Noobish questions about internet domain registrations

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Caporegime
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
34,564
Location
Warwickshire
Hi guys

How do I find out a list of what domains are

- Taken, and when the associated lease expires
- Taken with no possibility of the lease expiring
- Not taken and totally available to set up
- The cheapest place to buy a certain domain name

I know next to nothing about domain naming and laws and figured it was time to get enlightened as I'm looking at starting website(s) in the near future.

I was also wondering if it's possible to do things like register Battlefield4.com and sell it back to EA, or could they somehow force me to relinquish it through some sneaky legal tactics (this is a theoretical example and purely for my own curiosity)?
 
Not taken would be impossible. That's every combination of every word.

To test if what you want is taken just use one of the many services, such as 1&1 internet https://order.1and1.co.uk/xml/order/Instant;jsessionid=8BDA08077774212AF8B435DF5210CB65.TCpfix154b

They are all similar prices and not very much so looking around for prices isnt worth it. Just keep all your registrations in one place, makes things a lot more manageable if you set up a lot of sites.

No you won't get away with charging back registered trademarks in URLs. They will easily strip you of the domain, especially if you are requesting silly money. The only way you can viably take a domain is to register it before the IP is invented and use it for your own IP/service legitimately. If you don't use your domains and just hold them on the speculation someone else might want them, they will win that case too. However, a lot of people don't like this hassle as the holder can say he/she is using it for email or some other invisible service.
 
A few "domain dropping" websites I used to monitor got shut down for some kind of breach of T&Cs with Nominet and the way that the sites reproduced the their data but their are a few of them still about.

Also, even if you you register a domain name with a trademark with no intention of selling it on you could still lose it. In August 1999 I registered "dotnokia.com" and the website was a massive collection of Nokia 3210 keypress ringtones (about 20,000) people could use for free. All went fine until November 2000 when I got an email from someone claiming to be from Nokia, saying I had "their" domain name and I had to hand it over to them. I thought it was a windup so I replied saying if they wanted to buy my popular domain name (getting about 100,000 page views a month) they could have it but they'd have to make it worth my while.

Next day a courier handed me a letter.... from the IPR Authority dept of Nokia Finland, basically a cease and desist type letter telling me to pull the website and transfer the domain name to them. The site got pulled, domain transfered - end of.
They were nice enough to give me the money I'd paid to register the domain back tho!!

I registered Uniquefones.com in it's place and carried on until another cease and desist type letter from IPR warning me about the selling of ringtones and royaly payments and such like (even tho they were free and not only was I making no money, I was out of pocket).

I decided to back off and quit as I didn't need the hassle, only to watch "Club Nokia" (Nokias official offering) start doing a similar thing. I should have held out as microbilling got very popular and soon after the £1.50-£3.00 ringtone business boomed! Oh well.

Anyways, I would be very careful about using any trademark/name (or anything similar which could be similar) in a domain name as you could end up losing out.
 
groen said:
i like maddogdomains because they offer domains by proxy which allows you to hide the whois information which can be useful to prevent harassment.

use http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo for domain information and pricing, but there are many similar sites.
Click to expand...

You did know that ICANN do not actually allow the use of "Proxies" in their terms & conditions?
Although the idea of using a proxy might be appealing, by using one you are actually breaking ICANN's T&C's and it would be quite possible for you to lose your domain.
 
groen said:
i like maddogdomains because they offer domains by proxy which allows you to hide the whois information which can be useful to prevent harassment.

use http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo for domain information and pricing, but there are many similar sites.
Click to expand...

Harassment? So it's possible for Joe Public to see the name and address of any person that owns a particular website? Is there any way to prevent this?

Thanks for some of the other points regarding domain laws and how to get started etc., interesting.

PistolPete, that's some brutal tactics from Nokia! Stopping the supply of ringtones is one thing, but how could they force the domain transfer also?!

Gord, by not taken I meant previously registered domains for which leases had expired and that were entirely available to anyone that wanted them.
 
Robbie G said:
So it's possible for Joe Public to see the name and address of any person that owns a particular website? Is there any way to prevent this?
Click to expand...

If you have .uk domain as a private individual, you can have it listed as such by Nominet, and have your address hidden so it doesn't show in a whois lookup.

A snippet of a whois lookup on my domain:

Registrant:
John S

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.
Click to expand...
 
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