Bank of America Buying Abusive Domain Names 249
Nite_Hawk writes "Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of directors' and senior executives' names followed by 'sucks' and 'blows.'"
They can't afford them all (Score:5, Insightful)
Yesterday [boingboing.net] it was noted that they can do this but getting all of those available will exceed their available cash. Seems like a waste of time and energy.
Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
The nearly endless variety of insulting phrases that begin with [name] [verb] [...] makes it impractical to register more than a tiny proportion of them, and no matter how extensive, it's easy to think of alternatives.
[name]stealsyourmoney.com comes to mind in the context of BoA long before it would occur to me to register [name]sucks.com, much less [name]sucksass.com, [name]sucksthebigone.com, and -- in the spirit of Bill Hicks -- [name]suckssatansscalycock.com.
Re:Everyone does it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even think it matters.
Honestly, if people can't start up "xSucks.com" they'll go and register something like "truthX" and spew their hate there.
By trying to keep from them from abusive and probably discreditable domain names, you're probably just going to push them into ones that will cause wider contraversy.
Let's start a nice slow golf clap for the Bank of America.
Waste of time... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is like putting buckets over your flowers in advance of a hurricane...while living in New Orleans.
On the other hand it is really interesting they are scared enough about the Wikileaks release to take these fairly absurd measures. I wonder what public opinion of Wikileaks will be like if they expose some serious corruption in a major bank.
Re:Clean slate... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I have with bank of america is credit card debt. I hope that disappears in the whole wikileakageddon bank of americassplosion.
don't bet on it, your debt might be one of their few assets when this is over. :p
Re:Just Making Themselves Look Worse (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be pretty close to admitting that their senior execs have done things that would cause public outrage. Seems like a smarter strategy would have been just to shut up completely about it until seeing what these leaks actually contain. But, I suppose if you know beyond a doubt you will be proven guilty and held to account for something, you might as well prepare for it.
There is one prepatory step that will apparently never occur to them: admit they have done wrong, identify the people they have wronged, make it right by giving them full compensation, and document that they have done so.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering their motive is indirect censorship and their target market that they wish would not see the offending material is amongst the veritable hordes of Facebook/Twitter/MySpace zombies out there this is incredibly stupid.
URL shortener exist for a reason. It makes posting to Facebook and Twitter that much easier. Not to mention, it would be pretty hard for BoFA to prevent people from forming Facebook groups.
Domain names are just one of the ways we use to communicate locations, and find them, on the Internet now.
Foolish and a waste of money.
Re:Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Go google "scientology" as an example. The 3rd result is "xenu.net" - a site who's sole purpose is to bring down the COS. Didn't need the word "scientology" anywhere in that URL.
Re:Just Making Themselves Look Worse (Score:5, Insightful)
There is one prepatory step that will apparently never occur to them: admit they have done wrong, identify the people they have wronged, make it right by giving them full compensation, and document that they have done so.
That's a sucker's bet. These people are PROFESSIONALS. They'll go with the tried-and-true method and round up some scapegoats, of course.
Re:Everyone does it (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed.
Or:
reallysucks.com
reallytrulysucks.com
reallytrulysucksbigtime.com
superreallytrulysucksbigtime.com
and so on....
Lots of buying to do there... I don't see how such defensive strategies can work... Am I missing something?
Taking Sites Down (Score:3, Insightful)
I have personally experienced the taking-down of sites and content by ISPs which were legally bullied (cease and desist orders) by large companies to make the site/content go away. It's possible that for every one site/piece of content that I've seen taken down outside of due process, short-circuiting the burden of proof, there may be many other sites where the ISP referred the matter to a legal department and determined that it was just corporate bullying, and took no action.
In my personal experience, when a big company threatens to take action against a smaller company, unless it's a high-profile case that the EFF is willing to tackle, the smaller company seems to fold and remove the site/content. It simply costs too much to battle it out in court, so the big guy often wins.
Does anyone have any experience with a smaller company telling a larger company to go suck eggs and successfully fighting a suit or threat to sue? Maybe I'm just cynical....
Why is it necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is why they think this is even necessary in the new world we just entered a month or so ago.
Why should they have to buy up domain names?
Why not just have their friends at Visa/Mastercard deny the ability of anyone to buy a domain name which could (potentially) be used to engage in "illegal activities"?
Or have their friends in Obama's office of imaginary rights enforcement [cybercrime.gov] seize the domains for trafficking in stolen property?
Or have the host (Amazon or whoever) drop the websites? Paypal refuse service? EveryDNS drop the domain records [google.com]?
Re:Everyone does it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everyone does it (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no doubt that anyone wanting to create a boa-lostmyhouse.com address can be infinitely more creative than B of A can be in anticipating what that address might be.
And ultimately it doesn't matter at all. You can post the same information at www.abc123-etc.com as you can on an address called boa-sucks.com.
It's the information and dialogue that will be damaging (from the company's perspective), not the URL.
If that's not obvious to them, why are they being entrusted with the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars?