51–58 of 58 posts
At MIT's Startup Bootcamp, Kyle noted a similar squatter on http://justintv.com/ .
If so, then News.com is very succesfully cybersquatting Hacker News, in the same way.
First, Dropbox has not commented on why Dropbox.com redirects to them, nor about their lawsuit of the domain owner. Therefore, this is a horrible news article, with an assumption that Dropbox holds an new ownership stake in the domain. Second, it's actually quite possible Dropbox asked the .com holders to forward traffic to the real site in order for both parties to value the domain's contribution to downloads/upsale…
I would say putting ads and turning a profit by advertising competitors of the brand your domain is mimicking would be considered squatting a domain.
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I doubt most people navigate that way. Sure, plenty of browsers will do a google search from the address bar but only if what you've typed doesn't resolve on its own.
You'd be surprised how far normal users will go out of their way to avoid the address box, often using comically complex routines. Google is much more trustworthy than DNS -- it's essentially content-addressed.
That way, I get an extra layer of protection of scams and what-nots. Well worth the extra click or two.
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I would say putting ads and turning a profit by advertising competitors of the brand your domain is mimicking would be considered squatting a domain.
It's the price you have to pay for choosing a brand name whose .com you don't own/can't buy.
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I met Drew, one of the founders of Dropbox, a few years ago at Barcamp Boston. If I remember it right, he said that the initial dropbox.com owner was just some random dude who was planning on starting some sort of venture related to dropboxes, hadn't done it yet, but didn't want to sell. My impression was that he got the domain some time before Dropbox launched, and at least initially, he wasn't doing anything partic…
More or less the opinion I got from it, although the third party seems more like a service the guy used. The guy was clearly using Dropbox and its brand name for his gain, but I can't easily get behind this as good thing when he had domain name first and legitimately. If he went ahead and made a company of his own called dropbox he might well have been fine, who knows. Just felt compelled to comment because the anger…
I wonder if this service is only available to US companies? If my foreign company registers a trademark in my own country then finds a website that was registered 9years ago will the US court force them to hand over the .com domain?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I met Drew, one of the founders of Dropbox, a few years ago at Barcamp Boston. If I remember it right, he said that the initial dropbox.com owner was just some random dude who was planning on starting some sort of venture related to dropboxes, hadn't done it yet, but didn't want to sell. My impression was that he got the domain some time before Dropbox launched, and at least initially, he wasn't doing anything partic…
More or less the opinion I got from it, although the third party seems more like a service the guy used. The guy was clearly using Dropbox and its brand name for his gain, but I can't easily get behind this as good thing when he had domain name first and legitimately. If he went ahead and made a company of his own called dropbox he might well have been fine, who knows. Just felt compelled to comment because the anger…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the price you have to pay for choosing a brand name whose .com you don't own/can't buy.
Dealing with squatters is the price we as web developers/entrepreneurs must pay? If domain names actually required a registered business to purchase a domain name that'd make perfect sense. Unfortunately I could go buy sligenterprises.com and you'd be out of luck if that's what your product was best represented as (except for suing me). I'd amount it to putting up a big ass sign, waiting for someone to also use a sim…