Cyber Squatters Grab Up More Than 600 'Pope Francis' Domain Names

tsamsoniw writes "Although the newly appointed Pope Francis I has proven himself technologically savvy enough to use Twitter, the Vatican dropped the ball when it came to quickly registering a domain name for the pontiff after his appointment earlier this month: Within hours, cyber squatters grabbed up more than 600 domain names containing derivations of the pontiff's name, including popefrancisi.com, popefrancis.co.uk, popefrancis.org, and popefrancis.fr, according to domain-name company names.co.uk."

Re:Because the Vatican Has Its Own TLD?

[CrimsonAvenger]

the Church has been around administratively since Constantinople was a living human being

Umm, Constantinople was NEVER a living human being. It was a CITY.

Perhaps you meant "Constantine", the man the CITY of Constantinople was named after?

Re:Cyber Squatter?

[amicusNYCL]

What is clear is we should not just vilify these people who are legally exercising their rights.

Yeah, it makes total sense that someone in Australia would register Popefrancis.fr, a French domain name, to publish a news site about the pope. Or that eRealEstate.com, from Florida, would register Popefrancis.co.uk, a British domain, for the same reason. These people aren't out to make a quick buck, they obviously just want to spread news and praise about the pope and Catholics.

Or maybe, and just maybe, I mean stick with me here, there are people like this [ricksblog.com], part of the "domainer" community, complete with their own domain news sites, magazines, etc, saying things like this:

On Tuesday I saw a list of 20 possible picks for pope. So I decided to hon my skill as I usually do on events of great interest. Being Jewish I was not aware the parameters for the pope changing his name but I was glad to see I had no shot anyways.

But while I did not hit the bullseye on this mission, I circled around that eye.

I got these 24 hours before the announcement: PopeJorge.com, PopeGeorge.com, PopeJorge.tv, PopeJorge.me, PopeJorgeBergoggio.com PopeJorgeBergoggio.org,

Then after the announcement I got these.

PopeFrancis.co.uk, PopeFrancis.de, PopeFrancis.be, PopeFrank.tv, PopeFrank.net, PopeFrancis.tv

PopeFrancis.co.uk got the most traffic yesterday. 82 visitors in the first 5 hours and 45 as of 10AM today.

All these names are availabe to transfer to the Vatican without charge....not that they would want any.

I can only imagine the amount of traffic the REAL domain got. PopeFrancis.com could have easily gotten over 1 million TYPE INS! Type ins! What more proof would folks like about type ins?

If the .com gets 1 million visitors and the .net gets 5000 visitors and all the rest combined get 5000 visitors, does that not illustrate the power of .com?

And this:

Godaddy came out with a press release and said theu sold 500 in the first 1 hour of Pope related domain names. So you could assume worldwide many thousands were registered. It is now a cottage industry in and of itself. We will see in what form this plays out. But a popular Pope could make for some very interesting domain stories.

As I write this I registered 2 more. popefrancissouvenirs.com, popefrancisinfo.com. Like I said, a cottage industry is likely to spring up. PopeFrancisMass.com

Here [popefrancis.co.uk] is one of his domain names. Go ahead, click on that and get all of the pope news and Catholic praise you can stand. Surely he's not in it just to try his luck gambling. (by the way, every time you click that link, you probably earn the guy fractions of a cent)

In case it isn't obvious, I have very little respect for people who go around registering domain names wholesale and trying to monetize them. Talk about a worthless existence. If they aren't going to use it, don't register it. But that's just my opinion.