Domain squatting controversy rocks e-commerce startup scene in the Philippines

A cybersquatting incident is causing a stir in the Philippine e-commerce industry.

The Bobbery, a local blog covering tech startups, reported yesterday that daily deals site Metrodeal allegedly owns a number of domain names — all variations of the names of rival businesses — that were linked to pornography sites.

This practice, known as cybersquatting, is when someone registers a domain name that is similar to a known website. The individual who registered it usually aims to profit from the web address, or perhaps damage the reputation of the target site.

The controversy took an unexpected turn today after Dwight Callahan, who claims to be a domain broker, posted on the Startup PH Facebook group saying that he owns these domain names.

Tech in Asia is attempting to contact this individual to verify that his identity is authentic.

Here’s the list of web addresses that were link to adult content:

• cash-cash-pinoy.com
• cashcashpinoys.com
• cashcash-pinoy.com
• deal-grocer.com
• dealdozens.com
• ensogos.com
• kerendeals.com

CashCashPinoy, DealGrocer, Dealdozen and Ensogo are in fact e-commerce and daily deals sites operating in the Philippines, and are therefore in direct competition with Metrodeal.

Callahan stated that he is “the actual owner of these domains being discussed.” Explaining why the web addresses, which are pegged to their targets’ search terms on Google, are directed to adult content (despite the non-sexy domain names), he says:

These domains in particular didn’t bring a lot of traffic (as you can see in Alexa, like one click a month), which is why I had discontinued searching for buyers and just pointed them to a my favorite website.

Startup community speaks up

Meanwhile, some of the members of the Facebook group still doubt the claim by the New York-based (according to his Facebook account) domain broker.

RJ David from local e-commerce site Sulit has offered to “[buy] all these domains at twice the registration cost” and “transfer the ownership to the respective companies” so as to resolve this dispute, but Callahan refused this bid.