OK, this isn’t strictly a college football post because until recently a trio of domain names I owned (pac-12.com, pac-12.org and pac12.org) bore little similarity to anything associated with college football. They were humble little sites offering A Dozen Jamz by Tupac for more than five years. Then the Pacific 10 Conference decided to add a couple of schools.
The very short story – the soon-to-be Pacific 12 Conference has purchased the domains from me and they will (presumably) soon be used to promote Pac-12 athletics. I’m not permitted to discuss the terms of the acquisition.
But, of course, there’s a much longer story as well. The conference’s predicament of not owning a lot of good “Pac 12″ domains came to light last month when the owner of pac12.com (not me) was slapped with a UDRP claim by the Pac-10, alleging bad-faith registration and illegitimate use of the domain and asking for the domain to be handed over to them. This apparently came on the heels of the conference sending the owner of pac12.com a letter in December disputing his rights in the domain and demanding he hand it over to them.
The domain’s owner has since filed suit against the Pac-10 to halt the UDRP case. His dispute with the Pac-10 became hot news in part because it involved a major sports conference, but more because of how he was using the site – to peddle Tupac music as an Amazon affiliate. Media outlet after media outlet, from USA Today to The New York Daily News to Dr. Saturday latched on to the “Pac-10 fighting Tupac fan” idea (with the Dr. Saturday comment section turning in to a referendum on Tupac and thug culture).
But my absolute favorite has to be the AllHipHop.com article that refers to the Pac-10 as a “basketball conference” and plays up this idea that pac12.com is owned by “a fan of Tupac Shakur”. They also saw fit to mention only USC, UCLA and Arizona State as example Pac-10 members (what, no hip-hop love for Washington State?).
Interesting reading, but here’s the thing: The pac12.com dude “borrowed” the idea for his Tupac site from me. He only changed it to that from some monetized parking page after getting the letter from the Pac-10.
And, dammit, I want some credit here. My Tupac product (A Dozen Jamz by Tupac) has been live since November 2005, five years before the Pac-10 decided to expand and five years before the pac12.com guy re-cast his domain in light of a litigation threat. And it was a damned fine Internet product. Being slighted was partially my fault since I had a coding error that caused the site to render blank in certain browsers (hey, I code for Chrome on OS X – doesn’t everybody use that?), but it pained me to see all those stories knowing it was in my best interest to keep my online mouth shut.
The problem I had in getting credit for that, apparently, is I’ve always used my domains in a way that protected my legitimate rights to register and use them. The pac12.com guy actually registered his domain before I registered mine, but he’s the guy who got into a legal fight with the conference. The Pac-10′s attorney contacted me in mid-December, but right off the bat acknowledged my legitimate rights in the domains and asked if I would be willing to discuss a possible sale. I didn’t hear back until after the whole “Tupac fan in Pac-10 fight” stuff started up.
And although I kicked around the idea (and defensibility) of holding on to my domains and creating a Bizarro Pac-12 site – which would have been a great intersection of my love of college football, online product development, hilarity and the “what ifs” of the Internet – ultimately a deeper view of the landscape made selling them the right move.
It’s a pretty fascinating circumstance regardless of my attachment to it. My non-attorney opinion is the conference’s case against the pac12.com guy isn’t that strong (though they don’t need to pursue it as aggressively now), but I think there are a number of good target domains they have a real shot at claiming that were registered after the conference publicly announced expansion plans but before they officially became 12. I’m not looking to do their legal work for them, so I’ll cut that discussion there.
Ultimately, though, I believe pac-12.com / pac-12.org are the best fit for the new Pac 12, since it’s the natural evolution of the pac-10.org (and redirected pac-10.com) domain they currently use. In fact, they immediately redirected my domains to pac-10.org after the transfer, so I think they like them. It’s worth noting they own pac10.com but don’t even bother redirecting it to pac-10.org. I could have done better on the sale if some really good alternatives weren’t also out there within a good UDRP’s reach, and I might have been able to put the financial screws to them a bit, but I’m pleased with how things worked out. The ROI here ain’t bad … ain’t bad at all. I’m no professional domainer, but I am a college football fan. That I end up with a very nice deal and the Pac-12 ends up with a great set of domains is an excellent result all the way around.
And one thing I really want to correct – not that a lot of people likely read an online post on oregonlive.com about the whole Tupac thing – but the writer (Rachel Bachman) decided to make a completely false statement in the comment section about my ownership of the three domains I owned:
The mystery here is that the owner of the three other Pac-12 domain names (according to WHOIS) has told Pac-10 officials that Linford owns them. But Linford says he doesn’t.
I suppose she might have meant to say somebody at the Pac-10 told her (you know, attributing statements to sources) I told them that this Linford guy owns my domains. That would have been inaccurate (I’ve never spoken to anybody at the Pac-10, much less told them any lie like that), but not as bad as a journalist making an unattributed incorrect statement of facts.
And so ends my experiment in Tupac music sales. The controversy has been good for sales in the past few weeks, but I must bid my Pac domains goodbye now and just wish them well in their new home. I’ll be looking for you on TV, little buddies.
