“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win!”—Gandhi

This quote above pretty much summarizes the evolution of the domain name monetization and development business. I have watched this business come of age for more than half a decade… In the beginning nobody cared… then when people started talking about how great it was, ‘smart people’ and the “legitimate web” laughed.

Then the trucks with money showed up.

I think it’s safe to say the covetous latecomers (well, all but the dumbest and the meanest) have begrudgingly accepted that they missed the boat as it relates to the domain phenomenon. A significant double-digit percentage of global Internet traffic is now owned by domain holders with generic names. So the fight is on.

Why a fight? Well collective Internet companies and search tools are worth hundreds of billions… and they aren’t *really* worth it. Google is ‘worth’ 160 billion+ and climbing alone. The heart of all these companies with frothy valuations is exactly the same as domain portfolios which actually have more consistent reliable traffic than even the best search appliance. That’s a butterfly-in-the-tummy disruptive wild-card to companies and media concerns built on shaky overpriced foundations.

It seems the domain industry which brings some of the most potent Internet traffic on Earth has to keep apologizing for itself. Apparently it suffers from a “stigma”... Yes, we should all be cursed with the stigma of two to four times the conversions of Google. Apparently things of incredible substance have a “stigma” on Maddison Ave and Sandhill Rd.

Then there are ISP’s who want a slice of the paid search pie, damming traffic upstream. There are forlorn technical people who missed the boat, IP attorneys who don’t fully understand the space trying for a money angle, jilted business people who touched the space but missed the phenomenon, browsers who encoroach and steal with impunity while their manufacturers rail against cybersquatters taking traffic they could otherwise steal... The list goes on.

Consider just some of what I’ve seen lately:

1. Marilyn Cade, former chair of the ICANN business constituency - voted out of her position in favor of Yahoo IP counsel Mike Rodenbaugh. Marilyn returns to the ICANN meetings in Puerto Rico as an independent consultant and by several accounts comes out swinging against the ‘domain monetization’ business. She’s entitled to her opinion, but at the meeting several folks are indignant that she mixes fact and fiction lumping good generic domain names and long-held registrations into the same presentation bucket with trademark kiting and other ills… Her blurring of the line between separate issues does a dis-service to the press and outsiders who think she actually knows what she’s talking about. I have spoken about monetization in general with Marilyn and can testify she seemed to have little experience in this field… Whether Marilyn is actually cognizantly maligning a space or simply mis-speaking, the outcome and harm to outsiders who misunderstand the industry as a result, is the same.

2. John Levine posts about “squeegee domaining” on CircleID, again lumping good and bad domain registrations and registrants into the same pool. His negative sounding, lopsided post draws more than 1000 views and a rarely precedented 37 comments on this typically staid and placid Internet-architecture forum…

3. Fairwinds Group (a group who’s ‘winds’ in this context appear to be anything but ‘fair’) Its principal Joshua Bourne tries to create a buck by forming the ‘Coalition for Domain Name Abuse’.. by all accounts it’s an empty shell 501(C)(6) with the presumed purpose of beating the bushes for sponsor money to fight against bad domaining practices. The fact that this group hasn’t exactly ‘set the world on fire’ looking for new (public facing) members to join or for a target to fight is poignant enough. I highlight it as a buck maker because Bourne recently calls out the ‘good’ in the domain industry in this Red Herring piece. The reason I draw attention to it is the “fight the space” undercurrent behind it.

4. Citizenhawk launches to fight against trademark typos… I like that goal but the risk is that over-reaching will deliberately (or inadvertently) take “good typos” (brandable variants) along with the bad. Funny enough I knew people who work for this group when they worked at iREIT (a domain investor) and we were starting the Internet Commerce Association to foster registrants rights.. now these folks are operating from the other side and testing boundaries that risk over-reaching on registrants rights.. The hypocracy of that flip-flop is palpable to those who are in this business because they care about it, not just because they are trying to make a buck.

I think we all agree that there are good and bad spots in every industry. The domain industry’s issues are sorting themselves out through ICANN, the courts and other resolution forums. But we have entered that stage when some of the world has chosen to fight the domain industry. If Mr. Gandhi is correct (and I firmly believe he is), then victory should be right around the corner ;)