Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "coming soon" sign that's been up for 5 years. The site is undeveloped, commercially zoned and represents essentially a burden for the community from both the unrealized tax revenue as well as eye sore and lower local property values. Plus the brand confusion, misdirected out-of-towners, etc.
So take this analogy to the internet, admittedly the 'real' costs may be lower--transmitting a few billion bytes is cheaper than road maintenance, fire and police protection to the unused property--but the societal cost is the same. The property should be fully realized and transfered to someone who will use it. This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. There is a public interest that is ethically sound. But at its heart, the people who cybersquat are a nuisance. They have no bona fide interest in the domain name and likely acquired it just to 'own' a property that they think they'll be able to flip one day.... it's the same sh*t as the real estate bubble, heck... bubble of ANY KIND. Fact is, I am glad this system of arbitration is in place because if I was Bill Gates and some guy named Joe Smith bought my name.com and didn't have a fan page or other relevant property, but just intended to sell it to me for a 10,000% return on his 'investment,' I would be pretty pissed off. I really don't see the other side of this debate. These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. It has created all kinds of negative effects like shotgun domain bidding, poaching, pricing bubble, artificial scarcity, ID theft, the 4chan.org issues mentioned in this article.... need I go on?
> Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit
Under US law you sure do.
You also have to define "waste". The owners of 4chan.com are obviously holding onto their domain because they see it as a valuable asset. I doubt they'd see this as wasting their property. They're watching it grow in value.
Your argument would virtually have us outlaw anyone from holding onto an asset if it could immediately be used better by somebody else.
As a counter-example: Why should anyone be allowed to horde gold? There's a gold shortage and it would be of much more use in computer manufacturing.
That's obviously insane, and yet it's essentially the same scenario.
I understand that it would be better for the common good if 4chan.com was owned by 4chan.org, but if we're playing the game of Capitalism, then these are the rules.
>Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. //
Sure it does. IF you own it.
>These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. //
This is capitalism. The more damaging domain as you suggest is real-estate. Online the problem becomes simply "oh example.com wasn't right, example.org ... oh, ya, there it is". That might be a very minor annoyance for some people for a couple of seconds.
The problem I see with the "they're not creating a mall" argument is that to the logical conclusion that means that if you have a swimming pool and aren't using it as much as the public feel you should that it can be confiscated. Or, say, you have 2 cars - well clearly you can't drive both at once; repossession by the state, et cetera.
Now I've got some pretty communist sensibilities but unless we're going to implement the whole system and treat all properties in this way (I'd really like to use one of the many, many over-priced vacant commercial premises in our city) then I can't see how you can really move on this?
> This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell.
Not quite--eminent domain is also used to take property from people who ARE using it. And I think that is where that debate gets very thorny, because the compensation is not always worth the costs of uprooting someone from their home.
Alright let me take your example and turn it around. Say someone decides to build a big fancy complex mall on Main St that will not only generate 10's of thousands employment but also attract a good amount of tourists. They finally found the plot of land, bought it and put up a sign called "Coming Soon". Pushing the paperwork, completing the construction would take 5+ years. In the mean time, someone read about this big project and decides to built a mini mart called Main St. Shopping right around the corner and demands the original Mall should be renamed. Now what? Now who is creating a bigger waste?
Things are not always black and white. If Google decides to squat on a domain for a future project, would you still called it squatting? Or them owning Google.io despite not having a business in these tiny islands be considered squatting too?
> This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell.
Actually, a lot of the debate about eminent domain is who is on the receiving end of the property. Eminent domain is supposed to be about the taking of private property for public use. E.g., building a school. It gets a lot more dicey when you start taking A's private property and making it B's private property.
I own a domain name that is basically mynamemyindustry.com . It is of zero value to anyone else who doesn't share my name, which isn't too common.
Someone bought myname s myindustry.com and occasionally sends me an email that it's going up for auction soon and enquires if I'm interested. I've just ignored them in the hope they get the point. They have been trying to make it seem like there's lots of other demands, when there's absolutely no reason to buy it other than the kind of similarity to my domain.
It can't even be profitable typosquatting. Nowdays the domain just redirects to a newer domain of mine and has been for a number of years, so in the unlikely event that someone tried to type in my current domain exactly and mispelled it, they still wouldn't end up on that domain. The only reason I keep up the registration is Google's inability to swap the primary domain on Google Apps.
Eminent domain isn't used to avoid waste. Rather, it's used to acquire land that you need for something important.
As far as I understand it, if I'm wasting a bunch of land and refuse to sell it, but there's a million acres next door that you can buy for pennies and your project will work just as well there as it would on my land, there's no case for eminent domain. Go buy that other land and build there.
Eminent domain is for stuff like, we're building a highway from here to there, and the only reasonable route is through there, and that's where your property sits, so we'll take it from you even if you don't want to sell, because this highway will have a big public benefit that outweighs your personal property rights. If the highway can just move half a mile to the left to the land of someone who wants to sell, then you do that instead.
