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Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

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Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#21

Post by simne »

This is timebomb. Information saved in search engines, etc, any time could appear again, and will look hugely contradict with current site activity.

I think, better to register/buy other domain, with different name.

If you have much money, also could for convenience of customers, make dedicated site with old name, where write on very beginning of main page something like "this site dedicated to memory of good person, but if you looking for ...co, redirect here (link)", but this is terrible solution, considering people could enter to buy something and they will first see negative information. But for some things this is not so important.

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#22

Post by simne »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #18
DocTomoe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that sounds like a horrible idea. It's like the new owner of an ISBN demanding libraries to burn the book previously sold under that ISBN.

Wait, do you mean an ISBN can be re-used and is not a unique identifier of a very specific book?

I have seen two different books with same ISBN. I'm not sure this is mistake or normal thing.

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#23

Post by number6 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #18
DocTomoe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that sounds like a horrible idea. It's like the new owner of an ISBN demanding libraries to burn the book previously sold under that ISBN.

Wait, do you mean an ISBN can be re-used and is not a unique identifier of a very specific book?

According to the site [0] it can not be re-used.

[0] http://www.isbn.org/faqs_general_questions

And yes... this is the official agency for ISBN in the US; the International ISBN page only looks a little less scammy: https://www.isbn-international.org/. Maybe they care more about analog media than digital...

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#24

Post by zvr »

number6 wrote: post #23
qwerty456127 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, do you mean an ISBN can be re-used and is not a unique identifier of a very specific book?

According to the site [0] it can not be re-used. [0] http://www.isbn.org/faqs_general_questions And yes... this is the official agency for ISBN in the US; the International ISBN page only looks a little less scammy: https://www.isbn-international.org/ . Maybe they care more about analog media than digital...

This is not exactly what the page says. It says nothing about them be free to give the same ISBN to someone else.

Typical case: a publisher gets hundreds of ISBNs in bulk. At some point they close their business. The agency can give the unused numbers to someone else. Determining which were unused is not always easy, since there is no requirement to inform them when one is assigned to a book -- therefore mistakes are made. The end result is that re-use is possible (and actually happens).

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#26

Post by bell-cot »

I just helped a deceased friend's family clear out his house and sell it, sell his book and music collections, sell his car, etc., etc. If his one-man small business had a retail store which he'd owned, we'd have sold that off, too.

A good way to deal with any new-feeling emotional|social situation which happens on-line is to think about analogous situations which were real-world things long before there was any "on-line".

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#27

Post by inportb »

Hard_Space wrote: post #13

If you feel conflicted, you could host the original pages in a dedicated directory with a no-index header, and set up a permanent 301 redirect for those pages..? If they end up listed with your own results, it's trivial to get Google to remove them via Search Console (I do this occasionally for my pure HTML website, which has no Google Analytics etc. on it). That way, anyone who ever saved the link or linked to it fr…

That's a good idea. Or, since it's already archived, redirect to the archived copy.

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#28

Post by warrenm »

Many years ago I got my .com transferred to me from the registrar that held it (it was expired, but not yet "released")

For a couple years I kept getting 404 errors in the site logs for pages dedicated to WWF/WWE wrestling stars ...even after moving hosting companies

I'd register the domain, use it for what you want, and ignore whatever may have been there before

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#29

Post by tartakovsky »

bell-cot wrote: post #26

I just helped a deceased friend's family clear out his house and sell it, sell his book and music collections, sell his car, etc., etc. If his one-man small business had a retail store which he'd owned, we'd have sold that off, too. A good way to deal with any new-feeling emotional|social situation which happens on-line is to think about analogous situations which were real-world things long before there was any "on-…

What does “good” mean here? This is just one general way to arrive at an answer that doesn’t require much thinking. Who knows if it’s the best even if it is the one that requires the least thought. The past is not always a reliable moral compass model for judgement calls.

Re: Ask HN: Buying a domain previously owned by a now deceased person

#30

Post by elpakal »

I have a side project named CaseYak and for the first year of it we were forced to use thecaseyak.com because caseyak.com was taken. We looked into the whois record for caseyak.com at the time, and it turned out it was owned by someone named Stephen Casey… who lived in Alaska (AK). So it was casey ak dot com (lol). Not sure what happened to Mr. Casey but the domain just opened up this year.
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