10 ms·

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. N

by 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.
    - givemeethekeys 4y ago
      Sir, I'd like to introduce you to the concept of property rights. God, I'm glad I don't live in a hell hole where someone who is trying to make the world a better place can just trample over me.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - prepend 4y ago
        Thankfully we’re not in a dystopia where some SEO and ad buys would result in changing opinion enough to transfer domain names and other property.
- stavros 4y ago
  Yes they should, why not?
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  Why is it a problem for the car company if some guy named Nissan has a website? They can simply choose a different domain.
- GTP 4y ago
  True, but then you can't register a domain under your name because it happens to exist a company with the same name? I understand trying to prevent people form registering domains they don't have anything to do with just because they're looking to sell them for a high price to somebody that has actually an use for them, but I'm against the idea of extending this to the case of people registering their own name.
- briffle 4y ago
  Right, but then does McDonalds the burger place get priority, or McDonalds Plumbing, which has been in business longer than the restraunt has existed? An Even better example is what if Apple Music had registered Apple.com first? At the time, many, many more people had heard of the beatles then computer company in California.
- LightG 4y ago
  You f@cking idiota ...
all2 4y ago
This moral position transcends time. Don't equate dollars to the actual value of your actions. Your heart is well set against evil.
dubswithus 4y ago
One doesn't need an excuse not to buy some of the ugliest cars ever made.
ses1984 4y ago
Are there any car companies that are innocent?
- technothrasher 4y ago
  Tucker?
  - jdironman 4y ago
    Little fischer red and yellow one?
- stevefan1999 4y ago
  hell, are there any companies that ate innocent? never.
jliptzin 4y ago
In the same boat. I remember following this story since I was in high school
codegeek 4y ago
I agree with you but honestly if it was another person named Toyota who purchased toyota.com, they would definitely be pursued/sued by Toyota as well. Large Corporations are powerful and will do everything they can to get what they want. It just happens to be Nissan in this case. So I wouldn't treat them any different than the others to be honest.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  >Large Corporations are powerful and will do everything they can to get what they want. Valve, despite controlling something like 80% of PC game sales, hasn't gone after the owner guy who owns steam.com
  - jdironman 4y ago
    Exactly, it should be a best effort thing not harassment. I'm sure they are probably monitoring its availability no doubt.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I'm not sure Valve would be considered "large corporation", at least at this point. Last time I checked, they had something like 300 employees. I'm not sure where the line would be for me to consider something a "large corporation", but at least 10000 would be my first guess.
    - ganoushoreilly 4y ago
      I think billion dollar valuations would suffice to be "large corporation" to me. Valve meets that.
      - mywittyname 4y ago
        Valve has to be worth way more than a billion dollars. A billion is like medium-stage startup at this point. They have to be worth 10x that easy, as a floor. Much higher (100x) for a strategic acquisition from a company like Microsoft.
somenewaccount1 4y ago
fwiw, you are not the only person who avoided buying Nissan over this lawsuit. While they may never be able to see the impact their decisions have had on their bottom line, it is likely more than most people would guess.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Sounds unlikely
- WheatM 4y ago
anonymousiam 4y ago
Reminds me of the Frys.com saga: https://phoneboy.com/pig/rant/fryscom https://phoneboy.com/pig/rant/fryscom
shadowgovt 4y ago
[edit: I stand corrected; Mr. Nissan conducted business at nissan.com]
- moron4hire 4y ago
  Uzi Nissan ran an IT services consultancy for 30 years, so it was actually a commercial website on the .com TLD.
jweir 4y ago
One of the earliest bits of net activism was Etoy - a Swiss art collective vs Etoys - a US online toy reseller. Etoys got a US judge to seize the etoy.com domain name. Etoy launched back with Toy War. A gamified activist platform were participants could earn points by attacking Etoys. https://etoy.com/projects/toywar/ https://etoy.com/projects/toywar/
cupofpython 4y ago
>(even though the Altima and Maxima were excellent cars) why advertise for them for free?
- missedthecue 4y ago
  I think he's implying that his boycott imposed a cost on him, and therefore had more meaning, because had they behaved differently, he would have liked to have owned a Nissan.
