16 ms·

Uzi Nissan (nissan.com) died of covid July 2020 and the website is now down

223 points by bmcahren 4y ago

bmcahren 4y ago
I was discussing trademarks and domains with somebody today and tried to show them my favorite long-standing trademark dispute nissan.com but it appears all of the website content has been taken down in May 2022. Here's one of the last standing copies: https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.co... Oh, and digest.com where he told is lawsuit story is now for sale (http://digest.com/ http://digest.com/) https://web.archive.org/web/20220402233023/https://digest.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220402233023/https://digest.co...
- giobox 4y ago
  The UDRP ("Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy" - the arbitration process all domain name disputes go through - you have little choice as mandated by ICANN for all domain name registrars) has been hopelessly broken in favor of the pursuer for a long time. It's a pursuer pays system; surprise surprise pursuers almost always win. UDRP panels are run by private firms of typically retired judges looking to cash in for easy work, selected by WIPO ("World Intellectual Property Organisation") . WIPO love the UDRP, because for the first time its given them real teeth to enforce something directly. Similarly, if you don't respond to a UDRP notification the case is almost always decided against you and you lose control of the domain, regardless of the merits of the case. If you want to look up some really terrible UDRP decisions regarding things that can't typically be trademarked under almost all legal systems (place and family names etc), the barcelona.com case is pretty famous. Same too with mcdonalds.com. Nissan.com is just another example sadly. There have even been UDRP cases where the panel has claimed using WHOIS anonymization was an "act of bad faith" and handed the domain to the pursuer. It's a wild system. > https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en > https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en
  - creeble 4y ago
    >Nissan.com is just another example sadly. Example of what? The car company never won a UDRP case against Mr Nissan.
    - giobox 4y ago
      Example of litigating over something that can't typically be trademarked - "Nissan" is a family name. There are plenty of articles online discussing the nissan.com case from the UDRP perspective, which is the typical remedy, and one Nissan can still pursue - you can't escape the UDRP due to the ICANN mandate.
      - creeble 4y ago
        Ford, Chrysler, Bloomberg - I'm not sure what you mean by "can't typically be trademarked". If Nissan Motors believed they could win via UDRP, why haven't they?
        giobox 4y ago
        Mr Nissan's hand is rather strengthened when he can show the UDRP panel he won a similar case in a US court of law, which might take the wind out the sails on the Nissan Motors side. For what its worth, the WIPO databases show plenty of other UDRP claims from Nissan Motors. > I'm not sure what you mean by "can't typically be trademarked". I mean exactly that - under most trademark law systems, you cant typically trademark a family name. I say typically because like everything there are exceptions.
mikece 4y ago
Uzi battled Nissan motor company because the company thought they had the right to take the domain from a man who had registered it because it's his surname. Nissan Motors should have been slapped with a massive punitive fine for that, but instead they continued to bleed Mr. Uzi Nissan of his resources by suing him repeatedly. Memo to Nissan Motor Company: it was because of this act of lawfare that I personally renounced ever buying a Nissan again (even though the Altima and Maxima were excellent cars). You deserve to be punished for your actions. I regret that refusing to give you my business isn't worth more.
- Kaytaro 4y ago
  Should domains be first come first serve though? Why? Almost 100% of people when they hear "Nissan" think of the car company, so why should that domain direct to some random guy who happened to claim it first?
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Isn't first come first served already the default? Which leads to scalpers trying to buy out brand names ahead of the corporations so they'll be offered money for them later?
  - bluehatbrit 4y ago
    Why should corporations have more of a claim to property or resources than individuals, just because more people know of them? If they were exercising phishing attacks then fair enough, but if they had a personal website of some sort on there, why the hell should a company get it just because they have the same name?
    - Kaytaro 4y ago
      Because domains pointing to where you'd expect just makes the internet a better place. It reduces dependency on search engines, makes the internet simpler to use, and ideally you could be confident that nissan.com isn't some Joe Blow but a trusted company. What benefit does "first come first serve" provide? Nothing other than allowing individuals to hijack widespread brands.
fourstar 4y ago
My brother owns (our last name.com). Our great great grandfather started and ran a fairly successful (pre-prohibition) brewery. Someone found out about our last name, trademarked it, and "restarted" the brewery with no relation to anyone in our family. The best part is they feigned ignorance when they "learned" that there were still living descendants in the area...
- 0des 4y ago
  What's the next step?
  - fourstar 4y ago
    Good question. We've talked to various lawyers throughout the years. The crappy part is that the people who resurrected it have hundreds of millions in real estate backed ventures (big $$$), so there's really not much we can do aside from pound sand considering we weren't brewing the beer, or enforcing the trademark. The even weirder thing is that they used his name as their contact email for the longest time on their website, made a brew dedicated to my late grandfather (a pediatrician they never met) based on tongue-depresser airplanes he made for his patients, and even had the gall to leave one of their first bottled brews at my great great grandfather's gravesite. So the only thing I can do is just raise awareness, and tell people who ask me if there is any relation (when they see/hear my last name) to not support them!
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      > even had the gall to leave one of their first bottled brews at my great great grandfather's gravesite. That's a weird thing to do. I can see wanting to steal an established brand because people are attracted to legacy, especially in the case of something like brewing. But leaving a tribute at his grave is, honestly, just bizarre behavior. Are the obsessed or something? Do they think they have some connection to your family? One of your family should try to work for them, maybe the company will treat them like the second coming. Or human sacrifice. But hey, worth a shot, right?
