Quietly being able to check on the availability of domain names is of growing importance to both commercial and personal users as the internet expands. Metaphor has developed a way to keep Internet "idea theft" from happening-LiberateDomains.com.

Last Winter Metaphor wanted to buy an internet domain name and found it to be available after a preliminary search.  However before the company could buy the domain name it was purchased by an outfit based in the Bahamas with links to China. Metaphor could have the domain name for $30,000 instead of the usual $30-$50 fee.

Chief Technology officer, Troy Davis, for Metaphor and EditSpot, Metaphor's web publishing subsidiary states, "We just want ideas to be free and people to be able to own and profit from their own ideas. These guys are like bullies and if no one puts up with (them), they will eventually go away, an we're hopefully trying to give people a tool to fight back.  Getting the right website is a huge issue, and why we see ridiculous names on the web now-with companies coming up with names that sound like a noise you make when you're sleeping-there aren't any other good ones out there."

More than 162 million new domains were created in the 1st quarter of 2008 alone, up 26% from the same period last year.  There is also a 40% growth in cybersquatting, which is the practice of buying a domain name that is  registered trademark for someone else.

What happened to Metaphor was technically not cybersquatting and not illegal but is another practice called "front-running" and is starting to be a huge problem. Big companies are buying up whole blocks of names that are associated with the actual name or close in spelling to get around this problem.  The economic repercussions of such practices could end up being in the millions or billions of dollars.