I pit domain name squatters!

The BBQ Pit
1

This is going to be hard to do because I don’t want names to come up in Searches, but I’m spitting mad and I have to let it out somewhere.

Most people probably know that I’m deeply involved with this artist, both as a long-time fan (18 years!) and as a friend. Her name is her real name. She was born with a different first name, but was called by her current name ever since she was a few days old (her older brother couldn’t pronounce the birth name and used the other name, and that’s what everyone who knew her called her), and since she considered it her name, she had it legally changed when she was 16. It is absolutely her real, legal name now. She’s an established artist with 11 albums and a worldwide cult following.

This artist has an official website and lots of people often wonder why she doesn’t just use hername.com. The reason is that there’s a male country-western singer from Canada whose NICKNAME is the same as my girl. He has a different real name, but in the past professionally used the nickname. Years and years and years ago he got the doman thatname.com and used it. Well, too bad for my girl, but them’s the breaks.

Well, he quit using the web site years ago and so my girl’s fans (including me) thought, ok, the domain will expire and she can get it. But no, he keeps renewing it, yet not using it. If he used it, that’d be one thing, but he doesn’t. Year after year after year, it keeps on not being used. Search results from the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive show that the last usage of the domain was on April 21, 2003! Since then it’s been abandoned.

Five years now we’ve been watching, waiting, hoping that he’d see the light and do my girl a kindness by letting her have the domain. But he’s watching, waiting and hoping that she’ll pay him a pretty penny for it. He even put the domain name up on ebay once. Fans, knowing, understanding and having no problem with the fact that that he was using the domain at the time, never checked his site, so none of us knew about the sale. One of us would have bought it, if we’d known, just to give it to her. She would have bought it herself, if he’d contacted her. And yes, he’s known about her since he first got the domain, because fans have written him. Until he abandoned the site, my girl’s fans just thought it was humorous and interesting, and no one had any problem with him. She herself thought their sharing the same name was a hoot, since their styles are so very different. Anyway, since her fans are generally not interested in his genre of music, there weren’t any fans consistently looking at his site, and he didn’t bother to write any of her fans who had had written to him, or try to contact her in any way. So the auction expired with no bids and we come to find out about this ebay sale a couple of years later!

Thinking he’d either put up a new site, or let the domain go, people kept quiet for a few years, but now, it’s obvious he’s NOT going to put up a new site, and he keeps renewing it, he JUST renewed it AGAIN so he’s obviously not going to let the domain go, either out of greed or spite or I don’t know what. At this point it’s just bullying, holding the domain hostage. If he put up a page regarding his own career tomorrow, I’d be fine with it. USE IT, asshole! If you don’t, then you just look like a greedy scumsucking domain name squatter.

I know that there are avenues she can pursue regarding trying to get the domain name, but damn, she’s an indie artist with no financial backing and no money for lawyers and trademarks and shit like that. She’s a decent human being and it hurts me to see her treated like this.

So anyway, just fuck you JC, fuck you!

2

I can’t tell from your OP whether you’ve written to him and asked him to sell it directly. Have you? If not, he might be willing to - having put it up for sale and received no bids, perhaps he assumes you’re not interested.

Anyway, while I can see it might be mildly annoying, is it really that big a deal? Domain names just aren’t that important these days. No one just types in URLs speculatively - not even my mum, and it took me the best part of a year to explain to her the difference between the address bar and the Google search box. Your girl is the top umpteen Google hits for her name which is, after all, how any interested sentient being is going to go looking for her. Having “firstname****lastname.com” really doesn’t matter worth a damn. Certainly not enough to get this upset about it.

Hell, I just discovered that my “name-domain” is being held by a squatter, and I’m not even an internationally known indie artist. I’m a terrible human being, though, to be fair. :wink:

ETA: dammit, someone has actually registered “firstnamelastname.com”.

3

Oh yes, fans have written him. Not me personally, but others have. He knows. I assume no one has met his price yet. She herself dealt with him for a while but now wants nothing to do with him. I don’t know what transpired.

You’re right, it’s not that big a deal. Anyone who wants to can find plenty about her easily enough, but most people assume that an artist (or company or entity) will have theirname.com as a home page, and it confuses people who do look for it, only to find a placeholder page that has links that are commercial and not even really about her. People write me all the time asking wtf? They think it’s HER not caring enough to have a page. I’ve tried to counteract that by buying org and net and keeping them current, but still.

smile I’ll bet you’re not really.