On the internet, all property is adjacent and nothing has to be in a particular spot. The supply of domain names is effectively infinite. I don't see the case for taking one just because the owner is "wasting" it. You don't need that specific domain, just buy the one "next door", which on the internet is all of them.
It would be a very bad precedent if an owner of a domain name can gain rights to the same name in another tld just by his own site becoming popular.
US trademark law is limited to (a) commercial context and (b) possibility of confusion. If you aren't selling anything, or even if you are commercial but are in a different line of business, you should never be troubled by any trademark claims. This is how the old Beatles record label and the computer company can coexist with the 'Apple' name.
Probably many of us here are in similar situations - I have a domain name for example in .net and .org, but someone else has the .com. I don't want to take the .com from whoever it is (not without their consent, that is), and I shouldn't to have to pay for lawyers to fight them off if they make the name better known for their unrelated site.
It's not that it's 'more popular.' That's not the debate. The debate is that the .com site is being squatted. If it was some 4chan interior design company with even some legitimate business, then the debate would be over. Do you think it's a bad precedent if Google becomes popular and you can show that a person subsequently registered all the single permutation misspellings of Google and then tried to sell them back to Google? Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if they didn't buy them at huge markup? Go read about the Whitehouse.com history.
On the flip side, I had a .com domain on backorder (I have the .co.uk), which was actually released.
I didn't get it (regardless of the back-order), but it got bought up by a domain squatting company who now want about $4K for it. It is currently parked with a horrendous page that doesn't even render correctly.
Now if my my .co.uk site were to get popular (hah!), I fully expect that price tag to increase.
I remember when Gap (the American clothes company) sued Genesis Access Point (the Irish dial-up ISP) and won, back in the 90s. That's when it all started going to shit.
I wouldn't want to be on the receiving side of this request. If its approved then it creates a bad precedent (as ds9 indicated). If its rejected then the person rejecting it is likely to piss of the 4chan crowd - and unlike many other 4chan attacks this is a cause the entire 4chan user base can get behind.
The word "demands" is probably very unfitting. Moot doesn't seem like the person who would "demand" something. He would just do it and not take it very seriously and hope for the best. There is no reason to not at least try to obtain the name.
Interesting, I've never met a domain squatter that didn't have a price, but setting that aside for now, is the word '4chan' trademarked? Ahh I see it is [1] as of March 5th of this year. This will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Is the name 4chan trademarked? It doesn't seem to be. Would it be easier to secure the .com if they trademarked the name first, then went after oversee?
I think it's really stupid to get domain like this, whether the name is trademarked or not. They didn't steal the domain, they just registered it (or bought it) because it was available. 4chan.org has absolutely no right to it. But since .com TLD is not really international, who knows what will happen.
Is this just to troll? Even if someone looking for 4chan.org enteres 4chan.com first, isn't close to 100% of the target audience able to figure out what went wrong and fix it within seconds? (either by trying .org and co, or by dropping the tld altogether to trigger a web search).
Quick 'hackernewschan.com' is still available. Someone here please buy it (seriously). It would be a troll-site for highly intelligent people that will bring forth a new age in humanity. Before you down-vote my comment brother... please consider the possibilities... they once thought that flying in the air impossible... what could be next?
Guys, this is serious. .org is for non-profit organizations. .com is for commercial purposes. This is why moot had to beg for donations for years while helplessly watching everyone and their cat monetize "his" "content" on a .com domain.
Nope .org is for things that didn't fit into the big 5 one of the other bidders for .org tried to run this line and restrict .org to US style non profits freezing out charities an NGOs like Oxfam and the Red Cross - they got shot down in flames.
You going to tell JWZ (one of the early netscape developers) that hes going to have to give up jwz.org good luck with that .
[+] [-] Shinkei|12 years ago|reply
So take this analogy to the internet, admittedly the 'real' costs may be lower--transmitting a few billion bytes is cheaper than road maintenance, fire and police protection to the unused property--but the societal cost is the same. The property should be fully realized and transfered to someone who will use it. This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. There is a public interest that is ethically sound. But at its heart, the people who cybersquat are a nuisance. They have no bona fide interest in the domain name and likely acquired it just to 'own' a property that they think they'll be able to flip one day.... it's the same sh*t as the real estate bubble, heck... bubble of ANY KIND. Fact is, I am glad this system of arbitration is in place because if I was Bill Gates and some guy named Joe Smith bought my name.com and didn't have a fan page or other relevant property, but just intended to sell it to me for a 10,000% return on his 'investment,' I would be pretty pissed off. I really don't see the other side of this debate. These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. It has created all kinds of negative effects like shotgun domain bidding, poaching, pricing bubble, artificial scarcity, ID theft, the 4chan.org issues mentioned in this article.... need I go on?
[+] [-] Lambdanaut|12 years ago|reply
Under US law you sure do.
You also have to define "waste". The owners of 4chan.com are obviously holding onto their domain because they see it as a valuable asset. I doubt they'd see this as wasting their property. They're watching it grow in value.
