Is the name 4chan trademarked? It doesn't seem to be. Would it be easier to secure the .com if they trademarked the name first, then went after oversee?
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"!
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).
"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 provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin, with a list of possible alternative names derived from pre-existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate parent Pillsbury that could be used to name the Australian restaurants. Cowin selected the "Hungry Jack" brand name, one of Pillsbury's U.S. pancake mixture products..."
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.
I think it's really stupid to get domain like this, whether the name is trademarked or not. They didn't steal the domain, they just registered it (or bought it) because it was available. 4chan.org has absolutely no right to it. But since .com TLD is not really international, who knows what will happen.
The .com is essentially US domain. So as, for example, .be is controlled by some Belgian organization, .com is controlled by US one. And it's not ICANN, so it doesn't aim to be international either.
Is this just to troll? Even if someone looking for 4chan.org enteres 4chan.com first, isn't close to 100% of the target audience able to figure out what went wrong and fix it within seconds? (either by trying .org and co, or by dropping the tld altogether to trigger a web search).
Quick 'hackernewschan.com' is still available. Someone here please buy it (seriously). It would be a troll-site for highly intelligent people that will bring forth a new age in humanity. Before you down-vote my comment brother... please consider the possibilities... they once thought that flying in the air impossible... what could be next?
Guys, this is serious. .org is for non-profit organizations. .com is for commercial purposes. This is why moot had to beg for donations for years while helplessly watching everyone and their cat monetize "his" "content" on a .com domain.
Nope .org is for things that didn't fit into the big 5 one of the other bidders for .org tried to run this line and restrict .org to US style non profits freezing out charities an NGOs like Oxfam and the Red Cross - they got shot down in flames.
You going to tell JWZ (one of the early netscape developers) that hes going to have to give up jwz.org good luck with that .
The word "demands" is probably very unfitting. Moot doesn't seem like the person who would "demand" something. He would just do it and not take it very seriously and hope for the best. There is no reason to not at least try to obtain the name.
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 Beatles record label and the computer company can coexist with the 'Apple' name.
Probably many of us here are in similar situations - I have a domain name for example in .net and .org, but someone else has the .com. I don't want to take the .com from whoever it is (not without their consent, that is), and I shouldn't to have to pay for lawyers to fight them off if they make the name better known for their unrelated site.
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.
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.
If you have a trademark and the current domain owner is simply squatting, you should file a dispute with ICAAN. It has a process specifically intended for your situation.
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 to Google? Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if they didn't buy them at huge markup? Go read about the Whitehouse.com history.
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.
The courts can decide squatted/legitimate use. I mean, were you using email@4chan.com before 4chan.org was starting up? And for that matter why would you be saving 4chan.com for your child? Are you 'speculating' that it will be worth more over time? Or is their name Mrs. Four Chan? It should be easy to make your claim if it's bona fide.
Again, this is a 'I know it when I see it.'
That client thing is shitty and that sounds like actually you have a great argument. Especially if you just post your negative blog post/review of that company redirected from that domain.
It's less about what you do with the domain and more about the method of choosing the domain. If your domain is blatantly copying a company name, and it's not your company name, you're not in a strong position. By copying I mean something like paypa1.com, not something like paypalsucks.com.
If you have a domain where you do nothing on it, but it's not copying anything either, that's squatting but nobody is going to care.
If you hold a client's site hostage for not paying, yeah that sounds like squatting. So what, that's not a value judgement.
Alright but if the definition of squatting doesn't help with the value judgement, ie some squatting is justified, then that's no great help towards deciding how to delineate allowable behaviour wrt domain holding, is it? I considered the purpose of the definition of squatting was to define behaviour which was considered unhelpful and was to be discouraged in some way.
I remember when Gap (the American clothes company) sued Genesis Access Point (the Irish dial-up ISP) and won, back in the 90s. That's when it all started going to shit.
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 "coming soon" sign that's been up for 5 years. The site is undeveloped, commercially zoned and represents essentially a burden for the community from both the unrealized tax revenue as well as eye sore and lower local property values. Plus the brand confusion, misdirected out-of-towners, etc.