kube-system 4y ago
It resolves and loads a page for me, it has just been... updated. Wonder if his next of kin will be selling it.
- conductr 4y ago
  > Wonder if his next of kin will be selling it Was my thought, hope he had put this in his estate with some reasonable transfer procedure
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  The company will get it eventually. That's the thing about corporations: they outlive people. It took Disney 79 years and the trade of a sportscaster's career to get Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back, but they did it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
VoidWhisperer 4y ago
While the content of the website appears to be down now, according to the whois[1], the website registration itself with it being registered to Nissan Computer Corp. does not expire until 2024. [1]: https://who.is/whois/nissan.com https://who.is/whois/nissan.com
- branon 4y ago
  Is it known who will renew the domain? Nice legacy for the guy.
  - malux85 4y ago
    We should try and find out who is managing his estate, let's get it renewed the maximum duration, just to annoy Nissan
    - capableweb 4y ago
      I'd be up to contribute some funds to have a $5 DO droplet serving the website for some time as well. I'll start by committing to one year of hosting ($60). I'll never buy a Nissan because of their actions against nissan.com, but somehow it doesn't always feel like enough.
      - nrmitchi 4y ago
        Probably not even necessary to do that much. Point it at Cloudflare backed by an S3 bucket with a single "in memorandum" page and host it until the end of technology as we know it for ~$1.
        capableweb 4y ago
        I've learnt my lesson to depend as little as possible on vendors with specific technologies when you want to keep something alive for a long, long time. The less reliance on specific closed-source & cloud technologies, the better.
zaidf 4y ago
Uzi Nissan was one of the more interesting people I met as a freelancer in college. He replied to a craigslist ad and we met for coffee. He had some crazy ideas (and conspiracies:) about all the things he wanted to hire a freelancer to do with nissan.com
- neonate 4y ago
  Please tell us more?
sorokod 4y ago
Nisan is relatively common Hebrew name from the month of Nisan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisan
1-6 4y ago
I wonder how much not having nissan.com affected Nissan’s business. I’m probably sure it’s tremendous.
- chiph 4y ago
  Perhaps back when his fight with the automaker was going on. But typing "nissan" into Google has returned the automaker as the 1st result for quite a while now (SEO for the win). Someone would have to type the full domain name into their browser to end up at his site.
  - bmcahren 4y ago
    Many people who learned computers in the 90s still type in pets.com/google.com/Chevy.com before searching for what they want.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Did something change between when this was posted and now? The website is up for me, however the content is stripped down relative to the previous version ( https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.co... ). All of the anti-Nissan content is gone and it simply says "Contact Us" Given the events, I wouldn't be surprised if his estate is moving toward trying to sell the domain and collect any possible proceeds.
- bmcahren 4y ago
  No, but seeing as his vehemently anti-Nissan-motors content is gone in entirety from both nissan.com and digest.com I count this as "down" in terms of the website that once was a bastion of internet freedom.
dang 4y ago
Related: Nissan Motors vs. Nissan Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25622386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25622386 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) Nissan.com (is not owned by Nissan the car company) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369990 - Sept 2020 (102 comments) Nissan Motor's Lawsuit Against Us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680958 - Aug 2019 (1 comment) Uzi Nissan Spent 8 Years Fighting Nissan Motor Company to Keep Nissan.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16670141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16670141 - March 2018 (83 comments) Nissan Motors LawSuit Against Nissan Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919367 - Dec 2017 (5 comments) Nissan vs. Nissan (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030968 - Aug 2015 (21 comments) Why You Can’t Buy a Car on Nissan.com – Now I Know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692059 - June 2015 (4 comments) Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6073980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6073980 - July 2013 (85 comments)
angst_ridden 4y ago
I used to work at a web firm that did Nissan USA's web site. I was in meetings where they discussed ways they would finally get the domain from Uzi. They obviously never succeeded. I did learn a lot about trademark law despite myself.
1970-01-01 4y ago
I don't care what happens to NISSAN.COM, as long as it does not fall to Nissan Motors. Ideally, someone should restore it from the last good snapshot and ask for donations to renew the domain on a regular basis. I would be happy to contribute to this effort.
alberth 4y ago
What’s odd is that the domain was renewed just 2 months ago (April 6th).
tekeous 4y ago
Should have hosted it with Njalla and watched Nissan fumble around trying to figure out who to sue
jacquesm 4y ago
Let's hope that his heirs hold on to the domain name.
- simondotau 4y ago
  I hope they sell it to the car company for tens of millions of dollars. Or more.
chiph 4y ago
Uzi was my ISP when I had ADSL in Raleigh and was a pleasure to work with when I had issues with BellSouth's service. I was sorry to hear about his death. The website was up just the other month, so this is a new development by his family/heirs. That Nissan Motors didn't immediately grab the domain after his passing may be evidence that domain names are an inheritable asset? Any lawyers have info on this?
tedk-42 4y ago
As someone who had no idea who this person was or their legal troubles with Nissan (motor company), I find it strange that this was the battle he chose to fight to define who he was as a person. Each to his own though. Not a hill I would have chosen to die on.
pvaldes 4y ago
That lead us to an interesting legal question, could a web page be inherited by the relatives of the deceased?
Macha 4y ago
Similarly, I notice Universal Tubing appears to have given up utube.com

