photo credit: Ann Althouse

In a not-so-distant prior life, I went out and registered lots and lots of domain names. A few of the bunch were, of course, badly thought out. Not because they weren’t monetizable or anything, but precisely because they were a little too easily so. Say, maybe for instance, because they may have been skirting ever so slightly along the wrong side of the cutting edge of trademark infringement.

And until this week, they’ve remained in their marginally developed state as well as staying under the radar. But not this week: two separate companies’ legal departments have sent, I must say, very polite letters telling me to knock it off in not so many words. And so I have, redirecting both offending domains to the respective companies websites and offering to transfer their ownership. And preemptively killed off a couple more that I feel are a little too far over that line as well.

I wouldn’t call myself unwilling to push the envelope as far as this little side adventure of a business is concerned, but I do find it awfully uncomfortable receiving legal documents that I can’t legitimately argue against. When the risk far exceeds the reward (as it definitely did with the pittance I earned off these domains), it’s just stupid to play the game.

Luckily, I have another 70 or 80 trouble-free domains to play around with…