I’m a freelance editor, writer and web designer with several clients of varying sizes. (Their businesses, that is. Though I’m sure they are personally of different sizes too. :))
Anyway, one of them is in a niche field with a few direct competitors that run almost identical businesses. My client is a staunch defender of her trademarked name and certain slogans, and has dinged some of her competitors for violations in the past.
However this woman has recently nabbed several of her competitors’ domain names under different country’s TLDs (that is, top-level domains, for example .co.uk, .it, .is, .ua, .ca, and so on). These aren’t just variations of the competitors names such as misspellings; they’re the actual domain name, just using a different country’s extension.
It’s certainly not up to me to judge what a client does, at least not to her face. 
Personally I think this behavior is hypocritical, but hey, I’m not the morality police and business is tough and yadda yadda.
However, she’s asking me to set up these domains to point to her own site. This is where I find myself at a quandary.
I want to refuse. I would do so very politely, very professionally, but simply mention that I’m uncomfortable setting these up since I believe this could cause problems down the road, and I also try not to act in a way that would cause harm if the same were done to me.
If I wanted to be more uptight, I’d mention that it’s a clear bad faith violation of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which basically states that knowingly registering a domain name of a competitor isn’t kosher. For those who don’t wanna read through all that tripe, here’s the relevant section:
[spoiler]b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith. For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:
(ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or
(iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.[/spoiler]
Mind you, domain poaching like this isn’t illega, or at least, I don’t think it is. ICANN (which stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) isn’t a law enforcement agency or anything. I believe they act as sort of an arbitrator and if one of the competitors files a claim, it’s up to ICANN to resolve the dispute. I have no doubt the decision would go against my client.
(BTW I should mention that what I’m being asked to do is something that the client can definitely do herself – indeed, she’s done it before and knows how. It doesn’t require huge technical knowledge or anything. She’s just asking me because she’s busy with other stuff at the moment. So if I don’t do it, she will. And I don’t care if she does; it’s her business, her decision. I just would rather keep my hands clean.)
Anyway, am I being too much of a prig? Should I shut up and do what my client asks? I don’t think my client would fire me or anything. We’ve worked together for nearly a decade and I think she knows where I stand on such things.
What would you do in this scenario?
That is how I feel: there’s a way I like to do business, and how I treat my clients, and I think that in the long run, the fact that I do behave this way means that they know they can trust me to deal fairly with them.