Yeah, I own my own name domain but don’t do anything personal with it because it doesn’t matter. I just have it redirect to another site I maintain with links to her. I could easily give it up and squatters could have it. No one would care. People care about her though.

HA! I actually copied and pasted firstnamelastname.com, but got a “server not found” page.

4

what about www.firstname-lastname.com

or www.firstnamelastnamemusic.com

or www.firstnamelastnamecountry.com (or whatever genre)

or www.happyrhodeslovesyou.com

or whatever else.

5

Who cares? I hate people like you who bitch about stuff like this. He isn’t squatting, it is his property! He bought it and he keeps renewing it, SO WHAT?! Just because somebody else wants it and has some belief that because it is their name they have some entitlement to it, that don’t mean squat.

Piss off. These people aren’t squatters, they are OWNERS. If a person is clever enough to recognize that somebody hasn’t purchased a desired name, and goes ahead and claims it for themselves in the hope of selling the rights to the domain, what is wrong with that?! Isn’t that capitalism?

The only reason why there is a belief that domain name squatting is somehow immoral is because it is generally large companies who realize their desired domain name is owned by Joe Clever who won’t sell it unless they pay him a pretty penny. Large company vs. private entrepreneur.

6

I hate the ones that are just a misspelling of a domain.

It used to be if I misspelled foo.com and ended up button in ofo.com or something I’d get a prompt that says “can not find server”.

Now I get hijacked and drug off to some idiot’s viagra spammer’s webpage.

7

I read an article in Brill’s Content years ago by, IIRC, Jeanette Winterson, in which she recounted her battle with the person who bought her eponymous .com domain name and her successful battle to get the Domain Name Gods to give it to her instead. She laid out the case in the article for why the well-known named person should own the eponymous domain instead of an unknown person or person buying on spec.

I came away from that article with the unshakeable belief that Jeanette Winterson is a daft old twat.

8

My firstnamelastname.com is owned by a company.

If this domain name matters to you, why not contact the bloke and offer to buy it?

9

I’m getting from the OP that they’ve done that, or at least that he’s aware of their interest, and is non-interested in helping them out.

Also wanna say that that is truly remarkable music, and she now has a new fan.

Who is now delighted to join in excoriating Mr. Probably Deservedly Totally Obscure And Completely Unknown To Google Canadian Erstwhile C & W Singer, who in the faint hopes that his career may someday have a Roy Orbison-like MTV revival, is squatting on a domain name in the interests of a nondescript career that not even the career-boosting interest of someone like KD Lang or U2 would make viable in anything like the near future.

Asshat. I spit in your general di-rection.

10

I hear you…but I don’t follow. He is not producing anything…not a product or a service by doing this. He is not doing anything with it himself. It’s more like parasitism.

11

This is why I don’t get the accusation that the guy is greedy; he doesn’t seem interested in selling it, period. I also don’t get why he’s necessarily spiteful. I think it more likely that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about this other artist and her career and feels no obligation to help her advance it.

I think you can make an argument for ashholery when you’re dealing with someone who buys a domain name that they have no interest in or connection to, with the sole purpose of holding up someone else for money before relinquishing it. But this name is the guy’s real name; he didn’t make it up or squat on the domain to piss people off, this is what he’s actually called. (The “nickname” distinction is not persuasive IMO, if that’s the name he’s known by, then that’s his name.)

It’s not even like the guy is some random accountant who has the domain to post pictures of his cats and the last Rotary meeting. He is a singer who has used his domain professionally in the past. For all we know, he plans to start his career back up in the future, or plans on using the site for his new career as a potter or a plumber or an independent home inspector. Or he plans to put up a few pictures of his cats and the last Rotary meeting.

AFAIK, there’s no “use it or lose it” rule on the web, though perhaps there should be. But the guy’s not a squatter, and he’s not “treating” your friend like anything. He’s using his own property as he sees fit, and that hardly makes him an asshole.

12

“Paratistism” would imply he is feeding off of someone else. I think you could make that argument if he was, say, courting traffic from the other artist’s legitimate site, saying something like, “This isn’t her site but check out my stuff, it’s really similar only better!” He’s not doing that. He’s just hanging on to an asset he was fortunate (or foresighted) enough to acquire before she did. I can see a lot of legitimate reasons to hang on to your own personal domain name that don’t involve being an asshole or giving a good goddam about all the other people out there with your same name, who might like to have the domain themselves.