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    I understand that, but he regrets that his decision could not be more influential. Which is severely undermined by the claim that Nissan makes great cars Especially when considering the person making the claim has an implied incentive to hate the cars. He's making a genuine claim that "I want to hate their cars but I cant" which is fantastic advertising for Nissan.
  - mikece 4y ago
    Exactly. I'm 6'5" and Nissan made cars with much more headroom than Honda or Toyota.
walrus01 4y ago
the altima and maxima may be fine cars but there's also nothing wrong with a camry or an accord. plenty of good alternatives.
- mikece 4y ago
  I'm 6'5" and Nissan made cars with much more headroom than Honda or Toyota.
angst_ridden 4y ago
It wasn't just his surname. It was his company name, too, and a trademark.
themaninthedark 4y ago
This is sad news. When I first heard about this back in High School, I had the same reaction. I hope they put back up the old website or at least a memorial page for him.
Pakdef 4y ago
> I personally renounced ever buying a Nissan again Personally, I stopped buying Nissan cars because of bad experiences/failed transmissions right after warranty expired.
- jimmaswell 4y ago
  Seems like their sports cars are alright. I enjoy my Z31 project car.
- astrange 4y ago
  Not because their Japanese executives had their US executives kidnapped and tortured by the police? https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/former-nissan-executive-greg-kelly-sums-up-ordeal/ https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/former-nissan-executive-greg-k...
  - Pakdef 4y ago
megablast 4y ago
- google234123 4y ago
  Cars don't make decisions, people do, yet you blame "cars". Anyway, your entire argument is a straw man.
  - dang 4y ago
    "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 4y ago
  Can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN? You've done this repeatedly, and we end up having to ban such accounts. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
zagrebian 4y ago
What makes you think that any other carmaker would have behaved differently?
- capableweb 4y ago
  We justify our actions based on what we've seen others do, not what we believe they would do. That's at least why I wouldn't buy a Nissan, but I'll still buy a different car brand. Until/if that car brand does something equally stupid, then I'll stop buying their cars too.
ohashi 4y ago
He wasn't as innocent as portrayed. The problem was he ran car related ads on his site: https://web.archive.org/web/19991122224115/http://nissan.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991122224115/http://nissan.com... If you look at his site, when it was a computer shop, fine. Then he started running ads (really trying to profit off nissan motor's brand) related to cars. Then he got taken to court. He played off like a victim forever. Did he have a legitimate reason to buy the domain originally? Absolutely. Did he infringe on Nissan's trademark? Almost surely, which is why he was forced to stop. No real good guy in this story. What's my background on this? I helped build the most comprehensive database for domain name legal cases (https://udrp.tools https://udrp.tools) and tend to be involved in areas regarding domain name registrant rights. IP lobby is already way too strong, picking something like Nissan.com as the rallying call really isn't the right move. There is going to be some balance. If you want egregious, lookup france.com https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-wont-upset-frances-win-francecom-trademark-fight-2021-12-13/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-wont-... The french government intervened in a case and took france.com from the owner claiming sole right to using 'France' That is bullshit. ICANN is also trying to take away domain name holder's rights to even go to court at all, in case it's an IGO (https://freespeech.com/2022/05/18/icann-igo-working-group-chair-disspain-admits-they-would-be-significantly-challenged-on-scope/ https://freespeech.com/2022/05/18/icann-igo-working-group-ch...). IGO thinks your domain infringes on your rights? You have zero recourse, and they want to grant immunity from the legal system. There are some real fucking injustices happening in the domain world that nobody is paying attention too. Nissan.com isn't one of them.
- neurostimulant 4y ago
  What's wrong with running cars ads on his own websites? Unless he misled his visitors into thinking his site is official nissan motors website, I don't see anything wrong with running some ads on it.
  - pc86 4y ago
    You really can't see how a reasonable person could just type in nissan.com, see car ads, and click on them in confusion? Really?
krnlpnc 4y ago
> Altima and Maxima were excellent cars Perhaps in the 90s early 00s. Their CVT is known to be very problematic
vba616 4y ago
Nissan/Nisan has apparently been the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar for millennia. And it was borrowed from the Babylonians/Akkadians/Sumerians so I assume it's considerably older in origin. Does one guy whose name it happens to be really own it more than Nissan Motor Company? I wonder if Mazda has faced any objections from Zoroastrians.