223 points by bmcahren 4y ago

I was discussing trademarks and domains with somebody today and tried to show them my favorite long-standing trademark dispute nissan.com but it appears all of the website content has been taken down in May 2022. Here's one of the last standing copies: https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.co... Oh, and digest.com where he told is lawsuit story is now for sale (http://digest.com/ http://digest.com/) https://web.archive.org/web/20220402233023/https://digest.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220402233023/https://digest.co...

giobox 4y ago
The UDRP ("Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy" - the arbitration process all domain name disputes go through - you have little choice as mandated by ICANN for all domain name registrars) has been hopelessly broken in favor of the pursuer for a long time. It's a pursuer pays system; surprise surprise pursuers almost always win. UDRP panels are run by private firms of typically retired judges looking to cash in for easy work, selected by WIPO ("World Intellectual Property Organisation") . WIPO love the UDRP, because for the first time its given them real teeth to enforce something directly. Similarly, if you don't respond to a UDRP notification the case is almost always decided against you and you lose control of the domain, regardless of the merits of the case. If you want to look up some really terrible UDRP decisions regarding things that can't typically be trademarked under almost all legal systems (place and family names etc), the barcelona.com case is pretty famous. Same too with mcdonalds.com. Nissan.com is just another example sadly. There have even been UDRP cases where the panel has claimed using WHOIS anonymization was an "act of bad faith" and handed the domain to the pursuer. It's a wild system. > https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en > https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en
- creeble 4y ago
  >Nissan.com is just another example sadly. Example of what? The car company never won a UDRP case against Mr Nissan.
  - giobox 4y ago
    Example of litigating over something that can't typically be trademarked - "Nissan" is a family name. There are plenty of articles online discussing the nissan.com case from the UDRP perspective, which is the typical remedy, and one Nissan can still pursue - you can't escape the UDRP due to the ICANN mandate.
    - creeble 4y ago
      Ford, Chrysler, Bloomberg - I'm not sure what you mean by "can't typically be trademarked". If Nissan Motors believed they could win via UDRP, why haven't they?
      - giobox 4y ago
        Mr Nissan's hand is rather strengthened when he can show the UDRP panel he won a similar case in a US court of law, which might take the wind out the sails on the Nissan Motors side. For what its worth, the WIPO databases show plenty of other UDRP claims from Nissan Motors. > I'm not sure what you mean by "can't typically be trademarked". I mean exactly that - under most trademark law systems, you cant typically trademark a family name. I say typically because like everything there are exceptions.

