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Experience with Fighting Domain Farming
Lost_my_regs writes "I had a .com domain name relevant only to me, no legal trademark, registered and hosted at a provider that went bust. When attempting to re-host the domain I discovered, to my unpleasant surprise, that the domain is now registered by a domain farming company (name removed). My question is: Is there any way to claim back my domain?"
I longer words, if you are prepared to devote vast amounts of your time and effort then there is a very slim chance of your success.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
His provider went bust and he was probably buying the domain through his provider. Sorry, auto-renew wouldn't have saved him.
Even so, I'd try everything I could before resorting to paying the leeches. It's just too distasteful for words.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
This account seems somehow wrong. Did you leave out some material information from the story?
Did this happen to you on a yearly boundary? If not, and if you had a registration on the domain that was good for a year, why couldn't you just go to another domain provider and identify yourself for a transfer? Was the account in good standing? Am I confused, or is this information not a matter of public record that extends beyond the end of your term of registration? Is the registrar at which you bought it the only source of record for such information? That would sound terribly dangerous as a single-point-of-failure for the web in the case of any kind of disaster, much less bankruptcy.
Additionally, did you get no notice? Did you just come in one day and find that your domain no longer responded and that all domains at that registrar were up for grabs? If so, that again seems very weird. I thought a bankruptcy required some court intervention at least for the purpose of asset divvying, and the notion that the registered domains were not an asset that required deliberative action seems odd to me. Possible, certainly--I'm not a lawyer and don't know the process. But odd nevertheless.
Did you act at the moment of the bankruptcy--or did you wait? That is, was your problem the result of the bankruptcy or your failure to act quickly? I realize these issues are probably sad and embarrassing, and I'm not meaning to rub salt in a wound. But Slashdot articles inform people about how the world works, and in exchange for the attention and good advice you offer, I think it's good to offer a complete accounting of the story.
Are you sure you're not leaving out some information? Perhaps the left-out information is not relevant to the question you were asking, but implicit in the question you were asking is alerting people to something that might happen to them. And I'd like to understand better the process by which this could happen to someone else so that we all, as a community, might understand if there's a process issue that needs fixing to assure proactively, rather than reactively, that this shouldn't happen in the future.
Sorry about your problem, btw. Losing a domain happened to a friend of mine by the more usual means of just failing to pay for it for a while. Someone scooped it up and they were left paying a couple hundred dollars to get it back. I agree that's a nuisance, but it does argue for keeping payments up to date on things you care about.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Except in this case he already *owned* the domain. However, the registrar went out of business and somebody else bought it through another registrar. It would be like if you mortgaged a house through your bank for a while, then your bank went out of business and some guy came along and mortgaged the house you're currently living in through another bank. It sounds like he didn't perform the steps required to retain ownership in the time limit provided, though. So while it's probably technically legal and proper it's still kind of a dickish thing to do.
Have you ever trademarked a name? Several thousand dollars (our last was $8000, legal fees and all), and it takes a while. Not smart for the average joe. And as for the appeals process, the average trademark infringing case will cost you $100k or more in legal fees alone, which is why most people avoid them.
Sorry, but your advice is not good advice for the masses.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Another to add to your list:
EasyDNS. Also not the cheapest, but I've used them for years with absolutely no complaints. A few of years ago, they sent a hugely apologetic email stating that their technical support department was unavailable for one hour during the time period when the entire east coast was without power. DNS service, however, was unaffected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act
If it included her distinctive name and business, the squatter is liable. And regardless, even assuming he wasn't, the squatter would need to contest a subpeona that's likely in a different state, after consulting a lawyer, et cetera, et cetera.
The marginal cost for bulk domains is something like 20-50 cents per year. One lawsuit which costs a thousand dollars to have dismissed costs the squatter thousands of names he could otherwise potentially profit from.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
Wow, i certainly got a lot of negative feedback, considering i was one of the few actually answering the O.P.'s plea-- and with a method that i've actually seen succeed. (Yeah I know, this is slashdot.) But anyway, i'd say that yes, the cybersquatter blinked. And there were some other interesting and shady details. I went back to my original emails and found this, which they'd sent to the friend who lost her domain: --- If another party has already registered the domain name you wanted, you may be interested in using Afternic.com's Virtual Broker service. This service allows you to make an unsolicited offer on a registered or taken domain name. Afternic.com is a leading domain resale site and wholly owned subsidiary of Register.com. --- I love their ability to solicit an "unsolicited offer" ;)
Anyway, even without that, the bad faith in the whole thing is obvious. Either they bought it intending to illegally profit off of her established brand and falsely represent themselves as her, or they bought it in bad faith intending to ransom it to her. If it was usedcars.com it might be different but it was a very specific url, which it sounds like the O.P. had as well.
there is only the door, the door, the door.
GENERATION 25: If you haven't yet, copy this into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. (Social experiment)
Sorry, AC. I am the holder of about a dozen trademarks registered in Texas and Illinois. It is YOU who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Here's a link to the Secretary of State's application form for registering a trademark in Illinois to get your started in recovering from your snarky dumb-assedness: http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/publications/pdf_publications/c2466.pdf
Yes, you can register trademarks state-by-state. You're the one who needs to do some research.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Actually, microsoft forgot to renew hotmail.uk in 1999!
Here is the story on the register
Enjoy!
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
Rule #1 - Don't let a hosting company register your domain for you. Register it yourself. It takes less than $10.00 and is a simple five minute process at any domain registrar.
Rule #2 - Make sure that your email address is updated regularly at your Registrar so you are notified promptly when the domain is due to be renewed.
Rule #3 - Recognize that if you don't pay your renewal bill, your domain is going to expire and the new registrant has as much a right to it as you did when you first took it over from the last registrant (You stated that you have no trademark).
It's pretty simple yet when we are too lazy to keep track of our own domain names we blame everyone else and their brother for our problems and call them names.
There probably isn't a single person here who wouldn't "farm" domains if they understood the value of good domain names and knew how profitable the business of advertising at a good domain name could be. Domains have become valuable assets with a healthy and legal aftermarket. Get used to it. Visit http://www.dnjournal.com/ or a few other domain sites and educate yourself.