by mikece 4y ago

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.
  - givemeethekeys 4y ago
    Sir, I'd like to introduce you to the concept of property rights. God, I'm glad I don't live in a hell hole where someone who is trying to make the world a better place can just trample over me.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - prepend 4y ago
      Thankfully we’re not in a dystopia where some SEO and ad buys would result in changing opinion enough to transfer domain names and other property.
stavros 4y ago
Yes they should, why not?
CogitoCogito 4y ago
Why is it a problem for the car company if some guy named Nissan has a website? They can simply choose a different domain.
GTP 4y ago
True, but then you can't register a domain under your name because it happens to exist a company with the same name? I understand trying to prevent people form registering domains they don't have anything to do with just because they're looking to sell them for a high price to somebody that has actually an use for them, but I'm against the idea of extending this to the case of people registering their own name.
briffle 4y ago
Right, but then does McDonalds the burger place get priority, or McDonalds Plumbing, which has been in business longer than the restraunt has existed? An Even better example is what if Apple Music had registered Apple.com first? At the time, many, many more people had heard of the beatles then computer company in California.
LightG 4y ago
You f@cking idiota ...

all2 4y ago

This moral position transcends time. Don't equate dollars to the actual value of your actions. Your heart is well set against evil.

dubswithus 4y ago

One doesn't need an excuse not to buy some of the ugliest cars ever made.

ses1984 4y ago

Are there any car companies that are innocent?

technothrasher 4y ago
Tucker?
- jdironman 4y ago
  Little fischer red and yellow one?
stevefan1999 4y ago
hell, are there any companies that ate innocent? never.

jliptzin 4y ago

In the same boat. I remember following this story since I was in high school

codegeek 4y ago

I agree with you but honestly if it was another person named Toyota who purchased toyota.com, they would definitely be pursued/sued by Toyota as well. Large Corporations are powerful and will do everything they can to get what they want. It just happens to be Nissan in this case. So I wouldn't treat them any different than the others to be honest.

HideousKojima 4y ago
>Large Corporations are powerful and will do everything they can to get what they want. Valve, despite controlling something like 80% of PC game sales, hasn't gone after the owner guy who owns steam.com
- jdironman 4y ago
  Exactly, it should be a best effort thing not harassment. I'm sure they are probably monitoring its availability no doubt.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm not sure Valve would be considered "large corporation", at least at this point. Last time I checked, they had something like 300 employees. I'm not sure where the line would be for me to consider something a "large corporation", but at least 10000 would be my first guess.
  - ganoushoreilly 4y ago
    I think billion dollar valuations would suffice to be "large corporation" to me. Valve meets that.
    - mywittyname 4y ago
      Valve has to be worth way more than a billion dollars. A billion is like medium-stage startup at this point. They have to be worth 10x that easy, as a floor. Much higher (100x) for a strategic acquisition from a company like Microsoft.

somenewaccount1 4y ago

fwiw, you are not the only person who avoided buying Nissan over this lawsuit. While they may never be able to see the impact their decisions have had on their bottom line, it is likely more than most people would guess.

oneoff786 4y ago
Sounds unlikely
WheatM 4y ago

anonymousiam 4y ago

Reminds me of the Frys.com saga: https://phoneboy.com/pig/rant/fryscom https://phoneboy.com/pig/rant/fryscom

shadowgovt 4y ago

[edit: I stand corrected; Mr. Nissan conducted business at nissan.com]

moron4hire 4y ago
Uzi Nissan ran an IT services consultancy for 30 years, so it was actually a commercial website on the .com TLD.

jweir 4y ago

One of the earliest bits of net activism was Etoy - a Swiss art collective vs Etoys - a US online toy reseller. Etoys got a US judge to seize the etoy.com domain name. Etoy launched back with Toy War. A gamified activist platform were participants could earn points by attacking Etoys. https://etoy.com/projects/toywar/ https://etoy.com/projects/toywar/

cupofpython 4y ago

>(even though the Altima and Maxima were excellent cars) why advertise for them for free?