mikece 4y ago

Uzi battled Nissan motor company because the company thought they had the right to take the domain from a man who had registered it because it's his surname. Nissan Motors should have been slapped with a massive punitive fine for that, but instead they continued to bleed Mr. Uzi Nissan of his resources by suing him repeatedly. Memo to Nissan Motor Company: it was because of this act of lawfare that I personally renounced ever buying a Nissan again (even though the Altima and Maxima were excellent cars). You deserve to be punished for your actions. I regret that refusing to give you my business isn't worth more.

Kaytaro 4y ago
Should domains be first come first serve though? Why? Almost 100% of people when they hear "Nissan" think of the car company, so why should that domain direct to some random guy who happened to claim it first?
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Isn't first come first served already the default? Which leads to scalpers trying to buy out brand names ahead of the corporations so they'll be offered money for them later?
- bluehatbrit 4y ago
  Why should corporations have more of a claim to property or resources than individuals, just because more people know of them? If they were exercising phishing attacks then fair enough, but if they had a personal website of some sort on there, why the hell should a company get it just because they have the same name?
  - Kaytaro 4y ago
    Because domains pointing to where you'd expect just makes the internet a better place. It reduces dependency on search engines, makes the internet simpler to use, and ideally you could be confident that nissan.com isn't some Joe Blow but a trusted company. What benefit does "first come first serve" provide? Nothing other than allowing individuals to hijack widespread brands.

fourstar 4y ago

My brother owns (our last name.com). Our great great grandfather started and ran a fairly successful (pre-prohibition) brewery. Someone found out about our last name, trademarked it, and "restarted" the brewery with no relation to anyone in our family. The best part is they feigned ignorance when they "learned" that there were still living descendants in the area...

0des 4y ago
What's the next step?
- fourstar 4y ago
  Good question. We've talked to various lawyers throughout the years. The crappy part is that the people who resurrected it have hundreds of millions in real estate backed ventures (big $$$), so there's really not much we can do aside from pound sand considering we weren't brewing the beer, or enforcing the trademark. The even weirder thing is that they used his name as their contact email for the longest time on their website, made a brew dedicated to my late grandfather (a pediatrician they never met) based on tongue-depresser airplanes he made for his patients, and even had the gall to leave one of their first bottled brews at my great great grandfather's gravesite. So the only thing I can do is just raise awareness, and tell people who ask me if there is any relation (when they see/hear my last name) to not support them!
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    > even had the gall to leave one of their first bottled brews at my great great grandfather's gravesite. That's a weird thing to do. I can see wanting to steal an established brand because people are attracted to legacy, especially in the case of something like brewing. But leaving a tribute at his grave is, honestly, just bizarre behavior. Are the obsessed or something? Do they think they have some connection to your family? One of your family should try to work for them, maybe the company will treat them like the second coming. Or human sacrifice. But hey, worth a shot, right?

kube-system 4y ago

It resolves and loads a page for me, it has just been... updated. Wonder if his next of kin will be selling it.

conductr 4y ago
> Wonder if his next of kin will be selling it Was my thought, hope he had put this in his estate with some reasonable transfer procedure
shadowgovt 4y ago
The company will get it eventually. That's the thing about corporations: they outlive people. It took Disney 79 years and the trade of a sportscaster's career to get Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back, but they did it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

