Halo4.com story sparks lively discussion about domains, squatting at video game news sites

My Wednesday night story on Microsoft acquiring the domain name Halo4.com from Scott O’Reilly sparked discussion about domains across a number of video-game news sites and blogs.

Kotaku, part of Gawker Media’s “Gawker” network of sites, was the first to publish this story with proper credit to this blog.

After the story went online at Kotaku under “The Annals of Cybersquatting”, almost 24 hours later and thousands of page views here, more video-game news sites and blogs from around the globe wrote about the acquisition including MeriStation, 3D Juegos, Gamers.fr and more.

Discussion among readers got lively.

Here, I selected some of the best comments.

The Owner of halo4.com Probably Made a Lot of Money, but He Isn’t Saying [Kotaku]

Vondruke:  Things like this shouldn’t be allowed and I wonder why it is. I mean if you own the IP you should be able to own the URL.

Kimochi Sama: you’re just jealous because you couldn’t snap the domain first to sell it for sizable cash

Microsoft obtains Halo 4 domain via secret dealings [ComputerAndVideogames.com]

Nitramuse:  Probably rubbing his hands watching his bank account increase. If MS was herassing him, he’d say it…I’m sure.  And now, he receives a s**tload of money, under the condition to “not talk about it, or we want our money back and we’ll keep the domain name. Sign here, please”.

StonecoldMC: *lightbulb moment*  Goes off to register the domain of halo5.com

Microsoft Obtains “Halo4.com” Domain from Man in the US [VGChartz]

scat398: it’s actually against the law to squat on domain names now…so more than likely his rights to the name were taken…with little or no money changing hands.

KylieDog:  In other news, a side character going by the name of “O’Reilly” was just revealed in Halo 4.