So take this analogy to the internet, admittedly the 'real' costs may be lower--transmitting a few billion bytes is cheaper than road maintenance, fire and police protection to the unused property--but the societal cost is the same. The property should be fully realized and transfered to someone who will use it. This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. There is a public interest that is ethically sound. But at its heart, the people who cybersquat are a nuisance. They have no bona fide interest in the domain name and likely acquired it just to 'own' a property that they think they'll be able to flip one day.... it's the same sh*t as the real estate bubble, heck... bubble of ANY KIND. Fact is, I am glad this system of arbitration is in place because if I was Bill Gates and some guy named Joe Smith bought my name.com and didn't have a fan page or other relevant property, but just intended to sell it to me for a 10,000% return on his 'investment,' I would be pretty pissed off. I really don't see the other side of this debate. These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. It has created all kinds of negative effects like shotgun domain bidding, poaching, pricing bubble, artificial scarcity, ID theft, the 4chan.org issues mentioned in this article.... need I go on?
> 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.
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.
>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?
>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
This has nothing to do with what I said. Neither a swimming pool nor a car is a scarce resource. Now if you owned the only bridge to an island and didn't allow people to use it, or charged them extortionary rates... then we can begin the debate.
>Sure it does. IF you own it.
I'll tell you what, go let your house collapse from disrepair, attempt to assert mineral rights in your backyard and then pour raw sewage onto your land.... we'll see if the zoning code enforcement, county lawyers and EPA respectively come knocking or not. Despite your assertion, there is very little that we actually own in the real property market. This is because it is in the public interest to have the many protections that we have.
URLs are not a scare resource. Having a specific (and in this case marketable) one is (and really only if that URL already has market value). I could make the same argument that MY car is a scare resource. Any car is not scare but MINE is.
If I already have a pool where you wanted one, you have to put yours somewhere else. If my car is parked the spot you want at the store, you park somewhere else. If I bought the last car of the type you wanted, you have to buy a different one.
Economically speaking, everything is a scare resource. But more importantly, a unused domain does not cause any damage, as say a derelict house would. I don't find the metaphors compatible.
Alright let me take your example and turn it around. Say someone decides to build a big fancy complex mall on Main St that will not only generate 10's of thousands employment but also attract a good amount of tourists. They finally found the plot of land, bought it and put up a sign called "Coming Soon". Pushing the paperwork, completing the construction would take 5+ years. In the mean time, someone read about this big project and decides to built a mini mart called Main St. Shopping right around the corner and demands the original Mall should be renamed. Now what? Now who is creating a bigger waste?
Things are not always black and white. If Google decides to squat on a domain for a future project, would you still called it squatting? Or them owning Google.io despite not having a business in these tiny islands be considered squatting too?
For the domain analogy, if they have a mini mart then they are actually using the address in a non-squatting way and nobody has to rename. (and an enormous under-construction mall is clearly not squatting either)
A future project will go a good way toward keeping a domain, probably not indefinitely, isn't usually relevant to the squatting case.
TLDs don't actually signify location so getting company.xyz is not squatting.
>In the mean time, someone read about this big project and decides to built a mini mart called Main St. Shopping right around the corner
Are you trying to stengthen my argument? You've just proven that they were doing the very thing I'm arguing is unethical. Now if they incidentally named their shopping plaza this name and they can prove it was coincidence... well then we have an argument.
As for Google.io, they DO have a business there... and all over the internet. If there was an existing business there named Google that say delivered math lessons to homeschoolers, then I would say Google could not legitimately claim them as squatting.
This is a "I know it when I see it" standard. It's usually pretty obvious what is squatting and what is not.
>Are you trying to stengthen my argument? You've just proven that they were doing the very thing I'm arguing is unethical.
No, the point is you are trying to use emotions to determine the "good" guy from the "bad" guy, which is not as black and white as it seems. On the same issue: 4chan.com was created on "12/13/03" where as 4chan.org was created on "2004-02-14". Now you can't say just because 4chan.org is popular, they should be awarded 4chan.com OR that 4chan.org should be transferred to 4chan.com because the name was "copied" from them and is thus "unethical".