13

If I read this right its not like Joe Smith bought BradPitt.com and is holding on to it for the money. This guy owns the right to a domain name that is his name. Why should he get rid of it? Maybe he feels that his career might take off at any minute. Maybe he doesn’t want to give up on that dream. He has as much right to it as the other person I have never heard of. More of course since he owns it.

14

Or for example I once typed in the Dope’s name wrong and went to Starightdope . com. I was attacked by a million popups. No idea if that domain is still in use. I wouldn’t suggest trying it. That is parasitism.

15

But he isn’t doing anything with it. He isn’t adding anything to the market…only taking away (which is why I brought up parasitism).

Is this a big deal…should there ‘be a law’? No. This isn’t that important.

Maybe he does want to keep it for reasons other than to make money off of it directly by selling it. The Ebay ad makes me think otherwise.

People that do wish to make money this way, however, I do consider immoral. They add nothing…no product, service or value.

16

I’m guessing that his thought is that he doesn’t want anyone to type in the domain and get her instead of him. He might not be interested in keeping the site up, but he just wants to prevent that from happening.

17

So what? I’m thinking about trying to buy Jodi’s IRL Name . com because I have some plans, both professional and personal, and I think it might come in handy sometime in the future. But what would I do with it now? Nothing. So I haven’t bought it yet (or before) because I just haven’t gotten around to it. If I buy it and someone else then wants to use that domain to sell knitted Kleenex box covers or post pictures of their grandchildren or become a movie reviewer, do I have an obligation to surrender my domain? I bought it. I have plans for it. And I have no obligation to turn it over to someone else solely because they have more immediate or bigger plans for it. On the flip side, since I haven’t bought my domain yet, if I search and find someone else is already using it, I’m shit out of luck. They were smarter or faster than I was, but they don’t owe that domain to me.

There’s no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to be currently using every asset you have. And choosing not to sell an asset you have doesn’t make you an asshole to the person who might like to buy it. The OP makes the guy an asshole by assigning him an evil motive: He’s “greedy,” he’s “spiteful,” he’s a “squatter.” I just don’t see the facts to support that IMO. That’s not to say I don’t see the OP’er’s frustration but hey, it is the guy’s name and he has used the site in the past. It doesn’t seem to me to be too much of a stretch to imagine he might have future plans for it as well.

18

I’m always conflicted on these domain-name issues.

On the one hand, it’s property like any other, and once you own it, i shouldn’t be able to force you to give it up just because i think i deserve it more than you. I can buy a car and keep it in the garage forever, without ever driving it, and that doesn’t give someone else the right to take it from me. Same with domain names.

On the other hand, the number of decent, viable resolved domain names (i.e., not the numbers) is somewhat limited, and it’s really depressing how many of them are taken up by squatters who do nothing but park a few ads on them and hold them for ransom. I tend to think that the web would be improved if this practice was curtailed, although i confess that i’m not sure of the best way to go about this.

Another problem i have with the whole issue of domain name dispute resolution is that, like parts of the legal system, it tends to reward deep pockets. It’s easier for large companies and others with plenty of money to go after the little guy, and the little guy decides that it’s too much of a hassle to put up a fight.

I started a thread a couple of years ago about a guy named Paul Dell, who lived in Spain, designed web sites for a living, and owned the domain name dellwebsites.com. The Dell Computer Company was trying to take his site, and also wanted €100, 000 in damages, €50,000 for Dell France, plus another €500 for every mention of the word Dell on his website.

This guy was, as i said in that thread, using his own name for his own business, and there’s no way in the world anyone with more than three brain cells would have confused him with the Dell Computer Company.

He was initially going to just give it up, deciding the hassle and expense of fighting a case, from Spain, against an American company, in France was too great to bother. A bunch of his friends convinced him to take donations and fight the case. It seems that, in the end, he lost, because his site is no longer up. He has a new site, but doesn’t explain what happened in the dispute with Dell. Here is an editorial comment on the case from The Register that i think nails some of the important issues.

19

That doesn’t necessarily mean he lost the case. More likely IMO is that it settled and Dell bought the domain from him. Everybody has their price. ETA: A settlement would also explain why there’s no explanation on the new site; many settlements are confidential.

20

Perhaps. Doesn’t really change the principle i was highlighting, though, in which companies with deep pockets can afford to go after people like Paul Dell, and the easiest solution is often to cave in to them, because ICANN and the registry owners have little interest in dealing with these disputes equitably.