In the market for a new domain name but the one you want is already registered? If you plan on entering an auction for that domain at GoDaddy, you may want to think again as the head of GoDaddy’s domain auctions has recently been caught bidding against its customers. The employee, Adam Dicker, was able to acquire some domains while hiking up the price on those he didn’t win.

Many people are already skeptical with online auctions where bids are kept secret and anonymous. Imagine if ebay didn’t display the number of bids, who bid, and how much the current bid is? Then, add on top of that an eBay employee going around bidding on various items while having access to all that information. Yeah, that wouldn’t fly for a second, but apparently when it comes to domains and GoDaddy, there’s little penalty.

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough info for me to not trust GoDaddy with any of my domains. Sure, this is just their auction counterpart, but that kind of lack of ethical responsibility means I won’t be doing business with them any time soon.

In part 1 of my Fake Profiles series, I talked about how people use fake profiles on social networking sites like MySpace to create large friends lists that are nothing more than lead lists to push various marketing efforts. In part 2 I will be focusing on how (and why) people use fake profiles for online dating websites like Match.com and Yahoo Personals.

Like social networking sites, dating websites have become big lead sources for internet marketers (aka, spammers and scammers) to attack. With online dating websites they are able to focus directly on a particularly lucrative niche – singles looking for dates. Having such a valuable and focused niche has drawn all sorts of seedy Web individuals to exploit these types of websites and users by creating fake profiles in an attempt to lure unsuspecting singles seeking net-goers.
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Yet another rediculous Web-related lawsuit has been filed – this time against companies that use wish lists for products. The lawsuit comes from Channel Intelligence, a company with a patent that looks like it covers the creation of lists in databases.

This reminds me of the absurdity of Amazon’s One-Click patent which basically had Amazon controlling the rights to one click purchases on websites. Seems like something somebody made up as a spoof or something right? Well, I wish it was just a joke, and while Amazon’s One-Click patent was partially restricted, much of it still exists.

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Last week I reported that eBay had been fined by French courts for certain illegal sales made on its auction website. Well, apparently the US courts aren’t quite as ignorant as the net’s freedom was defended against stupidity as the trademark accusations brought up in a similar lawsuit were completely rejected by US courts.

While it’s definitely a relief that at least some court out there isn’t going to hold a service provider responsible for the actions of its users, it also shows just how differently responsibility and blame is treated. With something as global as the internet, how are new services and technologies going to survive and grow if each region decides to handle the Web so differently? It’s not like this is the first case where a Web company has had to deal with such varying internet policies in different regions – Google censoring searches in China is a big one that jumps to mind.

So last week I started part 1 of my fake profiles series, with the focus being on creating fake profiles for MySpace. Why bring it up again so soon you ask? Well, maybe because the federal courts are looking at how creating a fake profile should be considered a federal crime.

Actually, the extent to which they are going would likely criminalize most (if not all) violations of any website’s terms of service. What this means is that any time you decide to fill out a form online, if you enter any false data or in any other way violate that website’s terms of service, you could be sent to jail.

Well lying is bad right? And when you use a website you should follow that website’s guidlines right? Perhaps. But you sure as hell shouldn’t make it against the law to do otherwise.

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