Domain purchase before the cyber squatting law of 1999

Domain purchase, cyber squatting law of 1999,

[jtek]

Is there any true resource for the big $$$$ domain purchases back in the hay day / mid 1990’s.
Word was there were tons of domains purchased by individual and sold back to large corporations because they had missed the purchase of their .com, prior to the Digital Millennium act in 1999.
Is there any truth to this?

After the Digital Millennium act in 1999 then it seemed to be more legitimate and less value, is this true?

Was there any larger purchases besides the 7.5M~10M of business.com?

Alan

[Quadrille]

Most of the high prices were not cybersquatters - simply valuable two or three character names - or even longer ones like Business.com. that wasn't cybersquatting.

Some great domains are still unavailable, but not used. nt.com, for example, used to be used by Northern telecom; now called Nortel, for ages nt forwarded to nortel - now it doesn't. That domain is worth many thousands - but it's not cybersquatting, as it belongs to a successor orgaization. Mind you; it might be now they are not using it!

I vaguely recall a few orgs paying a few thousand for 'their' sites - but I think the lawyers moved in pretty promptly.

One not-quite-cybersquatting trick was to buy domains related to events; such as "Football2002" hoping to find a world cup interest paying over the odds. I knew a fellow in a 'bubble' company who knew the end was nigh; he spent all of his last month buying that kind of domain name (in his name), using the firm's money - he reckoned that was his pension. I doubt he sold a single name!

[tim222]

One example is altavista.com, which sold for $3M+ in 1999. However I'm not sure if the seller was a squatter or someone with legitimate rights to the name (i.e., another comapny named Alta Vista).

[JohnRoy]

BTW, for how much would you purchase altavista.com today?

[tim222]

BTW, for how much would you purchase altavista.com today?

In 2003, Overture paid more than $100M for the whole kit and kaboodle.

[altavista.com...]

[tim222]

Was there any larger purchases besides the 7.5M~10M of business.com?

[zetetic.com...]

This site has a list of domain name sales >$1M. There are only 34. Further, they state that, "Of the nearly 34,883 sales in our database, only 228 (0.7%) have been sold for more than US$100,000."

[JohnRoy]

Thanks.

But,

altavista.com today

[tim222]

That's hard to say. AltaVista holds quite a few patents so they're still worth something.