so did anyone else notice some scumbag bought the riocar.com domain name

they have a very useful page that consists of a porn banner and a email how to contact them to buy they domain

I hope sonicblue never buys it

Yes we noticed that a while ago. Since Rio Car is our trademark I doubt we would have much difficulty getting the domain if we wanted it *flexes muscles*

Rob

Yes we noticed that a while ago. Since Rio Car is our trademark I doubt we would have much difficulty getting the domain if we wanted it *flexes muscles*

Maybe you should even if you don't, or you can lose your trademark.

IANAL,
Borislav

you won't loose a trademark over a domain name..

ugh.. I would not want to see SonicBlue flexing ANY legal muscle over a domain name. I've long been a supporter of the first-come first-serve domain name policy. I would never want any of my domains taken from me, because someone thinks they have more of a right to it.. I thought of them first, i put my $ down to reserve them for me. and with 64 alphanumeric characters, and several TLD's... there are enough domains for everyone..

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125

Hehe, this is alot like xlr's registering of the phatbox.com domain.

He never did respond to any of those posts...

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

I disagree - for-profit cybersquatters deserve everything they get, especially when they reinforce their extortion by associating porn sites with your trademark.

I think it's different when a domain is used legitimately by someone who just happened to get to it first.

Rob

I've long been a supporter of the first-come first-serve domain name policy. I would never want any of my domains taken from me, because someone thinks they have more of a right to it.

I agree with this in a general principle. For instance, someone has already used "Fabris.Com" because their company is named that, and they got there first. More power to 'em. If I'd gotten there first, I would have stood my ground and said, "I don't care if you've trademarked the name Fabris, it's still my name and it's still my domain."

But domain-name squatters are a whole different story. The people who squatted on Riocar.com don't have any reason for owning the domain name other than to extort money from Rio. This is, in principle, evil. In these clear-cut cases of cybersquatting, I'm glad that the rightful trademark owners can come in and claim it.

For anything in the gray area in-between these two extremes, we have the legal system. That's what our legal system is for. If there were no gray areas, we wouldn't need judges.

___________
Tony Fabris

I agree if the person is using it for a legitimate website they have every right to the name and a company shouldn't be take it

but if they souldn't be allowed to use it just to extort money from a company

would associating porn with someones trademark be slander or something ?

would associating porn with someones trademark be slander or something?

Interesting idea. If your lawyers wanted to really be mean about it, they could probably nail the cybersquatters pretty hard on that particular point. Dunno if anyone's ever tried that, it'd be fun to see it played out.

___________
Tony Fabris

while i hear what you are saying, rio can hardly be a trademarked WORD, maybe a logo, but it is spanish for river, who teh heck can you trademark that? the logo yes.

the word riocar, yes however, if they really wanted to put up a stink, all they have to do is say they are making a rivercar, and you will have a prb getting it without paying.

The chance of course to win, would be surround them with lawyers. In the long run, it is probably cheaper to pay them $5,000 and be done with it.

Does anyone know who i can call, or email about this domain name squatting issue? I had a domain name for about 2 or 3 years, and i forgot to pay the bill - so someone bought it out from under me. It belongs to a band with a trade marked name. Now i can't get it back. Anyone have any ideas on who to go to see if i can do anything with the trademark to get it back?

-CHiP

Does anyone know who i can call, or email about this domain name squatting issue?

The domain dispute policy on the Network Solutions site might be a good start.

Borislav

This post got me thinking.. for about a week, I have been thinking of of registering barbaza.com (my last name). Reading this post was enough reason to scare me into putting it off no longer. So, I went to my usual www.directNIC.com (only $15 per year - I don't know how some companies get off charging $90?!!??) and registered it...

BUT, when I did, I noticed that barbaza.tv is NOT available. Now, Barbaza is a rare last name. I only know if about 30 of us in North America. So, I went to barbaza.tv and found that a company is buying up domain names based on people's last names and then SELLING email addresses to those people. So, the probably own stephens.tv, so if your name is John Stephens, you can pay them to have [email protected]. (I am guessing at Stephens here...)

This puts a whole other twist on squatting. On one hand, it seems like they are providing a service, but on the other - they are a corporate version of a squatter...

How do you guys feel about this? I would be a little more upset if they had registered barbaza.com rather than barbaza.tv...

