All extansion for Cho Seung-Hui and "Cho Seung Hui" domains where gone soon after he was identified as the gunman in the worst shooting rampage in modern US history

Why would you register this?

To Monetize it or just to have it for the sake of history

For now, ChoSeungHui.com redirects to the VirginiaTech site. However, it is using ns1.parkednames.com and ns2.parkednames.com Let's see what happens to ChoSeungHui.com in a month.

What people have done with the names of other lunatic murderers is in very poor taste.

JeffreyDahmer.com - DomainSponsor PPC page
JohnWayneGacy.com - DomainSponsor PPC page
DavidBerkowitz.com - HitFarm PPC page
CharlesManson.com - custom PPC page
AileenWuornos.com - Marchex PPC page

As opposed to the media frenzy? A lot will be done in poor taste.

Originally posted by gwideas
As opposed to the media frenzy? A lot will be done in poor taste.

Yes, very true.

They just had a small segment on ABC Nightline...

Kudos, as they also critized media outlets for replaying the shooter's manifesto, and their incessant interviews of people that really did not have much to do with the event.

"News" is a medium for selling advertising. No advertising revenue = no news, no news division.

It's already been established that some folks have no qualms about registering and pointing tragedy related names towards parking companies. Let's see if the parking companies or feed providers have any qualms about profiting by feeding ads to domains related to this tragedy.

I'm not sure Google or Yahoo would be pleased by having media attention drawn to the fact that they are profiting by feeding ads to domains clearly registered to profit from this tragedy. Somebody somewhere should consider assembling a filter list on the quick before someone who suffered a loss in this tragedy goes ballistic and we have another news cycle.

http://www.choseunghui.com/ redirects to a Virginia Tech Memorial Fund page.

http://www.seunghui.com/ has NS1.TRAFFICZ.COM nameservers and ppc link page

GoDaddy's nameserver NS45.DOMAINCONTROL.COM is used for two domains I've seen www.cho-seung-hui.com and http://www.choseung-hui.com/ and takes people to : "This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com", with 10 sponsored links and a smiling lady at top left encouraging you to reg $1.99 names at GoDaddy.

Originally posted by fizz
GoDaddy's nameserver NS45.DOMAINCONTROL.COM is used for two domains I've seen www.cho-seung-hui.com and http://www.choseung-hui.com/ and takes people to : "This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com", with 10 sponsored links and a smiling lady at top left encouraging you to reg $1.99 names at GoDaddy.

These are the default name servers at GoDaddy that are automatically assigned to new registrations. You would see equivalent parking pages at any large registrar.

A couple of the inevitable backlash articles:

It's impossible to get inside Cho's mind, but it's also hard to figure out the genetic wiring that motivates entrepreneurs who hear about the worst school shooting in history to run to their computers and register domain names to sell them.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/VATech/story?id=3060386

SANS, with the aid of outside security researchers, culled through approximately 551 Virginia Tech-related domain names and found only two belonging to a charity and 57 deemed as "innocent" sites. The majority of the VA Tech-related sites, 381, were found to be "parked," with another 42 sites up for sale and 35 as having "questionable" status. Six of the sites were characterized as "fraud."

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-971...547-1040_3-0-5

Originally posted by safesys
SANS, with the aid of outside security researchers, culled through approximately 551 Virginia Tech-related domain names and found only two belonging to a charity and 57 deemed as "innocent" sites. The majority of the VA Tech-related sites, 381, were found to be "parked," with another 42 sites up for sale and 35 as having "questionable" status. Six of the sites were characterized as "fraud."
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i fear (for business sake) that situations like these have the potential to cause reform to our current domain name ownership system. Not like its the end of the world, but the public obviously don't like certain aspects of this biz. Reform wouldn't be entirely rational, but think about it: to the public eye it would be easier to stop fraud. The whois system is too flawed in reality. Ownership should be confirmed to a mailable address before being allowed to register at least one domain. Then, getting the confirm code sent by snail mail you can activate your account and register one or more domains. At least that leaves a decent trail; whois privacy and so on are not good things for honest biz (though if legal I would consider it b/c of its privacy benefits). they could want to go beyond that and make you show that you have a lelgitimate use for a name, but that could really slow down the process. It could be a bit more efficient though, by checking tm databaes before registering to find exact or likely typos and send them for review. While if you have the TM rights (not sure how this works) maybe your confirmed address matches that of the Tm registration then you can immiediately register the name. Or if there is no TM you can also immediately register the name. That wouldn't help in this case though i guess.