I am on the verge of declaring war.

Since High School I have used the name “Apolo Productions” or some variation (Apolo Enterprises; Apolo/Current SO Assoicated) to represent my professional freelance self.

A couple of years ago I was able to net myself apolo.cz (Christmas Island). Eventually the people of the country decided they’d prefer to only give out the domains to people/companies that could prove they were native… That was fair.

So, I went on a quest for my beloved apolo for domains. They were all taken. And to make matters worse they basically were empty. Blank pages. Nothing on them.

Apolo.net was the first one I got. I had to pay $75 dollars for it. This of course was after I told the domain squatter that I wasn’t going to pay him $350 for the privilege to own something that he was merely selling for profit.

The whole domain game has gone to absolute s&$t.

4 years ago I wrote the owner of my absolute goal; apolo.com. The website was blank. The page didn’t even load. I looked up the info in whois and wrote the guy. I got back a message explaining to me how the domain was part of his Brazilian based Sporting Shoe business. He said he’d be more than happy to sell me the domain and the business for about $20K. I responded that the domain was not being used as he said and that I had no interest in a sporting shoe business. I pointed out that I had no proof there was even a business involved.

2 days later the page www.apolo.com went live with the front end of a really badly designed sporting show shop. On examination I discovered that all links from the front page were dead and that it merely was a front page. And a bad one at that. 3 days later the page went down and was replaced with a web counter. The web counter has been up every day for the 4 years since. (I’d point out at this point, if possible, do NOT go to the website www.apolo.com; all you will do is tweak his web counter and give him the impression that many people are looking)

Since then I’ve tried to begin to actually establish a point of presence at Apolo.net. This past December, I decided it was time to make another attempt on Apolo.com. In December I pulled his whois information and tried to email him again. I wrote a very long business letter that was not too threatening that made only the slightest innuendo of CyberSquatting. The email bounced.

I was in my joy. If he’s not contact-able then he jeopardizes the rights to his Domain. Or so I thought. Our (ironically enough mutual) registrar is register.com. They have been not only less than helpful, today they added the proverbial straw that finally broke the proverbial camel’s back. They have told me repeatedly that they will take my complaints and pass them on to a department that they can’t tell me about. This amorphous department will evaluate the situation and may or may not get back to me.

Today I pointed out that by letting this issue go on for 2 months with no resolution they are allowing this guy to violate their terms of service. The ToS basically says if you do not update incorrect information in 15 days your account is subject to termination. I basically explained to Register.com that I have gotten the same brush off for 2 months. They told me that they’d send it to the department and voice my concerns. This time it was from a supervisor telling me the exact same thing. I told them in no uncertain terms that I expected resolution. They asked, what if he updated his information. I said, yes, had that been done 25 days ago I’d accept that. They said they had no idea how long it would take to validate the information. I told them it took me two days to discover the email bounced and the phone number was invalid. It took me three weeks for a registered letter to be returned as undeliverable. They had more resources from me. Again I was told they’d voice my concerns. I told them they had until March 5th and then I filed suit against the domain owner and them with ICANN.

Sadly however, looking at ICANN and everything else, I really see how the whole thing is absolutely broken.

Now, I’ve heard all the arguements of, “Well, he doesn’t have to use a domain if he’s paying for it.” Granted, they also consider paying for it, “As long as the credit card will auto renew”

From my point of view… I’ve actually now filed “Apolo Productions” after all these years with the trademark bureau. I’ve been serving pages with an identity of Apolo Productions in one form or another since 1997. If I wind up having to go thru ICANN this could run as expensive as $1500 dollars which will just go to some guy who gets paid for raising or dropping his thumb. Short form, everyone else loses.

And where am I today? I had to make an offer to a website for apolo.org. The minimum offer they will take is $60 Euros. Their counter offer 4 hours later? $600 Euros. No. Not happening.

And some still wonder why I’ve grown to really despise large pockets of (so called) humanity.

Grrrr

« »