The clear version

Rules & Sponsor Terms

The protest should be easy to understand. These rules explain the joke, what a sponsor buys, and what happens before and after a paid placement.

Effective 2026-09-10

The reminder

stopbuyingdomains.com is a public service announcement: stop buying domains you will not use. Sharing is free. There is no prize, no account, and no leaderboard of domain counts beyond the optional confession counter and the visitor total.

Confessions

The unused-domain counter is a joke with a rate limit. You can confess between 1 and 80 unused domains per submission. We store a running total and a short-lived network marker so the same connection cannot flood the number. We do not store names, emails, or the domains themselves.

Visitor count

The homepage may show how many people have read the reminder since launch. That uses an anonymous visitor cookie and a per-browser marker so the same browser is not counted twice. It is not tied to a name, email, or account. Crawlers are ignored.

Wall of shame

Anyone can pay to put a domain name on the public wall of shame. It is $2, once, for every listing — the price does not go up, and it does not matter how full the wall is. This is not a sponsor tile: there is no logo, no 30-day placement, and no place among the ten paid sponsor spots. The domain and an optional short note are shown publicly, with the site favicon when one exists. Anyone can like a listing; that is free, public, and not a ranking. The domain name links out to that domain; that is still not sponsorship. Email is used for the order only.

Checkout runs through Mollie as a one-off USD payment. The listing goes live after payment and stays on the wall until it is withdrawn or removed. Consumers have 14 days to withdraw by emailing danny@fivo.cc. Checkout records an express request to publish immediately. A withdrawal takes the domain off the wall and refunds the paid amount.

Pornographic, illegal, or similarly prohibited names and notes may be removed immediately. That is ordinary moderation and does not create a refund right.

There are ten numbered tiles. A tile is one fixed placement for 30 days. It shows a logo, a public name, an optional short line, and a sponsored link. Live sponsors also appear in the top banner and the Meet the sponsors directory. There is no subscription and no automatic renewal. Live placements are shown with the most expensive first. Tile numbers do not buy a better position — the amount paid does.

A logo upload is optional. Without one the tile shows the favicon of the website given at checkout, and if that site has no favicon, the first letter of the sponsor name. A logo can be sent to danny@fivo.cc after the order instead.

When the 30 days are up the tile stops showing the sponsor automatically: it disappears from the banner, the grid and the directory, and becomes claimable again. Nothing renews and nothing is charged a second time.

Price is global, not per tile. The next open spot always costs the current ladder price, whichever tile you pick. Successful paid placements climb this ladder. When a tile expires after 30 days it becomes claimable again, but the next purchase stays on the ladder. Expiry does not move the ladder backwards:

Purchase 1$5
Purchase 2$10
Purchase 3$25
Purchase 4$250
Purchase 5$500
Purchase 6$750
Purchase 7$1,000
Purchase 8$1,500
Purchase 9$1,500
Purchase 10+$1,500

Checkout runs through Mollie as a one-off payment. Individuals and businesses can buy. Business buyers can add invoice details at checkout. Until card payments are enabled on the Mollie profile, checkout offers whatever methods that profile already has.

Consumers have 14 days to withdraw by emailing danny@fivo.cc. Checkout records an express request to start immediately. A withdrawal ends the placement and refunds the paid amount minus the proportional amount for days already live. Business orders do not use this consumer withdrawal flow.

Pornographic or sexually explicit logos and similar prohibited content may be removed immediately. That is ordinary moderation and does not create a refund right.

Privacy

Sponsor checkout stores the public tile, email, payment reference, and any business invoice fields needed for the order. Wall of shame checkout stores the public domain, optional note, email, and payment reference. Emails are not shown on the site. Payment details stay with Mollie.

Confessions store only aggregate totals and a short-lived rate-limit marker. The visitor count stores an anonymous cookie id and a marker per browser so the same browser is not counted twice. Wall of shame likes reuse that cookie when present, store which listings that browser liked, and keep an aggregate heart count per listing. Sponsor and wall of shame icons are loaded from Google's public favicon service, which means that service sees the domain being displayed. Server logs and Cloudflare analytics may include coarse request metadata. We do not sell this data.