Maxwell, after reading the entire thread I now know why you did this! You said this is 2 posts: "Most people who know me know I deal in controversial domain names.... To show that there are good, honest domainers out there who do recognize goodwill and aren't extortionists....to show that I am, indeed, part of this group of people, as some domains that I own are controversial (but by no means an outright violation of anyones trademark), and should those ever go into a dispute resolution, I want the frequently-used argument of "the registrant has engaged in a pattern of registering trademarked domains" to not apply to me, given the fact that I would go to this effort to defend someone else's trademark"
It is now qute obvious you did this for your own possible future benefit and to help yourself in the event of lawsuits or wipo's aganst your controversial names. You did not do it purely from the goodness of your heart as you managed to get some members in this thread to believe, such as Doc Com for example. You only did it to cover yourself re a potential "pattern of registering trademarks" assertion aganst you. You said that n your own words. Are you willing to admit that now so we can put this thread to rest?
Had it not occurred to you that this is merely a fringe benefit?
In any event, this is not the reason for which I am securing TM'ed domains to pass along to their rightful owners, though I can understand why you think that's the case.
Pure goodness aside, it's in the interest of all domainers for us to have a good name. We've all been told at one point or another that we're "cybersquatters", or otherwise unethical. And I want to show these people, as a domainer, that we're not all extortionists who will try to get $100,000 and not a penny less for domain names registered in bad faith.
I will irrevocably admit that I do recognize the fact that I am benefiting from this personally, but that's only because domains I wish to hold as investments are merely
controversial in nature. Let's face it, a judge or arbitrator is compellable by any number of things which can work against me. I read WIPO and CIPO cases for fun, and know that too many cases have been lost as a result of domain owners exhibiting a pattern of registering domain names which were trademarks.
Of course, every one of those cases was a registration that was straight-up dumb. The parallels between them and I are that we both own names which are controversial in nature (theirs were the ones disputed in front of panels, whereas mine are yet to be), and we have registered other
trademarked domains as parts of our portfolios.
The difference is that I have transferred (or in this case, offered to transfer) the domains to their rightful owner, which shows that I am not holding them for the wrong reasons.
I don't appreciate your remarks that specify that I "got other members to believe" that I'm a genuinely honest person. He can read the same things you can read. I'm not going to edit that post or hide anything. It's all here for anybody to see.
A comparable situation might be as follows;
I find somebody's wallet and return it to them. Two weeks later, a guy matching my description is accused of stealing a man's wallet, and I'm brought in for questioning.
Now, of course, an alibi could get me out of this. Or I could explain x y and z to get out of further investigation perhaps saddling me with a conviction (just like arguing out rightful ownership in front of an arbitration panel). But wouldn't it be rather useful for me to mention that just two weeks earlier, I had returned somebody's wallet, somebody who could vouch for the fact that it was returned intact, without anything missing from it?
Of course my motive for returning the wallet initially was to be a good, honest person. However, had I just left it there (just as if I had left those names in TBR to drop), whose hands would it have ended up in?
Had I disregarded the wallet, and I get called in for questioning anyhow (say the actual perpetrator looked like me), there's no basis on which I could defend myself by using positive character as a reason for not being capable of committing that robbery. I have no story, and I'm left to my wits.
So, if you were in the same situation, of course you would utilize past acts of goodness to show that you were less likely to be capable of being in the wrong, as the accuser in a domain name dispute might allege me to be.
Does this clear things up for you, David?
) etc.
