Situation:
I went to my favorite website to buy domin names - godaddy.com, and was
trying to purchase a .com domain name. Well the credit card
authorization
failed because the card was not activated. No problem, So I fixed the
CC
problem and tried to get the domain name the next day.

When I was about to buy it from godaddy it said it had already been
taken.
So I did a whois and saw it had been purchased by Compana, Inc.
(another
domain name registrar), that same day.

So I did some research on them and found out that they monitor domain
registry querries and selectively buy domain names that have some
significance and relevence in search engine keyword rankings. This
is an automated process.

My question is how is it possible for a business such as Compana, Inc.
able
to monitor what domain names are being querried?
And, Do you have to be a registrar to do that?

You can read more and comment about it here too:
http://ray-solomon.com/2006/06/10/dns-question/