Gus Mayopoulos, new owner of MuslimRegistry.com
Donald Trump’s proposed “Muslim Registry” became a hot topic, and naturally, the matching domain MuslimRegistry.com was queried.
Registered in 2002, the aged, two-word .com compound was owned by the domain marketplace, BuyDomains.
Philip “Gus” Mayopoulos, an activist, was able to collect donations via a GoFundme campaign to acquire the domain MuslimRegistry.com, through crowdfunding.
The domain was marked for sale at $980 dollars, but Gus Mayopoulos was able to secure a 10% discount from BuyDomains. He donated the savings to the ACLU.
It’s probably the first time that crowdfunding and donations are used to acquire a domain name.
The idea was to protest the grand plan by president-elect, Donald Trump, and to secure the matching keyword .com for that purpose:
“I want to buy the domain name “muslimregistry.com” and use it as a trolling platform for people who are actually looking for a real, official website where they can register Muslims.
The website itself will probably ask these people for a lot of their own personal information before they can “register” anyone, and will then redirect them to a number of educational resources, including a link to a list of distinguished Muslim-American veterans, a link to the Holocaust Memorial Museum (because that’s the kind of stuff that happens when you register people for being a minority religion), and a link to the Southern Poverty Law Center. “
A total of 57 people donated, collecting $1,027 dollars in 4 days. Donations ranged from $10 to $100 dollars.
Gus Mayopoulos is the President of the Harvard University Student Body.
His brilliant plan to acquire the domain MuslimRegistry.com succeeded, in part due to the failure of BuyDomains to evaluate the domain’s worth.
That’s the issue with setting a domain BIN price, as opposed to evaluating every incoming offer. 😉
