Why is this not illegal!

While a bit annoying I wouldn't be too keen to call for more regulation of the internet, who exactly do you think should be stopping them from doing this and policing them?
 
Yes, this happens all the time, and with your expiring domains. Companies buy them up with the hope of passing traffic to generate income with advertising and/or to sell on at an inflated price. If this is your trademark then I believe you can still pursue the domain for your self. Expiring domains are the worst, customers coming to where I used to work used to get us to look after domains and often forget the secondary domain that needed transferring, when that domain expired and did not get noticed through the expiry period and got bought up by someone there was often a lot of blaming going on!
 
I thought if a domain wasn't being put to good use then you could make a claim to buy it?

I often buy domains when I get some ideas, most of them aren't used but still like to keep hold of them incase I come back to that idea later. Is a simple holding page enough to stop someone trying to buy it? :confused:
 
MonkeyMan said:
I thought if a domain wasn't being put to good use then you could make a claim to buy it?
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I'm not sure about that, you can make a claim if someone is "cyber-squatting" i.e. they have prima facie taken ownership of the page to prevent a legitimate interest from acquiring it and possibly trying to extort money from them to relinquish it - say for instance I somehow registered www.microsoft.co.uk before Microsoft did, I've got no claim over it but they have a legitimate business interest so if I'd asked them for money to return it they could submit a claim about that page which would probably be successful.
 
It's not likely that my domain name would be bought up, as it is a misspelled word in leet speak, hehe
 
I've got about 5 movies websites which i know will have Sequels out in afew years, ive got all of them aswell, the companys will have to buy them from me! big big ££££
 
Jamesdavid3 said:
I've got about 5 movies websites which i know will have Sequels out in afew years, ive got all of them aswell, the companys will have to buy them from me! big big ££££
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Or they'll see you're not using them and take them off your hands ;):p
 
I can see them making a generous offer to buy them for maybe $10-$20 before lawyers get involved, while it may be years until those movies are made and thus costing you money instead.
 
The term cyber-squatting is used a little bit too frequently.
Cyber-squatting is the act of buying a domain with the sole intention of making money from a particular company when I've got no legitimate interest in the name.
This basically means that if I register a domain that contains a trade mark or name of another company my intention is clear.
I've done so because I'm pretty sure that company will want to buy the domain and I can ask what I like.

However as the registrant has no legitimate interest in the domain then this is classed as squatting and in most cases they will be forced to hand over the domain name.

Registering short or generic domain names with the intention of making money is not cyber-squatting.
Until the market fell out on domain names it was simply considered good market sense.

You can't make a claim on an "unused" domain unless you can show some kind of prior rights due to trade marks and the like.
So if my domain has been registered and the domain appears to not be in use, if my company was formed before the domain was registered I might have a good claim.
It's difficult to tell a truly "unused" domain.
Catching traffic could be considered as "in use" - you might not like it, but it is in use.
I have domain names purely for nameservers or FTP or just email.
The domains appear to not reallly be in use - they are.

The final thing to remember is that domain names are sold on a first come first served basis.
Yes all of the "good" .com domains are gone, but lets be honest, 10 years ago if you'd had the opportunity you would have registered some of them yourself.

.com is still the most popular domain extention, however it's how you present your site.
co.uk works very well internationally as well as being good for the UK.
.net can work so long as you get the name out there and make the site good.
Even .info, .eu domains can and do work - you just have to do more work yourself.
 
Interesting stuff.

Say I buy a domain knowing that in the near future it would be needed by a big corporate business.

If I developed it into a photo blog and used it for that purpose, would the company then have no alternative but to make an offer for the site instead of insisting it be passed over?

Hope that made sense. :o
 
Wiggins said:
Interesting stuff.

Say I buy a domain knowing that in the near future it would be needed by a big corporate business.

If I developed it into a photo blog and used it for that purpose, would the company then have no alternative but to make an offer for the site instead of insisting it be passed over?

Hope that made sense. :o
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I suspect so, but you would have to make a good case, so say you called your site "digipos" and then some company that makes tv's decides to call their product "digipos" too and for some reason they want a separate website for it, assuming you started your thing before the company did, I don't see how they can win a case for you to hand over the name.
 
how soon do you have to renew your domain to prevent a takeover? Is there a minimum period or will your host contact you before selling it on ?
 
It's not illegal becase of useless governments. Why isn't it illegal to steal someones property if there is no intent to permanently deprive?
 
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