Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Yep. You heard right. All your celebrity URLs are now belong to Chris Bosh. But, after battling an alleged cybersquatter in court and winning, apparently he's gonna go all Robin Hood with the domain names, giving them back to the famous folks whose URLs were poached.

Sure, he's primarily known as an all-star forward for the Toronto Raptors, but for Chris Bosh, this isn't exactly his first rodeo in terms of online activity. He is heavily involved in social media, through his firm Max Deal, and is clearly one of the more Internet-savvy athletes out there. He put himself on the map when he became a legit Internet sensation by way of his YouTube campaign to get fans to vote for him for all-star. However, apparently he didn't register the URL Chris Bosh dot com quite fast enough. One Luis Zavala got it first, along with a huge stockpile of others. And he didn't want to give it back. So he got sued. And he lost. But it didn't stop there.

Luis Zavala apparently was either disinclined or unable to pay out the $120,000 settlement Bosh won against him. So, as a consequence it seems that Bosh got a gang of URLs in lieu of payment--some 800 domain names. Now, instead of just having ChrisBosh.com back, he also owns a plethora of other celebrity and athlete domain names. He's like a one-man GoDaddy. But don't listen to me, listen to the New York Times.

The list of domain names, which is available for download at www.winston.com/siteFiles/Domain_Name_List.pdf, includes several N.B.A. stars, among them Jason Kidd, Deron Williams, Amar'e Stoudemire, Steve Nash and Michael Redd, as well as college and high school players and international prospects.

It also contains the names of mixed martial arts fighters, a competitive eater and members of the Gotti family. There are domain names for Britney Spears's son, the wife of the rocker Rob Zombie and the twin sons of Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.

All the Web addresses now belong to Bosh, who said he had no intention of profiting from them.

"I am thrilled that I am able to offer the return of these domain names to a host of other athletes and celebrities whose names were cybersquatted," Bosh said in a statement.

Tying a neat little bow atop the story is the press release from Bosh's legal team. Why? Because that is the page you are redirected to if you try to go to www.luiszavala.com.

Daniel Turman