NYC's Mayo Mike Bloomberg: Domain Name Squasher?

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has changed his voter registration from Republican to Independent. This has started tongues wagging--like none other than the righty Wall Street Journal--to speculate that the billionaire-mayor could mount an independent run for President.

I don't know much about Mayor Bloomberg other than he seemed like he was a smaller replacement for former mayor Rudy Giuliani--in both physical and political stature.

However, before Mayor Mike was Mayor Mike and simply Billionaire Mike, I had a small, indirect run-in with him.

In 2001, I was representing a law client with the same last name who had obtained a website domain name of "bloomberg." My client was going to use the site to promote his own business, career, and life.

Before getting far with things, my client got a nastygram from one of Bloomberg's "people" in New York, accusing my client of squatting on the domain name and violating federal law.

I've seen domain name squatting, and believe me, Sen. Quayle, this was no domain name squatting. My client didn't try to leverage the name or hold it hostage. My client wanted to use it for himself. It was his own last name. I sent photos of my client, articles about my client and his exploits, and tried to appeal to Mike's "people" as, well, a person.

The "people" were having nothing of it.

After an exchange of letters with Mike's "people," they went ahead and filed an arbitration over the domain name.

The arbitrator from the National Arbitration Forum saw it Bloomberg's way. (As an aside, every NAF arbitration I have been involved in has been a dismal affair, with the NAF possessing, in my opinion, a pro-corporation/anti-little guy bias. I can't stand dealing with them. But I digress.)

I was struck by the lengths Mayor Mike would go to crush some individual over a $9.99 domain name. Bloomberg could have gotten any number of variations on Bloomberg for his business ventures, but no, he had to go and screw my client in South Dakota. My feeling was he did it just because he could.

Maybe Mayor Mike has changed now that he's gotten into politics, which is much more of a people pleasing business compared to his prior business of acquiring as much money as he possibly could.

But if Mayor Mike starts talking about being a champion of the little guy in his putative run for the Presidency, I think I'll puke. Because I know what lengths he'll go to--or at least his "people" will go to--to do his will, no matter who he steps on in the process.

If I were going to vote for a New Yorker for President in 2008, Sen. Hillary Clinton or Mayor Giuliani would get my vote long before the now newly independent "man of the peole," Mayor Mike Bloomberg.