{news} www.ctgreens.COM vs. www.ctgreens.ORG

[Christopher Reilly]

I don't know how many people are aware that we actually have two web addresses:  ctgreens.ORG (which we almost lost a couple of months ago) and ctgreens.COM (which we lost today).Some history: originally we just had ctgreens.org but then in 1999 we began receiving complaints that the CT Green Party's website was selling products.  As it turns out a company calling itself Connecticut's Greens had registered ctgreens.COM and was attempting to set up an online mall.  People would stumble across it when they accidentally typed in .com rather than .orgThe online mall venture failed and when the domain name became available in July of 2000 I jumped in and registered it for the CT Green Party and set it up in such a way that if a person typed in ctgreens.com they would be silently redirected to ctgreens.org.  Each year a renewal notice for ctgreens.com would come to our P.O. Box and each year I would renew it.So far, so good.  But following the usual CT Green Party pattern, after several trouble-free years someone new to the CT Green Party came along and pointed out that they could do a much better job of renewing ctgreens.com.   The CT Green Party agreed and transfered ownership of ctgreens.com from CT Greens to that individual and agreed to reimburse the individual whenever that individual renewed the domain name.The individual soon left the CT Green Party still owning ctgreens.com.  However, the individual failed to renew ctgreens.com by its renewal date which was yesterday (Friday, July 20).So the situation is this.  A company is holding ctgreens.com but will give it back to that individual (but not to the CT Green Party) if we pay the company $150 during the next 30 days.  If we fail to pay the company $150 within 30 days then the ctgreens.com name becomes the property of that company (rather than the individual) for them to do with as they please. Please note that this is what the CT Green Party agreed to when we transfered ctgreens.com over to the individual.Currently ctgreens.com still redirects itself to ctgreens.org and will probably continue to do so for the next 30 days.  My best guess is that after 30 days from now the company will change ctgreens.com into one of these "Buy this domain name" sites while it tries to line up advertisers (Greenwash companies and "Environmental" companies might be interested) for a commercial ctgreens.com.  My guess is that this effort will probably fail and the company will release the name in July or August of 2008.  I'll keep an eye on it.--Chris Reilly
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