Report: OWS to Pay $8,000 for OccupyWallStreet.net

According to a report this morning in The Atlantic Wire, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has decided to spend $8,000 to purchase the  OccupyWallStreet.net domain name. The domain name was hand registered on September 23, 2011 by a Florida resident.

It appears that OccupyWallStreet.com is already owned by someone involved with the OWS movement, although the registration has privacy protection on it. That domain name currently forwards to the group’s website at OccupyWallSt.org.

The Atlantic Wire report also cites a tweet that OWS was offered the opportunity to purchase Occupy.com for $150,000. In my opinion, the report’s author mis-labeled the owner of Occupy.com as “some domain squatters,” which is inaccurate since the domain name was purchased well before the Occupy movement started. A cybersquatting definition can be found on Wikipedia.

As I mentioned previously, the domain name is being shopped around by attorney Karen J. Bernstein  on behalf of the domain owner.

According to The Atlantic Wire report,  OWS is not interested in buying Occupy.com right now because of the high cost. Perhaps the group will raise funds via the $8,000 domain name and decide to purchase the domain name at a later date.

Thanks to RKS for sending the link.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

9 COMMENTS

  1. It’s funny that it’s actually the OccupyWallStreet.net owner that is the squatter here, not Occupy.com. The latter is a generic term whereas OccupyWallStreet.net uses the group’s name, which the domain owner clearly had no connection to and no reason to own. OWS should have locked up the OccupyWallStreet domains from the outset. It’s a waste of money to pay $8,000 and rewards someone who at best acted greedily and at worst acted out of bad faith by registering a domain using the OWS name. That’s not what GOOD domaining is about.

    • @ Mark

      I tend to agree with what you posted, although I don’t blame OWS for not registering the names. The group seems to be loosely knit without a real “leadership,” so in that respect, it was likely something that slipped through. Many city names were purchased rather quickly though.

  2. The funniest thing is that they spent ages and had meetings and votes deciding it was important to secure their name and mark etc, even filing a competing tm application last week. Then, after their flavour of democracy ran its course they ended up paying an over the top sum for a rubbish name to an actual suspected cybersquatter. They decided to move to secure their brand and the execution of that has made the opposite happen. I believe they just made their biggest tactical error since someone decided to go potty on a squad car 🙂

  3. @Mark:
    It’s a waste of money to pay $8,000 and rewards someone who at best acted greedily and at worst acted out of bad faith by registering a domain using the OWS name. That’s not what GOOD domaining is about.

    Ahh…………yeah

  4. @Alan

    Had OWS been more proactive in registering their trademark, which belongs to the group and not the owner of occupywallstreet.net, then it would have been a trademark violation for this individual to register the name. However, just because they dragged their feet and there is no violation does not mean morally it is correct to grab a domain name under their exact name and then try to sell it back to them for a quick buck. OccupyWallStreet.net is not a “trend” domain name. Trend names are generic terms. OWS is the name of an actual group (i.e. a brand) and therefore the person who registered the name “occupied” something that didn’t belong to him, it belonged to OWS.

  5. @Mark

    The man or woman that registered the said domain is a
    domain investor, not a squatter, as the phrase was not yet
    trademarked. I read in the news today that the group that heads OWS has filed for a trademark and plan to market
    hats, banners, t-shirts etc “for profit”.

    The story here is not about the merits of OWS or whether it will become a footnote in history, the story is about some one being savvy enough to see what is trending in the news and registering. My congratulations go to the seller on making $7993 profit on a $7.00 investment. Damm that’s good!!!!

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