In the past, domain name squatters tended to lose to the trademark owner. Recently, however, they have begun to win, and win often. Indeed, it has got to the point where many domain name strategies recommend that large firms actually register their own “sucks” domain to prevent malicious abuse. Indeed, the COI recommends defensive registration.

Incidentally, I was so amused by this article by Rocket’s Nick Crossland everything.sucks – a TLD for complaints (I came across it looking for the COI page) that I thought I’d share it.

* I detest words with “cyber” in them, but “cybersquatter” is the worst yet. Sounds like a constipated robot, doesn’t it? It gets worse. The COI uses the term “cybersmearing”. Robot on dirty protest?

Unfortunately the online Thesaurus isn’t particularly culturally aware, so I’ve got the choice of saying (literally) “Look, no one thinks you’re algid/frigid/hawkish/shivery/snappy/wintry” or (closer figuratively but culturally way off the mark) “Look, no one thinks you’re boss/dandy/divine/glorious/hunky-dory/keen/marvelous[sic]/neat/nifty/sensational/swell”.

The Urban dictionary gets closer to ‘cool’. I can now say “Look, no one thinks you’re kewl/awesome/nice/great/”

But what is ‘cool’ anyway? Again, the Urban dictionary offers good cultural references: it offers a suggestion for what it is not (“Pantaloons are not cool); and what it is: “a simplified way of telling someone to shut the fuck up because you don’t give a shit.”

Alternatively you could see whether anyone thinks your client is shit. The official online thesaurus offers no synonyms or antonyms, but does make me an offer to ‘explore shit in the visual thesaurus’, which I think I’ll decline. The Urban dictionary is much more forthcoming, but I think a more appropriate antonym would be ‘sucks’ or ‘lame’, to wit (again, courtesy of the urban dictionary): “sucks – is not good. is, in fact, bad. lame – sarah got a butterfly tattoo on her lower back. that’s so lame, i’d rather get a dick on mine, at least i’ll be more original.”

PS You need a ‘preview’ button for comments, I have no idea whether all this care and attention I paid to putting links and italics in is going to work.