RealTown's RealTalk

Steele V. Propp wrote,

It actually makes very good sense.  There is so much attempted "gamesmanship" on using these initials that NAR is just having to say "no" to them all.  And the fact that you are asking the question suggests that you really know why they are refusing.  You know that there could be an extra benefit that no one else in your area would have by using your initials.

Greg says,

This makes sense to someone who has not invested thousands of dollars and countless hours developing a web presence using the term "MLS" WHILE it was NOT against the rules. Now it is years later and I am finally making money off my time and investment and I am supposed to just walk away from all of it and start over because someone was supposedly "gaming".

Greg Cremia

It may make sense to start now; however when I bought mine I had just got zapped by the Internet police for www.Knoxville-Realtor.com and I wanted to make sure I was not breaking any rules with my then new website, www.KnoxvilleMLS.com

So..........I called our board's AE, got his blessing and then to be sure called NAR's legal department to inquire there. A nice gentleman told me that NAR had no trademark on "MLS" so he did not see a problem with it either.

So I bought it and now................fast forward to 2008..........after I have spent the same thousands of dollars and countless hours as Greg getting it to a top search engine rank and guess what................sorry, you can't do that anymore. Oh wait, skip the "sorry" part in the preceding sentence, no one has said "sorry".

Anyone else who believes this new set of rules is unfair to pioneers and innovators should please visit http://www.FreeTheMLS.com

PS, visit www.Knoxville-Realtor.com too (yeah, it's still there, just not mine anymore) and see what happens to discarded domain names. Following is a partial response to what's being done about it by NAR.

"The site you mention, Knoxville-realtor.com, is a type with which it is most difficult to deal because it is no longer being used as a site for a member or even a real estate agent.  It is just a list of pay-per-click advertising links.  This situation is an example of one of our most frustrating situations in which the site was being used by a member, the member stopped and dropped the domain in response to our request and it was subsequently registered again by someone else.  It seems that once the site becomes available again we see that it is only be a matter of time before the site reappearing on the Internet with the kind of appearance you now see at this site. 

We have very limited luck in getting anything done with these sites.  You may have read about the practice of 'tasting' domains.  There are millions of domains being used like this each week and this may be one of those domains.  In looking back we have now written to four different domain holders (Ultimate Search, another who used a private registration service, March ex, and now an individual in Australia) since the site was taken down by the member.  Using Domain Tools we learned that over the last four years there have been 26 changes on 14 unique name servers.  In other words, it changes so fast that we can't even keep up with who owns the domain."

"over the last four years there have been 26 changes on 14 unique name servers.  In other words, it changes so fast that we can't even keep up with who owns the domain."

These guys seem to be able to take "gaming the system" to a whole new level.

Jim Lee, CRS, ABR, GRI, Certified e-PRO Trainer , e-JIM
Realty Executives Associates, Knoxville, TN
www.KnoxvilleMLS.com mailto:JIM@JimLee.com
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real estate blog: www.KnoxvilleTennesseeRealEstateBlog.com