FWIW: I plan on setting up aliases for all my family members so they can have [email protected] or [email protected] ... (for free!)

32GB (JUST UPGRADED!) Mk. II BLUE
Detroit, MI USA
www.PfeifferBeer.com

Damn, now you got me thinking about this. So I went to check out www.maher.com again to see if it was still occupied (I checked it out a few years ago). It's still there, although it looks like he hasn't updated it since the last time I checked. Then I tried www.maher.net. Check that one out and tell me that doesn't suck!

Thanks for that site though. $15 is a very reasonable fee. And I was able to find out that maher.com/net/org/tv are all taken.

however, dignan17.com is available! Hooray for random numbers!

By the way, what would you people suggest I do for hosting? I have an account with my school, but I don't want to do a simple forwarding thing. It would be cool to have my own web space to do stuff with

Also, could someone explain to me how I go about making email addresses? Thanks! This is great!

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

My favorite web hosting service by far is pair.com they have the best prices and the best connection anywhere.

5.95/Mon for FTP account
Empeg.com was/is hosted there

We still use pair for hosting empeg.com and geek.empeg.com (although they don't host the DNS).

Rob

personaly, I pay to have a linux box of mine colocated at a local ISP, I provide email/web/shell accounts to a whole ton of my friends (online and offline) and I do some domain/web hosting for a couple of small groups. I do this because I do it more as a hobby, and not as a service.. (i don't charge people I know personaly, it's anoying, and messy with taxes and crap)

other than that.. I would recomend something like pair.com.. I know that's who i recomended to empeg when they wanted a US based hosting provider.

the other option, which I like personaly, is to go with a nice geek friendly local ISP.. there are LOTS of them out there, and in the world of huge ISP's like AOL, taking over the world, it's good to support the local ISP's they're normaly easier to work with, and tend to be very supportive of internet freedoms.

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125

Thanks for all the help here. I'll have to check out pair.com and any local ISP's, but for now I'm redirecting it to my college site. Or, at least I thought I did. It's all set up on the directNIC page, but I can't get it to work at all. Nothing loads.

Oh well, at least I got it. I am now the owner of www.dignan17.com

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

It may not have updated in whatever DNS you use. I couldn't ping it by name.

_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."

Yeah I think it takes a few days for your dns information to be spread across the internet.

Sean

At least you got a address, I tried to register sean.tv and they wanted a minumum offer of $3500. What a joke.

How about this: one cannot register a domain in Croatian (.hr) root domain unless one is a company, and then domain name more or less has to be a registered company name. raos.com belongs to an Italian restaurant and food shop (I have checke some recipies, they are quite OK ). raos.net is a barely functional site belonging to a dog lover and small IT services business proprietor who shares my last name. raos.org is taken but has no DNS entry. bonzi.com belongs to a software company that could learn volumes about customer support from guys@empeg (I used to receive quite a number of e-mails from their angry customers who fired at first bonzi a search engine spat out)....

I think I will just stay with a local near-monopoly for a while...

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Hmm, I guess making up Drakino works well, all domains are open. Aparently, my completly random nickname ended up being the name of a Russian town. I wonder if they say it the same way I do. I picked Drakino a while back, after seeing the beginings of the "AOL add a number to your username" issue.

Yeah xanatos.com .net and .org have been gone for awhile oh well... :(. I did register xanatos.cc and .cx however... and I'm thinking about xanatos.jp :) But hey, my main page suits me just fine... ihavenolife.com!

Current domain name count: 6 (highest 8)
ihavenolife.com, thenitelife.com, xanatos.cc, xanatos.cx, amdsux.com <- Before I was educated ^_^;; and wifebeaters.net

Later!

Damien Heiser

RioCar / empeg 12GB Blue Mark 2a SN: 120001043

My made up name has been pretty good to me as well... although I recently discovered there is a real Kim Botha somewhere over there in the US... He doesn't seem to have much of a net presence though...

Kim

Well depends on how you say it now.

In Russian the 'i' is more like a 'j', and 'o' is more like an 'a' (At lease pronounced that way here in Norway.)
So Drakjina, hows you new nickname.

If there are any Russians reading, please correct me. This is from the back of
my memory.

TommyE

"AOL add a number to your username"

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that issue

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.