Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#61

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 10:13 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #55

jusben1369 wrote: post #2

Lost in this overview (and I couldn't really tell the point of the overview) are the probably 10 000 + people per year who go to this site by mistake. It's odd to me that Nissan didn't just offer him those 7 figures worth of legal fees and solve it (or maybe they did to no effect)

I suspect they initially thought they could just bully the guy. By the time they understood he actually was on solid ground (it was the 90s, lawyers didn't know anything about our intertubes), it was too late: smallbiz owners like Mr. Nissan can be the hardest mofos once they get personal. I bet he's still proud he didn't accept their offers. It's old news anyway, very well-known. I'm always surprised when stuff like…

I'd actually not heard of this even though I've been on the Internet since 1989.

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#62

Post by beedogs » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 10:26 AM UTC

cju wrote: post #57

badclient wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually met the guy and did some contract work for him. After hearing the story from his mouth, what stuck with me is his utter dislike for the Nissan CEO and Arabs. He seemed very passionate about Israel and cited Nissan's Arab CEO as a huge part of why he dislikes that company.

It's quite strange to see Carlos Ghosn described as an Arab. As far as I know, he has never spoke publicly about Israël. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn

To people who are that fanatical about Israel, I don't think it matters that he hasn't said anything. It's guilt by association.

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#63

Post by YokoZar » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 10:31 AM UTC

badclient wrote: post #23

jusben1369 wrote: post #2

Lost in this overview (and I couldn't really tell the point of the overview) are the probably 10 000 + people per year who go to this site by mistake. It's odd to me that Nissan didn't just offer him those 7 figures worth of legal fees and solve it (or maybe they did to no effect)

I've actually met the guy and did some contract work for him. After hearing the story from his mouth, what stuck with me is his utter dislike for the Nissan CEO and Arabs. He seemed very passionate about Israel and cited Nissan's Arab CEO as a huge part of why he dislikes that company.

Racism has always been a bit strange to me, but the idea of turning down a literal million dollars because of it is just unfathomably alien.

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#64

Post by stavros » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 10:35 AM UTC

_0nac wrote: post #60

StavrosK wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a factor? That means that anyone can take my domain by registering a company with the same name and suing me for it.

No, they need to pass the three-step test: * The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; * The registrant does not have any rights or legitimate interests in the domain name; and * The registrant registered the domain name and is using it in "bad faith". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Res...

Ah, right, so the decisive factor of the GP is not whether the guy is running a legitimate business, it's whether the guy is using the domain to mislead people into thinking he's Nissan cars.

So, for example, a personal site with a few family photos of someone called Nissan, or whose nickname is Nissan, or who just liked the word, would not be infringing, so they couldn't take it away, correct?

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#65

Post by mateja » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 11:35 AM UTC

k3n wrote: post #31

ebbv wrote: post #11

This post is clickbait with basically zero content. The story of Nissan.com is well known to anyone who's been around the web for long. After all the battle started in the '90s. This article is saying "The web is important! Nissan Motor Company wants to own nissan.com!" No shit.

I found it very informative, I mean Wikipedia[1] only gives a scant 140-ish word overview of the subject (and basically the same thing on the page for Nissan Computer itself), and though it does give 3 references, 2 of those are PDF's from the court judgements and the 3rd is an expired link to the USPTO. Oh yeah, Nissan.com[2] actually contains the most information, though it looks biased and sensational (to be expec…

"The court ordered NMC to pay $58,000 as cost under rule 68, this is less then 2% of what the cost was to defend this case."

It has cost Nissan Computer $3M to defend itself? For a local PC repair shop? Either he's highly principled or just lying.

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#66

Post by le205 » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 11:59 AM UTC

How much traffic do you think they actually lose by not having Nissan.com? I would have thought as soon as someone looking for Nissan cars visits that URL, they would realise it was not the right site, then try the ccTLD version i.e. Nissan.co.uk, or simply search "Nissan" in their search engine of choice.

It's a bit like Google AdWords - some choose to bid on their own brand keywords, but are they actually gaining incremental visitors, or just spending budget on acquiring traffic that would otherwise arrived for free anyway?

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#67

Post by jpatel3 » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 12:07 PM UTC

thejosh wrote: post #21

yogo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My first thought whenever this topic comes up is why a company that big simply can't make him an offer he couldn't refuse. Maybe he's stubborn or something but I have to take the little guy's side here. Maybe they should get nissan.co lmao. Wait, nissan.co leads to Mazda. Hmm, it's not immediately clear to me what the relationship between nissan and mazda is. Edit: nevermind, it seems to take you to a random…

nissan.co takes me to a super shady website. http://betterlivinginsider.com/biz/AU/lp01A.htm?t202id=79166...

It just randomly takes you to few span followed by mazda on first go.

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#68

Post by notahacker » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 12:34 PM UTC

kayoone wrote: post #50

davidiach wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that they have tried that at first.

If they did, it obviously wasnt enough ;)

I'm willing to believe a small fraction of the amount they subsequently spent on legal fees would, if offered at the beginning instead of threats, have been more than enough....

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#69

Post by quaffapint » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 12:41 PM UTC

Used to work for a credit card company, MBNA. They wanted mbna.com, which was owned by Mercedes Benz, North America. Not so amazingly enough, hand Mercedes a million or so and voilà we now had mbna.com, and why Mercedes is now mbusa.com.

Re: Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

#70

Post by smcl » Sat, Jul 20, 2013, 12:43 PM UTC

quaffapint wrote: post #69

Used to work for a credit card company, MBNA. They wanted mbna.com, which was owned by Mercedes Benz, North America. Not so amazingly enough, hand Mercedes a million or so and voilà we now had mbna.com, and why Mercedes is now mbusa.com.

You might mean "voila", not "wala"