Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

[jusben1369]

Lost in this overview (and I couldn't really tell the point of the overview) are the probably 10 000 + people per year who go to this site by mistake. It's odd to me that Nissan didn't just offer him those 7 figures worth of legal fees and solve it (or maybe they did to no effect)

[badclient]

I've actually met the guy and did some contract work for him. After hearing the story from his mouth, what stuck with me is his utter dislike for the Nissan CEO and Arabs. He seemed very passionate about Israel and cited Nissan's Arab CEO as a huge part of why he dislikes that company.

[toyg]

I suspect they initially thought they could just bully the guy. By the time they understood he actually was on solid ground (it was the 90s, lawyers didn't know anything about our intertubes), it was too late: smallbiz owners like Mr. Nissan can be the hardest mofos once they get personal. I bet he's still proud he didn't accept their offers.

It's old news anyway, very well-known. I'm always surprised when stuff like this comes up on news sites, I tend to forget the web is full of goddamn kids these days ;)

[Hrundi]

This reminds me of the domain http://steam.com, which has the following text in the frontpage:

"This domain is not for sale."

I'm sure Valve could drop a ton of money to aquire that domain.

[yogo]

Exactly. My first thought whenever this topic comes up is why a company that big simply can't make him an offer he couldn't refuse. Maybe he's stubborn or something but I have to take the little guy's side here.

Maybe they should get nissan.co lmao. Wait, nissan.co leads to Mazda. Hmm, it's not immediately clear to me what the relationship between nissan and mazda is.

Edit: nevermind, it seems to take you to a random car related destination. After checking it out further the dntx.com domain takes you to mazda first, then some other car search site, then finally a site with an empty template.

[ciokan]

I'm sure that the same efforts and patience invested in negotiating with the man would have bought them the assets. Bully is bully dude got mad.

[eli]

shrug

How many of those people actually decided to buy a Toyota because the Nissan site didn't load on the first try? I think people overestimate how much a domain name matters.

[laurent123456]

> a final injunction which allowed Nissan Computer Corporation to maintain control of the domains Nissan.com and Nissan.net so long as it neither advertised nor mentioned/made disparaging comments about Nissan Motor.

First thing I see on nissan.com is a massive "Nissan's motor lawsuite against us" with crossed Nissan logos and "it could happen to you too", then a massive ad below this. Doesn't Nissan have a case that not only he doesn't respect his side of the bargain but he's obviously using Nissan's popularity for his own benefit?

[abjr]

No. He no longer has to refrain from posting or linking to disparaging remarks about Nissan.

"Injunctive relief may not restrain Nissan Computer from placing links on nissan.com and nissan.net to other sites that post negative commentary about Nissan Motor; to this extent, the relief granted is overbroad, reaches non-commercial speech, and runs afoul of the FTDA and the First Amendment."

Source: Last page of http://www.citizen.org/documents/CourtofAppealsRulingNissanM...

[fsck--off]

Wow. I think the source code belongs in The Daily WTF. Just look at this gem:

  <form name="menuform4">
  <p>
  <select name="menu4" 
  onChange="window.open(menuform4.menu4.options[menuform4.menu4.selectedIndex].value);
  return false;">
  <option value="http://www.nissan.com" selected>People's Opinions &nbsp;</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml">Page 1</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_2.shtml">Page 2</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_3.shtml">Page 3</option>
  
  (Snipped about 500 lines)
  
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_503.shtml">page 503</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_504.shtml">page 504</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_505.shtml">page 505</option>
  </select>
  </form>
              </font></strong></b>
              </td>
            </tr>
          </table>

[8ig8]

True, but also keep in mind the site is still up with this spike in traffic.

Must be Varnish, Nginx, CDN edge servers, sprites, gzip, pre-fetching and efficient CSS selectors.

[badclient]

Mr. Nissan used to run a small computer shop in the 90s. He's pretty old school guy who's had to hire shit load of developers over the years for various pages of the site. I was hired at one point to fix an issue with their contact form.

[aegiso]

I wonder how much simpler our browsers could be if we didn't have to worry about rendering and styling this breed of dated spec-breaking insanity.

[kayoone]

I simply do not understand why Nissan Motorcompany dont just offer the guy a good pile of money. He has all the rights to use the domain, as its his name, and simply bought it first.

That or spend millions and a decade on lawsuits that lead nowhere...

[brazzy]

> He has all the rights to use the domain, as its his name, and simply bought it first.

Neither of those would be sufficient. The decisive factor is that he's actually operating a legitimate business under that name.

[davidiach]

It's possible that they have tried that at first.

[IgorPartola]

A friend of mine operated a movie review site that mentioned Netflix in the name. Netflix sued him, but settled out of court by having him change the name, and buying the original domain for a few thousand dollars. They then let the domain expire.

