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.
Totally agree. Well said.
I own KURDS.COM…In view of what is happening with Islamic State & the Kurds in northern Syria, and Iraq – massacres of the Kurds in village after village, the siege of Kurdish Kobani, Erbil etc etc – am I not allowed to sell this domain?!?
The number of people that die in road accidents – globally – every year is a humanitarian catastrophe…Same with the damage caused by alcohol….Are we to say people can never sell a car, truck, or alcoholic beverage?!?…
I see nothing wrong with selling ebola.com for $150,000 or even more to $1,500,000
Ebola outbreaks are causing massive social and economic problems in the world. But, there are economic gains to medical and pharmaceutical professions.
According to SBS, doctors offered big dollars $525 per hour to work with Ebola. “The WHO (World Health Organisation) are offering $325 dollars an hour, and the Centre for Disease Control Malawi office they are offering $200. In total that is $525 per…
This is the link page for doctor getting paid $525 per hour.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/10/15/doctors-offered-big-dollars-work-ebola