The Ebola virus will hopefully be contained soon.
For the best part of last week, Ebola.com and its owner received plenty of unwarranted negative coverage by mainstream media, that blasted its “for sale” status.
Jon Schultz, owner of the domain he lawfully acquired for $13,500 in 2008, was verbally assaulted in a series of sensationalist posts that reeked of anti-entrepreneurial bias:
- The Washington Post referred to the Ebola.com owner as “The merchant of disease“
- Gizmodo called Mr. Schultz and his business partner, “opportunistic pieces of human garbage” and dragged their mothers in the argument.
- Foreign Policy‘s ignorant writer, used the terms “squatter” and “useless money-grubbers.“
There were several other unsavory publications online that copied, regurgitated or re-processed the above news to suit their agendas, treating the above publications as points of authority, without checking the facts or contacting Mr. Schultz.
Meanwhile, nobody noticed that several large pharmaceutical companies and medicine vendors own most of the top 10 deadliest diseases in the world, in dot .com.
The bottom line is that Mr. Schultz does not owe any of these pseudo-ethical writers any explanation, and yet he perfectly explained, once caught in the crossfire of aggressive commentary, that he not only gave up ad revenue from merely parking the domain, but that he intended to build an informative portal:
“This is not only a mean-spirited article in which Mr. McCoy seeks to impress people with how moral he is by criticizing me for doing nothing but buying a piece of property and looking to sell it at a profit (and sacrificing about $5,000 in domain parking revenue to have a site up with a link where people can make a donation to Doctors Without Borders), but his quotes of me are inaccurate as well. I am sure he cannot produce a recording of our conversation because the quotes which he provided are not exact quotes and do not accurately portray my sentiments.”
That first step has been made, and Ebola.com has received a web site upgrade that features news and information about the Ebola virus.
By doing so, however, Mr. Schultz reserves the right to sell the domain when and as he sees fit; it’s his investment property after all.
The asking price of $150,000 is perfectly in line with the value of the domain, and a very small dent in the “wallet” of most pharmaceutical companies that would love to acquire Ebola.com.
