far beyond the Spanish Main, to Africa, Asia, America, and to places not universally known by the average member of our credit unions. In spite of the strength of the credit unions and their several billions in assets, very powerful corporations, focused on the Domain Name Game, can play an international chess game second to none with the credit unions. The buccaneer fleet has vanished and in its place we may have glimpsed a new fleet, a modern navy, so to speak, backed by a large modern State, with virtually unlimited assets and information knowledge. Is it possible that behind the matrix of names and domains, grabbing the unwanted “children” of the Credit Unions, who so foolishly cast them out, is a far bigger player than anyone has imagined? A power that itself is involved in registering domains and issuing certification? A power that has a web that spans the globe, running information technology even to some State Intelligence Agencies? Food for thought, especially for the marketing departments of the credit unions and the executives who have ignored this situation for decades. The domain name game is getting serious.

 

On shore, I could see the glow of the great camp-fire

burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Someone was

singing, a dull, old, droning sailor’s song, with a droop

and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no

end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had

heard it on the voyage more than once and remembered these

words:

“But one man of her crew alive, What put to sea with

seventy-five.”

Shiver My Timbers, shiver My Soul/Yo Ho He Ho/There are men

whos hearts as black as coal

And they sailed there ship across the ocean blue/A Blood

thirsty captain and a cut throat crew./Its a darker tale as

was ever told/Of a lust for treasure and a love of gold…/

 

—-Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island