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?

[Penguinisto]

Err, what extortion?

The majority of catholics online just go to vatican.va [vatican.va] for anything out of the Vatican, and studiously ignore the rest, if they even bother to go at all.

Seriously - even if every one of those squatted domain names pointed to lemonparty, it would make exactly zero difference to the laity. QED, no financial gain to be had. Overall, it's sort of like saying that the Vatican should have somehow snapped up any and all variations of @Pontifex on Twitter, when there's really no need.

I guess the confusion comes from thinking that the Catholic Church is like some sort of commercial entity, where brand recognition and trademark protection online trumps all. Fact is, it doesn't - the Church has been around administratively since Constantinople was a living human being, and has had to put up with a hell of a lot more defamation and disparagement over the millennia than a bunch of wannabe blackmailers holding GoDaddy accounts can muster.

Cyber Squatter?

[fermion]

How is registering a domain cybersquatting? Unless they clearly expect to sell the domain back there are many reasons to register such a domain. For instance, information on a pope is highly censored. it may be that these people are setting up sites to report news that does not make into the media. Or they may be there to praise and promote the Catholic faith. Or many other reasons. What is clear is we should not just vilify these people who are legally exercising their rights. It just reinforces the prejudice that Catholics do not believe in individual rights when those rights but against the desires of the Vatican.