There’s money to be made in the suffering of others, and 4,000 deaths due to an incurable viral outbreak are no exception.
A company in Nevada named Blue String Ventures owns the rights to the internet domain name Ebola.com, and is willing to sell it for $150,000 (€118,000).
"$150,000 is not a tremendous amount for a premium domain,” Blue String Ventures president Jon Schultz told CNBC in an email.
“The fact that this is a top news story makes it very reasonable, in our opinion, as many domains sell for seven figures. Just this year Whisky.com sold for $3.1 million and MI.com sold for $3.6 million."
"Ebola.com would be a great domain for a pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine or cure, a company selling pandemic or disaster-preparedness supplies, or a medical company wishing to provide information and advertise services," Mr Schultz added.
It is not uncommon for multinational pharmaceutical companies to purchase domains of this kind; as CNBC notes, both Cancer.com and Obesity.com are owned by Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline owns Diabetes.com, and Pfizer has its grips on Arthritis.com.
Schultz and his business partner Chris Hood purchased the rights to Ebola.com in 2008, and have amassed an empire of panic-driven domains including Birdflu.com, Fukushima.com, and PotassiumIodide.com – the compound used to combat cancers caused by radiation in a nuclear disaster or terrorist attack.
The Ebola.com domain currently lands on a homepage that directs users to donate money to the medical charity Doctors without Borders. It also includes links to newspaper articles about the current outbreak decimating western African countries, and links to books, ebooks and DVDs about the disease that can be bought on Amazon.
(H/T: CNBC)