VoidWhisperer 4y ago

While the content of the website appears to be down now, according to the whois[1], the website registration itself with it being registered to Nissan Computer Corp. does not expire until 2024. [1]: https://who.is/whois/nissan.com https://who.is/whois/nissan.com

branon 4y ago
Is it known who will renew the domain? Nice legacy for the guy.
- malux85 4y ago
  We should try and find out who is managing his estate, let's get it renewed the maximum duration, just to annoy Nissan
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I'd be up to contribute some funds to have a $5 DO droplet serving the website for some time as well. I'll start by committing to one year of hosting ($60). I'll never buy a Nissan because of their actions against nissan.com, but somehow it doesn't always feel like enough.
    - nrmitchi 4y ago
      Probably not even necessary to do that much. Point it at Cloudflare backed by an S3 bucket with a single "in memorandum" page and host it until the end of technology as we know it for ~$1.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        I've learnt my lesson to depend as little as possible on vendors with specific technologies when you want to keep something alive for a long, long time. The less reliance on specific closed-source & cloud technologies, the better.

zaidf 4y ago

Uzi Nissan was one of the more interesting people I met as a freelancer in college. He replied to a craigslist ad and we met for coffee. He had some crazy ideas (and conspiracies:) about all the things he wanted to hire a freelancer to do with nissan.com

neonate 4y ago
Please tell us more?

sorokod 4y ago

Nisan is relatively common Hebrew name from the month of Nisan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisan

1-6 4y ago

I wonder how much not having nissan.com affected Nissan’s business. I’m probably sure it’s tremendous.

chiph 4y ago
Perhaps back when his fight with the automaker was going on. But typing "nissan" into Google has returned the automaker as the 1st result for quite a while now (SEO for the win). Someone would have to type the full domain name into their browser to end up at his site.
- bmcahren 4y ago
  Many people who learned computers in the 90s still type in pets.com/google.com/Chevy.com before searching for what they want.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

Did something change between when this was posted and now? The website is up for me, however the content is stripped down relative to the previous version ( https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.co... ). All of the anti-Nissan content is gone and it simply says "Contact Us" Given the events, I wouldn't be surprised if his estate is moving toward trying to sell the domain and collect any possible proceeds.

bmcahren 4y ago
No, but seeing as his vehemently anti-Nissan-motors content is gone in entirety from both nissan.com and digest.com I count this as "down" in terms of the website that once was a bastion of internet freedom.

dang 4y ago

Related: Nissan Motors vs. Nissan Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25622386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25622386 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) Nissan.com (is not owned by Nissan the car company) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369990 - Sept 2020 (102 comments) Nissan Motor's Lawsuit Against Us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680958 - Aug 2019 (1 comment) Uzi Nissan Spent 8 Years Fighting Nissan Motor Company to Keep Nissan.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16670141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16670141 - March 2018 (83 comments) Nissan Motors LawSuit Against Nissan Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919367 - Dec 2017 (5 comments) Nissan vs. Nissan (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030968 - Aug 2015 (21 comments) Why You Can’t Buy a Car on Nissan.com – Now I Know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692059 - June 2015 (4 comments) Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6073980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6073980 - July 2013 (85 comments)

angst_ridden 4y ago

I used to work at a web firm that did Nissan USA's web site. I was in meetings where they discussed ways they would finally get the domain from Uzi. They obviously never succeeded. I did learn a lot about trademark law despite myself.

1970-01-01 4y ago

I don't care what happens to NISSAN.COM, as long as it does not fall to Nissan Motors. Ideally, someone should restore it from the last good snapshot and ask for donations to renew the domain on a regular basis. I would be happy to contribute to this effort.

alberth 4y ago

What’s odd is that the domain was renewed just 2 months ago (April 6th).

tekeous 4y ago

Should have hosted it with Njalla and watched Nissan fumble around trying to figure out who to sue

jacquesm 4y ago

Let's hope that his heirs hold on to the domain name.

simondotau 4y ago
I hope they sell it to the car company for tens of millions of dollars. Or more.

chiph 4y ago

Uzi was my ISP when I had ADSL in Raleigh and was a pleasure to work with when I had issues with BellSouth's service. I was sorry to hear about his death. The website was up just the other month, so this is a new development by his family/heirs. That Nissan Motors didn't immediately grab the domain after his passing may be evidence that domain names are an inheritable asset? Any lawyers have info on this?

tedk-42 4y ago

As someone who had no idea who this person was or their legal troubles with Nissan (motor company), I find it strange that this was the battle he chose to fight to define who he was as a person. Each to his own though. Not a hill I would have chosen to die on.

pvaldes 4y ago

That lead us to an interesting legal question, could a web page be inherited by the relatives of the deceased?

Macha 4y ago

Similarly, I notice Universal Tubing appears to have given up utube.com