Everyone within the entire internet gambling industry is starting to take notice today of how the Bodog.com domain name hijacking applies to their businesses. No matter if you are an operator or an affiliate, everyone needs to realize that what happened to Calvin Ayre and Bodog Entertainment can happen to any other internet gambling operator.Point-Spreads.com has spoken to several operators that have expressed their concern over the incident. While most of his competitors are usually overjoyed in his misery, all that we have spoken to have been nothing but supportive of the situation Ayre finds himself in after his prized domain name was redirected due to a default judgment against his company for $48 million dollars.
"We are watching what happens with the Bodog domain name case very closely," stated a Bodog competitor. "What happened to Calvin can happen to anyone in the internet gambling industry and our legal team is already advising us on how we should proceed to prevent this from happening to our domain names."
Mel Molnick has a registered patent that basically says he invented internet gambling. I know the thought of this reminds everyone reading this article of Al Gore bragging about how he invented the internet. On the surface it does appear as if Molnick created internet gambling, I am not joking either, at least as far as the US patent office is concerned! Everyone in the internet gambling industry realizes however that people were doing various forms of gambling via the internet before Molnick’s patent was awarded.
What can a internet gambling operator do in order to avoid the opportunistic Molnick from holding them hostage?
1.) Change the ownership of their URLS around on a continual basis.
By changing the domain name ownership often, it will be virtually impossible to secure a court order against the specific owner of the URL because it will constantly be influx.
2.) Change the registrar of the domain name to one that is based outside of the jurisdiction of US courts.
While this does not 100% prevent a domain name hijacking from taking place, it certainly will make it more difficult, time consuming and costly for the party trying to acquire the domain name.
Point-Spreads.com has spoken to several affiliates this morning after reading our article about the Bodog.com domain name hijacking. The Bodog team was able to get a mirrored website up at NewBodog.com within 12 hours of the domain name being hijacked.
"Bodog was very reactive to my needs as an affiliate right from the beginning of the issue," stated super affiliate Bones McCoy of 1800-Sports.com. "I already re-routed the tracking codes to the NewBodog.com URL and it is business as usually as far as I am concerned."
