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Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I’m with Nissan the car company on this one. The general public expects visiting nissan.com to take them to a website se

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I’m with Nissan the car company on this one. The general public expects visiting nissan.com to take them to a website selling Nissan cars.

mythz 9y ago
So the moment another company becomes popular they have automatic rights to your existing family's business domain name? Is it only domain names they have to rescind ownership of, or should they also be forced to change their business name and dispose of any existing branding, signs and marketing materials they have? What's the family business then meant to do, cease operating their family business under their generations-old family name?
- khazhou 9y ago
  > So the moment another company becomes popular they have automatic rights to your existing family's business domain name? Is it only domain names they have to rescind ownership of, or should they also be forced to change their business name and dispose of any existing branding, signs and marketing materials they have? None of that other stuff is relevant to domain name. The "Amazon" camping shop in Pikesville, Ky doesn't need to change its business name (though they probably should if they set up shop in Washington state). > What's the family business then meant to do, cease operating their family business under their generations-old family name? No, just take another domain name. Millions of people have probably landed on nissan.com while trying to research a car, and been confused and frustrated in disbelief. And this is because one guy with the name "Nissan" beat them to the punch in the early domain-name grab. He could have just as easily taken uzinissan.com and enjoyed his 11 hits a month on that domain.
  - namelost 9y ago
    So? Let them be confused and frustrated. The world's not going to end. Big corporations have enough advantages without giving them rights that ordinary folk don't have. Say that I am a mediocre violin player. But I happen to own a rare Stradivarius. A rich and successful violinist writes to me and asks to buy my violin. I refuse his offer. So he sues me, and says to the court that because he is so famous and so technically adept, the violin should rightfully belong to him. Is that fair?
  - stordoff 9y ago
    > just take another domain name So an already small company should change their domain, and potentially lose customers as a result, just because a larger company wants to use it? > beat them to the punch in the early domain-name grab That is to say he owns the domain. A third-party have a better use for it doesn't define ownership. > He could have just as easily taken uzinissan.com It was initially registered due to company names that contained "Nissan" -- registering using a full personal name doesn't make much sense in that case.
mbaye 9y ago
A domain name is--in a sense--property. It can be bought and sold, garnished to pay off debt. Utilitarian logic doesn't apply here.
yorwba 9y ago
The general public probably also expects a guy with the name Nissan to be the owner of the company selling cars under his name. The available namespace is limited and sometimes the expectations of the general public are wrong. https://firefox.org/ https://firefox.org/ isn't owned by Mozilla either.
madez 9y ago
And it's rightfully unpopular. General public expectation does not define ownership. As long as the owner doesn't try to impersonate the Nissan car company, there is no problem.
UncleEntity 9y ago
I expect nike.com to tell me about the Greek goddess Nike but what do I get when I go there? There was a similar lawsuit in France over some lady named Milka who had milka.fr and she lost probably because she didn't have millions to blow on the lawsuit. They didn't bug me when I bought milka.eu (or something similar, it was a while ago) after reading the article and being drunk at the time decided it was a good idea to use it to host one of the wonderful pictures I took of a Lenin statue while in Budapest. Probably not worth the effort since it was pretty obvious I was just trolling them.
justherefortart 9y ago
One of my old bosses had a company named United Healthcare registered in my state. Guess who had to just accept it, yeah the big UHC. He spun it down decades ago as he sold it and all the associated businesses off to another large healthcare company.
GirlsCanCode 9y ago
You are an evil, cruel person. The company was called "Datsun" when he got the domain.

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I’m with Nissan the car company on this one. The general public expects visiting nissan.com to take them to a website selling Nissan cars.

mythz 9y ago

So the moment another company becomes popular they have automatic rights to your existing family's business domain name? Is it only domain names they have to rescind ownership of, or should they also be forced to change their business name and dispose of any existing branding, signs and marketing materials they have? What's the family business then meant to do, cease operating their family business under their generations-old family name?

khazhou 9y ago
> So the moment another company becomes popular they have automatic rights to your existing family's business domain name? Is it only domain names they have to rescind ownership of, or should they also be forced to change their business name and dispose of any existing branding, signs and marketing materials they have? None of that other stuff is relevant to domain name. The "Amazon" camping shop in Pikesville, Ky doesn't need to change its business name (though they probably should if they set up shop in Washington state). > What's the family business then meant to do, cease operating their family business under their generations-old family name? No, just take another domain name. Millions of people have probably landed on nissan.com while trying to research a car, and been confused and frustrated in disbelief. And this is because one guy with the name "Nissan" beat them to the punch in the early domain-name grab. He could have just as easily taken uzinissan.com and enjoyed his 11 hits a month on that domain.
- namelost 9y ago
  So? Let them be confused and frustrated. The world's not going to end. Big corporations have enough advantages without giving them rights that ordinary folk don't have. Say that I am a mediocre violin player. But I happen to own a rare Stradivarius. A rich and successful violinist writes to me and asks to buy my violin. I refuse his offer. So he sues me, and says to the court that because he is so famous and so technically adept, the violin should rightfully belong to him. Is that fair?
- stordoff 9y ago
  > just take another domain name So an already small company should change their domain, and potentially lose customers as a result, just because a larger company wants to use it? > beat them to the punch in the early domain-name grab That is to say he owns the domain. A third-party have a better use for it doesn't define ownership. > He could have just as easily taken uzinissan.com It was initially registered due to company names that contained "Nissan" -- registering using a full personal name doesn't make much sense in that case.

mbaye 9y ago

A domain name is--in a sense--property. It can be bought and sold, garnished to pay off debt. Utilitarian logic doesn't apply here.

yorwba 9y ago

The general public probably also expects a guy with the name Nissan to be the owner of the company selling cars under his name. The available namespace is limited and sometimes the expectations of the general public are wrong. https://firefox.org/ https://firefox.org/ isn't owned by Mozilla either.

madez 9y ago

And it's rightfully unpopular. General public expectation does not define ownership. As long as the owner doesn't try to impersonate the Nissan car company, there is no problem.

UncleEntity 9y ago

I expect nike.com to tell me about the Greek goddess Nike but what do I get when I go there? There was a similar lawsuit in France over some lady named Milka who had milka.fr and she lost probably because she didn't have millions to blow on the lawsuit. They didn't bug me when I bought milka.eu (or something similar, it was a while ago) after reading the article and being drunk at the time decided it was a good idea to use it to host one of the wonderful pictures I took of a Lenin statue while in Budapest. Probably not worth the effort since it was pretty obvious I was just trolling them.

justherefortart 9y ago

One of my old bosses had a company named United Healthcare registered in my state. Guess who had to just accept it, yeah the big UHC. He spun it down decades ago as he sold it and all the associated businesses off to another large healthcare company.

GirlsCanCode 9y ago

You are an evil, cruel person. The company was called "Datsun" when he got the domain.