I learned of this when users of my dictionary search site (OneLook) started complaining. I'd been in contact with folks from dictionary.com in their early days, and I've watched its rise and fall with curiosity. If whoever owns reference.com now is reading this, I'll buy it from you and I can promise to honor its original mission as I have with OneLook -- make me an offer.
FYI dictionary.com and thesaurus.com are still available on their original domains. I believe that, under prior ownership (IAC), they consolidated the traffic of their properties under reference.com in order to get higher audience numbers in ComScore and hence better ad deals. It's baffling to me that they (apparently) either let the domain expire or sold it to a spammer. It's accrued brand equity since 2008 -- and no doubt a lot of backlinks, for whatever that's worth now.