[glennon]

Since Nissan is the only major international company unable to acquire their first choice of domain, it appears an outlier. The lesson perhaps is that the market, coupled with the dispute resolution system, works well with respect to web domains.

[pbreit]

The article inexplicably fails to mention if Nissan [car company] ever simply offered up a large amount of money to transfer over the domain. It's pretty human nature to dig in when you are attacked.

[jdeibele]

It would be interesting to know how the process would go - if he just accepted an offer, then Nissan might take him to court saying he was squatting on the name. Or he might be OK if they approached him first. IANAL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

[le205]

How much traffic do you think they actually lose by not having Nissan.com? I would have thought as soon as someone looking for Nissan cars visits that URL, they would realise it was not the right site, then try the ccTLD version i.e. Nissan.co.uk, or simply search "Nissan" in their search engine of choice.

It's a bit like Google AdWords - some choose to bid on their own brand keywords, but are they actually gaining incremental visitors, or just spending budget on acquiring traffic that would otherwise arrived for free anyway?

[comatose_kid]

If only he had gotten the domain for his first name, he wouldn't have to worry about legal issues.

[itazula]

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. was founded in 1934. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Company#Nissan_Mot... And the word "Nissan" was used before that as a stock market abbreviation in Japan. The name Nissan, however, was probably not well-known outside of Japan. Mr. Nissan had probably never heard of the company. He was first to register the domain name, and presumably Nissan "the company" had the same opportunity at the time. But it is disturbing to read comments such as this on a page (http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml) linked to from his home page:

"Mr. Nissan,

I congratulate you, and thank you, for your perseverance in standing up for what is honorable and legitimate, for each of us and our children. NMC's attempt to leverage their size and importance (as it is the Asian way), will not be tolerated. I will post your information for everyone I know to read and boycott their products."

Boycott! Wow.

After reading several such posts, I wonder if the posters realize that Nissan has factories in the U.S.

Someday, I speculate that the current nissan.com will be subject to a cyber attack in a case of mistaken (or "mistaken") identity. What goes around, comes around.

So, while Mr. Nissan has the rights of "first dibs," he should realize that real damage is being done, and that he is fanning flames that do not speak to the "better angels of our nature."

[8ig8]

Here's the site Uzi put up regarding the lawsuit. Last updated October 17, 2007...

http://ncchelp.org/

Edit: Here's the original PR...

http://web.archive.org/web/20000510174513/http://www.ncchelp...

[srathi]

There is a similar story about Armani brand and a person named A.R. Mani.

[shawn-furyan]

[Edit: Looks like the parent was deleted. The comment was noting how the site is poorly marketed, and that this led the commenter to think it was a fake business.]

Clicking through the website, I don't find it unbelievable that this is a DIY website of a local computer shop. There are tons of small business websites like this out there, and while they don't inspire a sense of legitimacy in people unfamiliar with their store front, it's not a problem for those that are.

Well, that was my first impression anyway. There's an address on the website that points to a residential area, not a commercial area. If the was an actual storefront they probably wouldn't do that: http://goo.gl/qkT4l (maps.google.com). Still, if the website is bringing in enough money to live on, a lot of small website owners tend not to keep up with current best practices, and the site was created in 1994. It looks to be of its era, I would say.

[kayoone]

Its just a small website of a guy running a computer shop. Sure hes monetizing on the Nissan brand name, but wouldnt you do the same if they run multi-million dollar lawsuits against you for 10+ years to get your domain? And all that while you just bought it first, before they even had the idea to and its your legal last name ?

[jsumrall]

I looked at nissan.com, and its a shame that the site is basically internet trash and lame ads.

[ciokan]

Apparently the man's virtue and principles worth more than whatever you would put instead of those "internet trash and lame ads"

[damian2000]

It looks like it was created in FrontPage 98. That said, the buttons on the left work and he is actually running a small business selling computer products and services (such as programming @ $90/hr).

[spydum]

Had to find some way to pay those attorney fees...

[Theodores]

The design of nissan.com takes me back to the days before the '.gif' patent war.

[quaffapint]

Used to work for a credit card company, MBNA. They wanted mbna.com, which was owned by Mercedes Benz, North America. Not so amazingly enough, hand Mercedes a million or so and voilà we now had mbna.com, and why Mercedes is now mbusa.com.

[smcl]

You might mean "voila", not "wala"

[dano414]

MBNA is a horrid credit card company. They love mandatory arbitration clauses; that always favored that shitty company. I will be glad to eventually write them off in BK court.

[robflynn]

What was the situation with Dodge? I can remember in the early-late 90s (heh, 1997is?) that dodge.com belonged to some financial group. The actual Dodge car company had 4adodge.com, I believe.

[barking]

Nobody remembers urls any more (if they ever did).

If I type the word nissan into the address bar on IE, firefox, chrome or opera I get a page full of links to the motor company.

[felipelalli]

Domain isn't important anymore: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nissan