The Short And Sorry Saga Of Stolen Valuable Domain Name Look.com	1.5/5.0 (2 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Cliff Livingstone November 10, 2008

My brother and I originally obtained domain name Look.com on April 19, 2004 from a Registrar Company for $75.00. We had a fledgling antivirus business called Look Software, and who would have thought. By 1999, dot com had exploded and the name was stolen by a former associate in Look Software. Who put it up for sale on the Internet for 15 million dollars. Not a joke.

We were tipped off in the fall of 1999 that it was on a website called www.greatdomains.com. I still have the screen print outs as proof. Two BC millionaires (shiver, shiver) put up $50,000 to get it back and earned 50% ownership. We had all been expecting a nice big juicy flip. However, by the time we got it back dot com had crashed and all ideas about a nice big juicy flip over were gone with the wind.

In the spring of 200 I discovered it stolen again. This time by someone unknown who had hacked into the Registrar's server. Fortunately I discovered it before any harm was done. The Registrar put it straight back to us with the caution that because Look.com was such a good name, somebody would always be trying to swipe it. No kidding.

In 2001 I decided to put Look.com up as a search engine website because of the ideal name use. To help raise funds I brought in a partner in 2002. Who also went rogue near the end of 2003 and abducted control of Look.com for himself, where abduct means to travel around in mysterious ways, usually with the property of another.

This time, because it was an inside job, the Registrar Company, now Bulk Register, said, "Tough luck, go sue". The problem was, that when the partner took the domain name he also took control of the website and the money coming in, so my bother and I were completely cut off from all sources of revenue since we didn't have anything else going at the time. Doing what you gotta do we immediately went out and started selling flowers in bars and restaurants around town at the tender age of sixty four. Fortunately we pulled it off. We always had enough money for groceries and rent, but unfortunately nothing for any expensive things, like lawyers.

In desperation I tried for a year in the hallowed halls of Justice as my own litigator with absolutely no previous experience in the courts whatsoever. Where Justice means ‘Just Ice’. And got eaten alive. The result was that I buried myself five feet out of six. The two millionaires (shiver, shiver), P. Mathews of Vancouver and H. Stark of Kelowna, or Peter M. and Harvey S. if you prefer, stepped back in and said they would help. Who then had Greydie and I sign over full  ownership of Look.com to them after giving their promises and assurances that they would never try to sell Look.com out from under us if we did.

Then sure enough, on June 4, 2007, that's exactly what they did. Using the very paper work we had signed. They sold Look.com to an American Company called InterSearch for around $575,000 Gs. The problem was that by that time the courts had given my brother and my Company Look Software Systems Inc. self sole ownership of Look.com until 2013, and then Mathews and Stark (shiver, shiver) ostensible ownership after that because of the paperwork we had signed. What Mathews and Stark did was use the 'after that' as though it were 'here and now’. to make a sweet deal with InterSearch based on the twisted pretzel. The twisted pretzel comprised not only contempt of court because of the ruling, but also criminal theft because of the sale, and finally outright con job because of the monumental con job they had pulled on Greydie and I like smiling crocodiles.

The other problem was that the courts had also given the business partner the exclusive right to run the website until 2013, and the right to sell it for our supposed mutual benefits as he saw fit. He saw fit. And sold the operating right for $275, 000 Gs to the same American company. The American Company therefore ended up owning the whole show. It's really hard to figure that they didn't know exactly what the score was because they had all the paper work in front of them and aren't stupid. Everybody's basic premise was that Greydie and I were now Old Age paupers with only $1,200.00 a month each to live on. In other we were liver ready for chopping.

I decided to go at Mathew and Stark (shiver, shiver) though the court anyway. This time I managed to dig a full six foot hole. I stood in front of the bench at the what turned out to be the last and final hearing. The Judge said quote, "Self Litigants aren't qualified to stand before the bench', unquote.  And it went quickly downhill from there.  Mathews and Stark (shiver, shiver) got away Scot free. To boot, now I can’t go into court for anything without leave of the court first, and only after posting a hefty bond up front. And you thought your last divorce was a slammer. This kind of censorship is the very absolute most prejudicial thing a court can impose upon anyone. It was done on the basis that I was a sic, serial litigator against (shiver, shiver) Mathews and Stark, even though this was the first and only time I had ever been in court against them.

Such an injunction is the kind of thing a court only imposes upon a relentless self litigant who constantly comes back to court time and again with a frivolous issue. It's the court room equivalent of a restraining order against a stalker. For example, another party John Turmel, has self litigated in court hundreds of times during the last twenty years over the legal right to use marihuana, and has never received such an injunction. The judge also awarded Mathews and Stark $7,500.00 in court costs, even knowing I was completely impecunious. Another highly unprecedented action.

I should have seen it coming though. The law firm of Men and Partners, (something like that), who handled the case for (shiver, shiver) Mathews and Stark are well known around town as maybe tricksters. Where trickster means knowing exactly who to pull favours from when the going gets rough. Mathews and Stark’s (shiver, shiver) lawyers took all the court cases I had issued against the rogue partner, and managed to convince the judge that it was all cases against them, hence sic, serial. It wasn't that difficult to pull off. The trick was in the biased judge. He took every word they said as gospel truth without proof, either because of the shimmering light radiating brightly off their lawyerly robes or because cigars had been smoked in the backroom. And he didn’t listen to a single word I said with proof, either because I was a hiss, hoark, spit, self litigator or because cigars had been smoked in the back room. Now you have a good idea of how a King's Court must have been run in the old days.

The rogue partner, who was by now back on my side because he thought what (shiver, shiver) Mathews and Stark had done was abominable, and who had been around a courtroom or two on his own right, said afterwards that he had seen or heard of a lot of people getting screwed but had never ever seen anything like this. So, since even a corpse knows it's time to throw in the towel when it gets bad enough, I’ve decided to throw in the towel and use www.wholelook.com instead as the humour website I had planned to launch as the restart backbone for Look.com. Ironically enough, Wholelook.com is probably a better domain name overall, just not as short.

And also, don't forget, 'Who laughs last thinks slowest'. The two Gilligans', Mathews and Stark (shiver, shiver) are no doubt probably laughing all the way to the bank by know. It’s a pretty good guess that they haven't thought this all the through though. As everyone knows, you can't take it with you through the eye of the needle when your time comes. But how you made it goes straight through. This may well turn out to be the most expensive $575,000 they ever made.

Also, for the record, after investing nearly a million dollars for Look.com, and waiting for nearly two years until all the dust had settled after buying the operating rights to Look.com from the partner,  InterSearch eventually put up their long awaited new website, which was a yawner, and which promptly tanked faster than dot com.

Besides, it's an ill wind that blows no one any good. I end up with a small silver lining out of this anyway. The whole saga of the dot com era, and Look.com in particular and all its foibles, has become an integral part of my, ahem, seminal book of memoirs, 'The CliffR Project'. The book writes itself. The project is in six parts from the hilarious sides of life and runs like a TV mini series. The details are now up as website www.cliffr.com. Plus the obvious, I get to use this whole mal-adventure to help promote both www.wholelook.com and www.cliffr.com through the Internet as interesting fanfare.

Hosting Bookmarks