missedthecue 4y ago
I think he's implying that his boycott imposed a cost on him, and therefore had more meaning, because had they behaved differently, he would have liked to have owned a Nissan.
- cupofpython 4y ago
  I understand that, but he regrets that his decision could not be more influential. Which is severely undermined by the claim that Nissan makes great cars Especially when considering the person making the claim has an implied incentive to hate the cars. He's making a genuine claim that "I want to hate their cars but I cant" which is fantastic advertising for Nissan.
- mikece 4y ago
  Exactly. I'm 6'5" and Nissan made cars with much more headroom than Honda or Toyota.

walrus01 4y ago

the altima and maxima may be fine cars but there's also nothing wrong with a camry or an accord. plenty of good alternatives.

mikece 4y ago
I'm 6'5" and Nissan made cars with much more headroom than Honda or Toyota.

angst_ridden 4y ago

It wasn't just his surname. It was his company name, too, and a trademark.

themaninthedark 4y ago

This is sad news. When I first heard about this back in High School, I had the same reaction. I hope they put back up the old website or at least a memorial page for him.

Pakdef 4y ago

> I personally renounced ever buying a Nissan again Personally, I stopped buying Nissan cars because of bad experiences/failed transmissions right after warranty expired.

jimmaswell 4y ago
Seems like their sports cars are alright. I enjoy my Z31 project car.
astrange 4y ago
Not because their Japanese executives had their US executives kidnapped and tortured by the police? https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/former-nissan-executive-greg-kelly-sums-up-ordeal/ https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/former-nissan-executive-greg-k...
- Pakdef 4y ago

megablast 4y ago

google234123 4y ago
Cars don't make decisions, people do, yet you blame "cars". Anyway, your entire argument is a straw man.
- dang 4y ago
  "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 4y ago
Can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN? You've done this repeatedly, and we end up having to ban such accounts. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

zagrebian 4y ago

What makes you think that any other carmaker would have behaved differently?

capableweb 4y ago
We justify our actions based on what we've seen others do, not what we believe they would do. That's at least why I wouldn't buy a Nissan, but I'll still buy a different car brand. Until/if that car brand does something equally stupid, then I'll stop buying their cars too.

ohashi 4y ago

He wasn't as innocent as portrayed. The problem was he ran car related ads on his site: https://web.archive.org/web/19991122224115/http://nissan.com:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/19991122224115/http://nissan.com... If you look at his site, when it was a computer shop, fine. Then he started running ads (really trying to profit off nissan motor's brand) related to cars. Then he got taken to court. He played off like a victim forever. Did he have a legitimate reason to buy the domain originally? Absolutely. Did he infringe on Nissan's trademark? Almost surely, which is why he was forced to stop. No real good guy in this story. What's my background on this? I helped build the most comprehensive database for domain name legal cases (https://udrp.tools https://udrp.tools) and tend to be involved in areas regarding domain name registrant rights. IP lobby is already way too strong, picking something like Nissan.com as the rallying call really isn't the right move. There is going to be some balance. If you want egregious, lookup france.com https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-wont-upset-frances-win-francecom-trademark-fight-2021-12-13/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-wont-... The french government intervened in a case and took france.com from the owner claiming sole right to using 'France' That is bullshit. ICANN is also trying to take away domain name holder's rights to even go to court at all, in case it's an IGO (https://freespeech.com/2022/05/18/icann-igo-working-group-chair-disspain-admits-they-would-be-significantly-challenged-on-scope/ https://freespeech.com/2022/05/18/icann-igo-working-group-ch...). IGO thinks your domain infringes on your rights? You have zero recourse, and they want to grant immunity from the legal system. There are some real fucking injustices happening in the domain world that nobody is paying attention too. Nissan.com isn't one of them.

neurostimulant 4y ago
What's wrong with running cars ads on his own websites? Unless he misled his visitors into thinking his site is official nissan motors website, I don't see anything wrong with running some ads on it.
- pc86 4y ago
  You really can't see how a reasonable person could just type in nissan.com, see car ads, and click on them in confusion? Really?

krnlpnc 4y ago

> Altima and Maxima were excellent cars Perhaps in the 90s early 00s. Their CVT is known to be very problematic

vba616 4y ago

Nissan/Nisan has apparently been the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar for millennia. And it was borrowed from the Babylonians/Akkadians/Sumerians so I assume it's considerably older in origin. Does one guy whose name it happens to be really own it more than Nissan Motor Company? I wonder if Mazda has faced any objections from Zoroastrians.