First, let me say that i think that some of the “anti-squatting” measures in place on the internet are draconian and set up to benefit large companies at the expense of the little guy. Sure, there are cases where people cynically try to take over domain names in the hopes of cashing in on the popularity and reputation of a large, established company, but there have also been cases where people get shafted just for having a similar name, a name they have a perfectly legitimate reason to incorporate into a web address.
The guy’s name is Paul Dell. He designs websites for a living. So he uses the domain name dellwebsites.com. Now Dell not only wants him to give it up, but to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. That is just fucking bullshit.
The guy is a small business operator based in Spain, for fuck’s sake. Is anyone seeking his services really likely to confuse his website with the Dell computer company of Austin, Texas?
Dell has gone after this guy before, in 2002, but backed down when he refused to cave in to their bullying. But they’ve decided that it’s time for another swing.
There’s a good chance that this will be thrown out, but as this article points out, the real problem with this sort of thing is that many small businesses and domain name owners just don’t have the time and the resources to defend themselves aginst this corporate bullying, and are often tempted to cave in to the demands.
Paul Dell himself is having trouble finding the money to fight this battle, and has now started accepting doantions through his own websites, and through a blog set up by friends.
Fuck Dell, and not just for their shitty computers.
Nissan (the car company) tried to do the same thing to Nissan Computer Co., which is owned by Mr. Uzi Nissan and uses www.nissan.com and www.nissan.net as its web addresses. It only stopped when the 9th Circuit refused to rehear the case en banc and the SCOTUS denied cert.
I can see why you would say that, but i think the two cases are quite different.
Sure, there are superficial similarities, with a large tech corporation going after a little guy. But Rowe admitted to specifically choosing the name because it sounded like “Microsoft,” and, by asking $10K for the name, demonstrated the sort of profiteering that the Domain-Name Dispute Resolution policies were designed to prevent.
Sure, i still think he should have told Microsoft to go suck eggs, but he was rather more cunning and playful about the whole thing than Paul Dell.
In this case, the defendant’s domain name is being used for a genuine business, the domain name is literally descriptive of that business, and he has shown no desire to profiteer from the similarity between his name and the computer company’s. Dell just wants to run his genuine web design company, and be left alone.
Does not look good for Dell, unless they can show the website was getting customers from Dell on purpose.
This reminded me that Chrysler once sued a restaurant called Jeep’s and lost because one sold trucks and the other sold cheese burgers. Of course, having evidence that the owner got the Jeep nickname before Chrysler put the name in the military vehicle did help. (IIRC the evidence included the mother producing an old photo of the restaurant owner when he was little and it had the name “Jeep” written on it)
Geez, does it always have to be a freaking lawsuit?
Contact the guy. Explain the company’s situation. Discuss. Work toward a deal. If he gives you want you want, good. If not, think it over and decide if it’s worth taking to the next step.
Sue when something genuinely important is at stake and you have absolutely no choice but to fight. Not for something as ludicrously petty as this.
Aside - Nissan is an actual name? I always assumed it was just Japanese for “brother”.
Half of me wants to deride Dell over this, the other half is fully behind them in this matter.
There is a certain celebrity many here like that uses a stage name spelled exactly like mine. It’s nowhere near his real name, and I have grade school papers from 25 years ago that prove it’s the name I’ve always gone by.
I feel I have more right to that domain as it’s my real name, but it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t have a team of lawyers. So while I can’t really support Dell wholeheartedly, I can’t bitch about them too much.
I had the same thing, a small c celebrity with myname.com. He really is named the same as me, but eventually the domain came up for grabs.
I had it on reserve with the webhost, I paid some amount of money to have them get the name if he didnt renew. As luck would have it, he didnt renew, but you know what?
Instead of me getting my own name dot com, one of those stupid “we own thousands of domains but are a bunch of userping losers who offer no valueable service to anyone and are parasites on the face of the earth dot com” managed to somehow slip it out from under me at the last second, (I still dont know how or why they did this), and now they want to charge 3000 plus for the domain. Those guys are the ones who should be put out of business, like spammers, they are ruining the internet.
Presumably, this celebrity of whom you speak already has the domain name in question? If so, i wouldn’t argue that you have a right to take it off him. And if the celebrity does not already have that domain name, and the name is free, then i would fully support your right to register and use it, and would oppose any attempt by the celebrity to take it from you.
In this case, if Dell (the computer company) had already registered dellwebdesign.com, then Paul Dell would likely have shrugged his shoulders and found another name. And if he had tried to take over the domain name, i would have supported the computer company, because the name is relevant to their company name, and they got there first.
But it didn’t happen like that. Paul Dell got there first, and has just as much right to the name as the computer company does.
Actually, those are exactly the sort of scumbags that the ICAN dispute-resolution policy is designed to thwart—people who do nothing but profiteer off domain names that have no relevance to their own needs or their own business.
If you really want the domain, you should look into fighting for it.
Well…the fees of the ICANN dispute resolution panels seem to range between $1300 and $2000(CPR). It’s just my name, so its not THAT important to me, but I did go through the effort of reserving it for 6 months and waiting for it to become available. Not exactly fair.
I didn’t realize that the fees were so high. I guess i shouldn’t be surprised, as it seems to me that the whole process is designed to help those with deep pockets, at the expense of everyone else.
Yeah, you know, i’ve asked myself the same question. But, as someone who has a problem with other types of speculative investment, i can at least claim the virtue of (partial) consistency.
You are certainly correct that anyone who supports the principles of capitalist speculation should, in theory at least, have no trouble with this particular form of it.
Actually, my biggest problem with domain-name squatting has less to do with the squatting itself than with the system of enforcement and dispute resolution, which, as i said, seems to favor those with deep pockets rather than the interests of fairness or first-in-best-dressed.
A large company or a professional organization can squat on myname.com, and i don’t have the wherewithall to try and get it back; but if i try the same thing, their lawyers will be all over me and financial expediency might cause me to cave in, even when i’m in the right.
If these inequities could be ironed out, i’d be much happier with the general principle of domain squatting, and might even go out and register mycrowsopht.com.
I don’t see the problem with domain squatters. Its like someone who buys a lot of land because they think someone will want to build a mall on it. More power to them. If dell wants that website they should buy it.
Any sympathy I may have had for Mr Uzi Nissan vanished when he began spamming me about his battle with Nissan. Despite the clear evidence from the email headers that the spam was originating from his servers, he repeatedly lied to me claiming it must have been from someone “supporting” him. It would suck if a company like Nissan won a case like this against someone like Uzi Nissan, but I can’t feel sypathetic to the individual in this particular instance. Spammers are ruining the internet.
On a very rudimentary level, I don’t have a problem with the domain squatters, but their business model benefits no-one but themselves, and they have a become an impediment to small start-up businesses.
A little while ago, my wife and I started up our own computer consulting firm. We spent ages coming up with names. Each time I typed one of our great ideas into a browser, only to find the familiar squatter’s page, I grew to hate these bastards a little more.
You could convince me that they have a right to exist. But you’d have difficulty convincing me that they are not rat-bastard parasites. I can’t think of many other professions that not only offer absolutely no benefit to anyone other than themselves, and actually profit by hampering the efforts of other companies.