Your argument would virtually have us outlaw anyone from holding onto an asset if it could immediately be used better by somebody else.
As a counter-example: Why should anyone be allowed to horde gold? There's a gold shortage and it would be of much more use in computer manufacturing.
That's obviously insane, and yet it's essentially the same scenario.
I understand that it would be better for the common good if 4chan.com was owned by 4chan.org, but if we're playing the game of Capitalism, then these are the rules.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|12 years ago|reply
Sure it does. IF you own it.
>These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. //
This is capitalism. The more damaging domain as you suggest is real-estate. Online the problem becomes simply "oh example.com wasn't right, example.org ... oh, ya, there it is". That might be a very minor annoyance for some people for a couple of seconds.
The problem I see with the "they're not creating a mall" argument is that to the logical conclusion that means that if you have a swimming pool and aren't using it as much as the public feel you should that it can be confiscated. Or, say, you have 2 cars - well clearly you can't drive both at once; repossession by the state, et cetera.
Now I've got some pretty communist sensibilities but unless we're going to implement the whole system and treat all properties in this way (I'd really like to use one of the many, many over-priced vacant commercial premises in our city) then I can't see how you can really move on this?
[+] [-] chrismonsanto|12 years ago|reply
Not quite--eminent domain is also used to take property from people who ARE using it. And I think that is where that debate gets very thorny, because the compensation is not always worth the costs of uprooting someone from their home.
[+] [-] nivla|12 years ago|reply
Things are not always black and white. If Google decides to squat on a domain for a future project, would you still called it squatting? Or them owning Google.io despite not having a business in these tiny islands be considered squatting too?
[+] [-] mdesq|12 years ago|reply
Actually, a lot of the debate about eminent domain is who is on the receiving end of the property. Eminent domain is supposed to be about the taking of private property for public use. E.g., building a school. It gets a lot more dicey when you start taking A's private property and making it B's private property.
[+] [-] Macha|12 years ago|reply
Someone bought myname s myindustry.com and occasionally sends me an email that it's going up for auction soon and enquires if I'm interested. I've just ignored them in the hope they get the point. They have been trying to make it seem like there's lots of other demands, when there's absolutely no reason to buy it other than the kind of similarity to my domain.
It can't even be profitable typosquatting. Nowdays the domain just redirects to a newer domain of mine and has been for a number of years, so in the unlikely event that someone tried to type in my current domain exactly and mispelled it, they still wouldn't end up on that domain. The only reason I keep up the registration is Google's inability to swap the primary domain on Google Apps.
[+] [-] mikeash|12 years ago|reply
As far as I understand it, if I'm wasting a bunch of land and refuse to sell it, but there's a million acres next door that you can buy for pennies and your project will work just as well there as it would on my land, there's no case for eminent domain. Go buy that other land and build there.
Eminent domain is for stuff like, we're building a highway from here to there, and the only reasonable route is through there, and that's where your property sits, so we'll take it from you even if you don't want to sell, because this highway will have a big public benefit that outweighs your personal property rights. If the highway can just move half a mile to the left to the land of someone who wants to sell, then you do that instead.
On the internet, all property is adjacent and nothing has to be in a particular spot. The supply of domain names is effectively infinite. I don't see the case for taking one just because the owner is "wasting" it. You don't need that specific domain, just buy the one "next door", which on the internet is all of them.
[+] [-] ds9|12 years ago|reply
US trademark law is limited to (a) commercial context and (b) possibility of confusion. If you aren't selling anything, or even if you are commercial but are in a different line of business, you should never be troubled by any trademark claims. This is how the old Beatles record label and the computer company can coexist with the 'Apple' name.
Probably many of us here are in similar situations - I have a domain name for example in .net and .org, but someone else has the .com. I don't want to take the .com from whoever it is (not without their consent, that is), and I shouldn't to have to pay for lawyers to fight them off if they make the name better known for their unrelated site.
[+] [-] Shinkei|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _puk|12 years ago|reply
I didn't get it (regardless of the back-order), but it got bought up by a domain squatting company who now want about $4K for it. It is currently parked with a horrendous page that doesn't even render correctly.
Now if my my .co.uk site were to get popular (hah!), I fully expect that price tag to increase.
It's a bizarre system.
[+] [-] gaius|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izzydata|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html
[+] [-] trentmb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binarymax|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ActVen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimeracoder|12 years ago|reply
If you have established use of a mark before the registration (or use) of a competing/conflicting mark, you can defend it.
In fact, registration arguably provides no protection other than the fact that it makes it easier to search for your mark in the USPTO registry.
[+] [-] rplnt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bduerst|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SworDsy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iSnow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
I wonder what the ad revenue would be from that domain? And would m00t be able to put ads on 4chan.com?
[+] [-] spiritplumber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jitendrac|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teemo_cute|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Camillo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|12 years ago|reply
You going to tell JWZ (one of the early netscape developers) that hes going to have to give up jwz.org good luck with that .