>As for Google.io, they DO have a business there... and all over the internet.
No they don't! Having a brand on the internet does not automagically qualify you for legally registered business rights all around the world. Having a universal trademark is hard, time consuming and restricted to local laws.
>This is a "I know it when I see it" standard. It's usually pretty obvious what is squatting and what is not.
Yes this worked out so well which is why our laws are based on vagueness.
>Yes this worked out so well which is why our laws are based on vagueness.
Actually this is a common thing in Law. Many times we can't objectively define something, but 'most' people know it when they see it. Some examples you should look at:
>On the same issue: 4chan.com was created on "12/13/03" where as 4chan.org was created on "2004-02-14". Now you can't say just because 4chan.org is popular, they should be awarded 4chan.com OR that 4chan.org should be transferred to 4chan.com because the name was "copied" from them and is thus "unethical".
You have not observed the full history. 4chan was popular before both dates observed by you, but under the 4chan.net domain (from September 2003). That domain was suspended by the registrar on 2004-02-11, which was the cause of the move to 4chan.org.
I.e. the 4chan.com domain was registered about three months after 4chan.net, at a point where the latter had substantial traffic.
> Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit
Under US law you sure do.
You also have to define "waste". The owners of 4chan.com are obviously holding onto their domain because they see it as a valuable asset. I doubt they'd see this as wasting their property. They're watching it grow in value.
Your argument would virtually have us outlaw anyone from holding onto an asset if it could immediately be used better by somebody else.
As a counter-example: Why should anyone be allowed to horde gold? There's a gold shortage and it would be of much more use in computer manufacturing.
That's obviously insane, and yet it's essentially the same scenario.
I understand that it would be better for the common good if 4chan.com was owned by 4chan.org, but if we're playing the game of Capitalism, then these are the rules.
Haha interesting side-case. Well, I will say that it certainly wasn't an example of Capitalism, and I don't condone something as silly as the illegality of owning a specific element like gold.
Eminent domain isn't used to avoid waste. Rather, it's used to acquire land that you need for something important.
As far as I understand it, if I'm wasting a bunch of land and refuse to sell it, but there's a million acres next door that you can buy for pennies and your project will work just as well there as it would on my land, there's no case for eminent domain. Go buy that other land and build there.
Eminent domain is for stuff like, we're building a highway from here to there, and the only reasonable route is through there, and that's where your property sits, so we'll take it from you even if you don't want to sell, because this highway will have a big public benefit that outweighs your personal property rights. If the highway can just move half a mile to the left to the land of someone who wants to sell, then you do that instead.
On the internet, all property is adjacent and nothing has to be in a particular spot. The supply of domain names is effectively infinite. I don't see the case for taking one just because the owner is "wasting" it. You don't need that specific domain, just buy the one "next door", which on the internet is all of them.
> The supply of domain names is effectively infinite
If you don't mind going to places like, adjkdhad3fnnkjd.com for all your future services, at which point domains lose their intended use, you might as well just remember and type out the ip number.
> This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell.
Actually, a lot of the debate about eminent domain is who is on the receiving end of the property. Eminent domain is supposed to be about the taking of private property for public use. E.g., building a school. It gets a lot more dicey when you start taking A's private property and making it B's private property.
I own a domain name that is basically mynamemyindustry.com . It is of zero value to anyone else who doesn't share my name, which isn't too common.
Someone bought myname s myindustry.com and occasionally sends me an email that it's going up for auction soon and enquires if I'm interested. I've just ignored them in the hope they get the point. They have been trying to make it seem like there's lots of other demands, when there's absolutely no reason to buy it other than the kind of similarity to my domain.
It can't even be profitable typosquatting. Nowdays the domain just redirects to a newer domain of mine and has been for a number of years, so in the unlikely event that someone tried to type in my current domain exactly and mispelled it, they still wouldn't end up on that domain. The only reason I keep up the registration is Google's inability to swap the primary domain on Google Apps.
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.
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.
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