OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
DAN.com announced that starting today it will be removing all Corona Virus related domains from its marketplace.
I mostly support the decision but I just think that the justification shouldn’t have been price related.
It doesn’t matter whether there are “astronomical high prices” or if the prices are “reasonable”.
Although if you think about it, if the average Joe sees e.g. coronavirusdeaths.com (just an example of a bad domain to be own/sell, I am not 100% sure this is for sale) selling for a trillion dollars it wouldn’t look good.
A few days ago I wrote a post that in my opinion is worth reading: “Anyone that buys a domain and tries to sell it is not a domainer“.
Here is the tweet from DAN today announcing the ban of coronavirus related domains:
Starting from today, we will be removing all Corona Virus related domains from https://t.co/vpmKVzih2D.
We’re seeing astronomical high prices being asked for these domains and find that unethical and unacceptable.
— DAN.COM (@Undeveloped) March 26, 2020
DAN also said that “We strongly encourage DAN sellers that own a Corona Virus oriented domain to donate the domain to a charity, government agency or non-profit organization that’s involved in battling the virus and misinformation about it. DAN will facilitate those transfers for free.“
I’ll repeat the comment I made on Elliot Silver’s blog:
Hypocritical witch hunt motivated by a desire not to be criticized, imo. If they’re so moral, why don’t they donate their assets to people who aren’t able to procure basic necessities through no fault of their own? There’s a lot of tragedy due to poverty, oligarchic exploitation and imperialism in this world quite apart from the current pandemic, but very few care until they’re in danger of being criticized.
P.S. GoDaddy appears to have done the same, even though they own numerous bird-flu domains which are for sale at NameFind (including AvianFlu.com, which has a minimum $32,500 bid at GoDaddy Auctions). You can argue that bird flu is a not-all-that-serious poultry industry problem, but it’s obvious the real value of the domains is in the event of a bird-flu pandemic.
If they want to be fair they should take down all bird-flu listings, plus those related to cancer, heart disease, depression, etc. – but I doubt they will do that as I don’t think they care about being fair, only in making sure they are not criticized. That’s fine, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not saying they should be fair, but I hope they won’t issue a sanctimonious statement like Reza Sardeha’s, I’m already nauseous today.
Its enough how everything is related to this virus just to make publicity.