GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Man arrested for stealing domain names

Rare... but it happens: http://www.njsp.org/news/pr080309.html

Detectives charged Daniel Goncalves, 25, of Union Township, with theft by unlawful taking or disposition, theft of identity, and computer theft, all crimes of the second degree. Troopers also executed a search warrant at his residence.

The arrest and search warrant were the culmination of a State Police investigation into the theft of P2P.com, an Internet domain name. A large volume of business and computer records relevant to the domain name theft were seized. Goncalves was processed and released on $60,000 cash bail pending court.

The domain naming system is a moderately regulated system of ?registrars? who have received authority through ICANN, (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), to register domain names for individuals and companies. Domain names are the readable addresses used by individuals and corporations to identify their presence on the Internet. For a set registration fee, the domain names are purchased for periods of time (up to 10 years) by their registrants. There is a large community of individuals who frequently refer to themselves as ?domainers? who buy and sell domain names they speculate will become more valuable over time. Two and three letter domain names are particularly valuable as they are easy to remember and generate larger amounts of traffic, which produces revenue.

P2P, LLC is such a company formed expressly for the purchase and management of one domain name, P2P.com. Because of its short length and topical relation to the exploding Peer to Peer file sharing phenomenon, P2P was particularly valuable, with an estimated value of between $160,000 and $200,000 at the time of its theft.