Slashdot Mirror
Unsolicited Offer For My Personal Domain Name?
Batzerto writes "Last Friday I received an unsolicited email offer for my domain — click the link below for the message. Their company name matches my domain, but with a country-specific top level domain (.NL in this case). They do seem to be legitimately using the domain in their country. As for my usage, the domain is my last name(.COM) and I'm only really using it for email. I'm not really that attached to it other than the hassle of changing email addresses. There are other flavors of the domain available (.US for example) that would suit my purposes just fine. So, Slashdot veterans, I ask you, what should I do? I'm leery of making an offer and falling into someone's legal trap. I wouldn't mind getting a chunk of cash out of the deal though."
From: ---
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 4:56 AM
To: ---
Subject: sell your domain ?
Dear Sir,
For my company I need the domain --- .
Is it possible to sell your domain to me?
Best Regards
N. de Robles
From: ---
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 4:56 AM
To: ---
Subject: sell your domain ?
Dear Sir,
For my company I need the domain --- .
Is it possible to sell your domain to me?
Best Regards
N. de Robles
Sell it, on the condition that you can keep your email address on the domain.
Win-win!
As you probably noticed yourself, it's likely a legal trap; if you show that you're interested in taking money for the domain name, they will then use that as an argument during legal proceedings that you're a domain name squatter.
So simply don't respond.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
If you were a car dealer or specialized repair shop, then it may have been reasonable for you to own a domain using several of their trademarks. That's certainly too broad a set of categories to be a likely hobbyist organization. Sounds like you were cybersquatting.
That's a different case from acquiring generic names (which can be rather dubious as well), and a much different case from what the main article was about, which is somebody who owns a domain that's based on his own name.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe the sender is:
- a person who does not have English as their first language, and/or
- a techie?
That would account for the rough grammar and the informality.
I mean, seriously, if an IT guy from .NL wrote it, would you really expect it to read like an American lawyer wrote it?
Everyone's talking about lawyers and whatnot... what happened to just being polite? I guess lawyers have ruined that too.
Actually, I think you've hit on something there. If you go in with the intent of having a low-key, civil discussion, often times things you would say in the course of those discussions may damage your case if things escalate.
In your case, I'd state that you own it because it is your name, and have used it for X number of years to provide services X, Y, and Z for yourself. That should help establish the legitimacy of your ownership, and may (IANAL) protect you against any trademark issues. Given that, you'd obviously be losing something of value and have a transition cost, and then invite them make a reasonable offer.
And the voice of reason speaks up.
It doesn't appear to be that hard to be reasonable, does it? I really must try it sometime.
But seriously, I would negotiate a price and probably ask nicely if I can keep an email address on that domain for a while. It's no real hassle for the other side's servers, unless you're getting multi-gigabytes of spam a day. Then at least you've got a good period of time to phase out that address.
Or keep the MX records for your domain and sub-let the www section out to them for $200/year. That way everything essentially just stays the same for you, and they get a .com webpage.
Plenty of options if everyone's talking nicely at the table.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Yes: supreme power. In the end, that's the only thing that truly matters. Everything else is just philosophy, which is fine as long as everyone plays along nicely; but when it goes down to a fight, might wins over right.
"Free market" is also free in the sense that the 500-pound gorillas are free to squeeze you underfoot. That's why I lean towards socialism myself; a single gorilla - the government - is easier to handle and if necessary distract than the small number of King Kong corporations of libertarianism or the endless hordes of rampaging killer apes of anarchism.
Yes, I'm very cynical.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
+1 on escrow.com
I sold a domain 2 years ago using escrow.com and everything went smooth as silk. To this day I do not know who the buyer was, but his agent handled a few details, and the money was wire transfered - ba da bing.
This was a domain I registered back in 1992 and I got an ridiculous amount for it. But if I knew then what I know now ... Sigh. I could have had sex.com, auto.com, business.com, etc.com. Sigh. Back to working on the perpetual motion machine.
Nissan is a common spelling/pronunciation of Nitsan, an Israeli name.
The name Nissan is not the same name as Nitsan. Nitsan is a flower bud. Nissan is a month in the Hebrew calendar. Both are names.
I wrote to Uzi Nissan about a year ago when I bought my Ford Focus. I let him know that I didn't even look at the new Nissan models because of what the company is doing to him. Nissan is losing sales over their treatment of the little guy. Uzi Nissan was in the car business when Nissan was still called Datsun. It should be Uzi suing Nissan Motors over the use of the name, not the other way around.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.