Blackstone Buys blackstonesucks.com

/

In a preemptive social media move, private equity firm Blackstone has purchased several disparaging websites:

  • Blackstoneblackstonesucks.com
  • blackstonegroupsucks.com
  • theblackstonegroupsucks.com
  • schwarzmansucks.com
  • stephenschwarzmansucks.com
  • stevenschwarzmansucks.com
  • steveschwarzmansucks.com

Blackstone follows the lead of Bank of America, which secured hundreds of domains last month, including BrianMoynihanBlows.com.

In September, Etsy, the online market for handmade art, filed suit against the owners of EtsySucks.com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info. Etsy won the case. But what about Freedom of Speech? The difference seems to be in how the domains are used; if they're used to post about a company, then fine, but these Etsy domains were empty, parked websites, indicating that the sites weren't "registered in good faith," according to Domain Name Wire.

Maybe I should register bizcominthenewssucks.com, just in case.

Discussion Starters:

  • You can't blame these companies for trying to stem the tide of negative online comments, but will these domain protections work?
  • What avenues would you most likely use to complain about a company's product or service? 
  • Research the "sucks" domain for a company that interests you. Is it taken and populated with negative comments? What, if anything, can the company do about it?