I appreciate that must have been difficult. If you could set the record straight, where would you have taken him? Love to hear your reccos and thoughts!
Very cool. I read you built this as you are learning music theory as an adult. As someone who also hopes to learn myself later in life, I just wanted to say thanks. All the examples / tools you have built are great!
I am not surprised by a single thing in this article. My parents local rental car company was purchased by Hertz 20 years ago and I got to see first hand the IT mess they brought to the acquisition.
Funny enough, when Hertz brought DTAG (Dollar / Thrifty) they might have purchased part ownership of a software Company called BlueBird Systems which developed a modern front end system built on Progress, which was light years ahead of Hertz internal nonsense at the time according to people I spoke with.
The car rental software world was a weird and wonderful place. They even had their own operating systems called SuperDos once upon a time specifically built to run dumb terminals throught multi-mux's over phone lines. When Enterprise innovated and used satellites to connect their locations together, the industry thought they were mad. Turns out their ability to do real time yeild management of their fleets was a game changer and enabled them to grow at an astounding pace and unseated Hertz very quickly.
The entire industry is filled with crazy consolidation, public / private takeovers and companies thinking their way is the better way to do it. Astounding levels of tech debt, hubris, money and larger than life personalities. A near perfect ecosystem for consultant grift.
I have dealt with a lot of domain squatters and see a pretty common pattern here.
1. Regardless of when it was purchased, there is always a "project" behind it that has never materialized.
2. There will be some dated fragments of said "project" like a Internet Archive page showing it was once going to be something but it usually never was anything but a ploy to avoid looking like a squatter.
UDRP rules are pretty clear about bad faith registrations and most country TLD's (including CIRA, the .ca domain) use the UDRP to solve disputes.
If you own a domain, regardless of when it was registered, each year you renew you are 're-signing' under the terms of the UDRP.
It should be obvious to the registrant, that the domain will cause confusion with a clearly held trademark. If you are in Crypto, you know Binance. Them making an offer and someone countering demonstrates they are willing to sell the domain.
Filing a UDRP dispute by the trademark holder will cost approx $5k+ USD. They made an offer worth roughly that to avoid a lengthy battle, but if the registrant won't go for it and demands a ridiculously high price for something they clearly aren't using, it's cheaper to just hire a firm and just go through the UDRP process to seize the domain. Many companies don't do that, but it's an option.
I was involved in something similar where we just paid the squatter $7k vs. going through the UDRP process. It sucked, but it was definitely faster and less complicated.
When it's all over, I predict taking the $6500 they offered will have been easier and less expensive for this individual. Their out of pocket costs are in the (hundreds) so that could have been a tidy profit.
https://youtube.com/shorts/IEbl6RIJeDc?si=pNol1UkjxRwML9Dz
I suspect the same thing will happen for northern states buying from Canada!