Thursday, September 4, 2008

Sedo Blacklisting Political Domains

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I have recently received the following email from Sedo:

Dear [Ms Domainer],

We are writing to inform you that the domains listed below have been suspended from Sedo\\\\\\\'s services because this domain(s) is a potential violation of Sedo\\\\\\\'s policy against domains that include obscene or illegal subject matter. While Sedo strives to protect our users rights to exercise free speech and maintain a marketplace with a vibrant and diverse collection of domain names, we apologize any inconvenience that this may cause.

obamapresident.org

In the course of removing such domains from our system there is the possibility that otherwise legitimate domains were suspended due to their inclusion of terms used in different contexts. If you have any questions about this decision please contact your Sedo account manager or the Sedo legal department at legal@sedo.com.

Sincerely,

Sedo Legal Dept.
Sedo.com LLC
161 First Street
Fourth Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142
Email: legal@sedo.com
You better believe I have gotten in touch with "legal" over at Sedo, who does a lively business in the U.S., where freedom of speech, especially for or against politicians, will trump Sedo's business model any day.

Let's see now:

ObamaPresident.org is

  • NOT a TM domain: Obama is a surname, and "president" (the last time I checked) is a generic word.


  • NOT a potentially "obscene" or "illegal" domain name.


I will await, with great interest, Sedo's rationale for its decision to blacklist my domain.
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7 comments:

Shuwix said...

Sedo push people to park domains to avoid 50$ minimal fee and rip-off at parking revenue (about 20-30% of Parked, Namedrive, Whypark, Fabulous earnings).
And with this prehistoric opinions and senseless business steps they also kill marketplace.

Don't mention tons of banned people with high parking earnings or people that are thought to bid their own domains without any e-mail explanation of reasons for BAN.

Shuwix said...

Sedo is like prehistoric company. Their parking is rip-off and they just try also to f**kup marketplace.

Obama said...

Well I just got: obamapresident.co.cc :D

Metamorphosis said...

That is a shame, when a company gets too big they start having this kind of behaviours. The same happens with google and adsense, i had once my adsense account closed and until today i didn't get an explanation, and they decided that on payment day, coincidence naturally lol.

I know i'm talking about something different, but it's just to illustrate what usually happens when companies get too big, they usually abuse their power.

Paul Bliss said...

Yeah, I just got a similar email for a supposed violation of the trademark holder of 'SEMSniper.com" - which I performed searches for name/product/service and was unable to locate anything, and they removed it from the listings.

I read that you're in PA? I'm in Pittsburgh myself - great to see another fellow domainer in the Commonwealth!

Bugzita said...

Paul Bliss,

I live in Central Pennsylvania. I think there's a few domainers in the commonwealth.

;)

I pulled all my domains from Sedo. It was a ripoff anyway.

Paul Bliss said...

Sedo Update - they sent me an email today stating that they made an error and re-instated my domain...

maybe that will happen with yours as well.

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Ms Domainer