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4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

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Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#31

Post by chrismonsanto »

Shinkei wrote: post #24

Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "comin…

> This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell.

Not quite--eminent domain is also used to take property from people who ARE using it. And I think that is where that debate gets very thorny, because the compensation is not always worth the costs of uprooting someone from their home.

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#32

Post by Shinkei »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #31
Shinkei wrote: post #24

Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "comin…

> This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Not quite--eminent domain is also used to take property from people who ARE using it. And I think that is where that debate gets very thorny, because the compensation is not always worth the costs of uprooting someone from their home.

I agree with you--it's an oversimplification to make my point in this one extreme example, but that's why we have courts to decide the grey areas--hopefully fairly.

A good example of current use of eminent domain is highlighted in this article from HuffPost about border properties on Texas/Mexico land. The gov't is paying a lot of money, but only if you have the sense/resources to hire a lawyer and fight for more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/landowners-seized-b...

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#33

Post by noonespecial »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #31
Shinkei wrote: post #24

Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "comin…

> This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Not quite--eminent domain is also used to take property from people who ARE using it. And I think that is where that debate gets very thorny, because the compensation is not always worth the costs of uprooting someone from their home.

Eminent domain hits the skids when it takes property from someone that is living there and pays them the market price for someone who wants to sell to someone who wants to stay. Those are different prices indeed.

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#34

Post by noonespecial »

_puk wrote: post #26
_puk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, I had a .com domain on backorder (I have the .co.uk), which was actually released. I didn't get it (regardless of the back-order), but it got bought up by a domain squatting company who now want about $4K for it. It is currently parked with a horrendous page that doesn't even render correctly. Now if my my .co.uk site were to get popular (hah!), I fully expect that price tag to increase. It's a biza…

Oh, and I had the trademark for said site..

If you have a trademark, file a complaint with ICANN. It will almost certainly be handed to you. Usually without even hearing from the other party. I've both lost and gained domains in this fashion.

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#35

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Shinkei wrote: post #24

Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "comin…

>Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. //

Sure it does. IF you own it.

>These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. //

This is capitalism. The more damaging domain as you suggest is real-estate. Online the problem becomes simply "oh example.com wasn't right, example.org ... oh, ya, there it is". That might be a very minor annoyance for some people for a couple of seconds.

The problem I see with the "they're not creating a mall" argument is that to the logical conclusion that means that if you have a swimming pool and aren't using it as much as the public feel you should that it can be confiscated. Or, say, you have 2 cars - well clearly you can't drive both at once; repossession by the state, et cetera.

Now I've got some pretty communist sensibilities but unless we're going to implement the whole system and treat all properties in this way (I'd really like to use one of the many, many over-priced vacant commercial premises in our city) then I can't see how you can really move on this?

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#36

Post by huxley »

jamestnz wrote: post #23
theOnliest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite example of this is the Waffle House (24-hour dive). In Indiana, "Waffle House" was already taken, so the national chain had to use "Waffle & Steak" instead. Of course, since we used to call the Waffle House "WaHo," this leads to the MUCH better name "WaSte"! [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_house#Waffle_.26_Steak

Another interesting example is the fact that Burger King is known ubiquitously as "Hungry Jack's" within Australia (but here in New Zealand we get the real BK branding). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack's#History_of_.22Bur... "When Burger King moved to expand its operations into Australia, it found that its business name was already trademarked by a takeaway food shop in Adelaide. As a result, Burger King pro…

An important US trademark case (Burger King of Florida, Inc. v. Hoots (1968)) also involved Burger King: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_(Mattoon,_Illinois)

The court ruled that federal trademark registration had priority over state law, and that the big chain Burger King had rights to the “Burger King” name everywhere except in Mattoon, Illinois. Since the Hoots family had prior actual use there, they retained the name for the Mattoon area.

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#37

Post by Havoc »

I wouldn't want to be on the receiving side of this request. If its approved then it creates a bad precedent (as ds9 indicated). If its rejected then the person rejecting it is likely to piss of the 4chan crowd - and unlike many other 4chan attacks this is a cause the entire 4chan user base can get behind.

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#38

Post by ChuckMcM »

Interesting, I've never met a domain squatter that didn't have a price, but setting that aside for now, is the word '4chan' trademarked? Ahh I see it is [1] as of March 5th of this year. This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[1] http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html

Re: 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

#39

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Shinkei wrote: post #29
ds9 wrote: post #21

It would be a very bad precedent if an owner of a domain name can gain rights to the same name in another tld just by his own site becoming popular. US trademark law is limited to (a) commercial context and (b) possibility of confusion. If you aren't selling anything, or even if you are commercial but are in a different line of business, you should never be troubled by any trademark claims. This is how the old Beatle…

It's not that it's 'more popular.' That's not the debate. The debate is that the .com site is being squatted. If it was some 4chan interior design company with even some legitimate business, then the debate would be over. Do you think it's a bad precedent if Google becomes popular and you can show that a person subsequently registered all the single permutation misspellings of Google and then tried to sell them back…

Define squatted (or define legitimate use) - if the owner is using the domain for email and simply finds serving advertising provides some income, is that squatting; given there is no confusion issue. If they have a project in hand, or bought it to give to their child when they're 18, or ... are all those squatting?

How about, as for me, they renewed for a client and then the client didn't pay but now wants "their" domain back. Is me having that and serving ads to recoup costs (rather than wasting time on courts), is that squatting?

>Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if they didn't buy them at huge markup? //

Extortion and practices intended to affect the business of a RTM are already unlawful of course.

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