A Nevada-based company called Blue String Ventures is selling the Ebola.com domain name for $150,000 – is that even legal?

A Nevada-based company called Blue String Ventures is selling the Ebola.com domain name for $150,000.

“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,” the president of Blue String Ventures, Jon Schultz, told CNBC via email.

Schultz bought the domain name in 2008 for $13,500. He also reportedly owns BirdFlu.com, Fukushima.com, and H1N1.com.

“According to our site meter, we’re already doing 5,000 page views per day just by people typing in Ebola.com to see what’s there,” Schultz told the Washington Post. “We’re getting inquiries every day about the sale of it. I have a lot of experience in this sort of domain business, and my sense is that $150,000 is reasonable.”

Why buy ebola.com?

Most disease-related URLs are bought by big pharmaceutical companies. Johnson and Johnson, for instance, owns cancer.com. But there is no reason that a private citizen cannot own one.

Many bloggers have accused Schultz of profiting at others’ misery and even cybersquatting. The illegal practice of cybersquatting involves buying a trademarked company’s name, like Pepsi.com, and then trying to sell it to the company for a high price.

However, since Ebola is not a brand name, what Schultz has done is merely domain name speculation. In every industry, including brick-and-mortar real estate, speculators and flippers have a bad name. But what they’re doing isn’t illegal – it’s just capitalism.