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copyright question

copyright question

Postby Xstream » Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:41 pm

I have 2 domains that I bought, I cannot put them here as that would be againts Pronetworks TOS, but, as a general question, is it breaking any kind of copyright law to buy a domain name of a popular site and just add 2 digits to it?
example ( and this is NOT my url)
www.wikipedia61.com
would that be illegal in any way?
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Postby phileysmiley » Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:04 pm

Yes, that would be illegal. You can alter the name but you can't just add numbers to it, because the name is still intact.

Example:

Amazon61 would be illegal
Ammazon would be okay (in fact, it's taken)
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Postby kanaloa » Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:08 pm

Ditto what Larry said. Some companies try and take it even further. Microsoft tried to take one of my Windows domains in the past. But they never succeeded. Thankfully.
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Postby Xstream » Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:11 pm

ok, maybe I asked the question too late, whoops, my bad.
what do I do now? hope I dont get sued?
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Postby phileysmiley » Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:49 pm

Xstream wrote:ok, maybe I asked the question too late, whoops, my bad.
what do I do now? hope I dont get sued?

The worst that could happen is that you'd get a C&D (cease & desist letter) from a lawyer basically telling you to stop using it. The likelihood of them doing this is directly proportional to the size of the company's wallet. Big firms have lawyers who have people who scour the net looking for copyright violations.
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Postby kanaloa » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:01 pm

Just don't use it. But Larry's right... if they are big enough they might find the registration anyway. There are services that you can subscribe to that inform you of anyone registering a domain remotely close to your own. A lot of MFA (Made for Adsense) sites use those lists to create Ad heavy pages (which I wish Google would ban from their listings and prohibit ad listings on).
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Postby Xstream » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:05 pm

John, sent you the urls in pm
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Postby jbullard » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:26 pm

I personally think that it should be legal. Here is why. What happens to the domain wikipedia61? Nothing, it just sits there because another company does not want anyone to use it. IMO, they should be forced to purchase that domain as well, or forfeit all rights to that exact name.

I think that people should not use Ad Heavy content to get money and those sites should be shutdown, but, if he wants to create an application similar to wikipedia, there is nothing stopping him from doing so.

But my onion.
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Postby kanaloa » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:42 pm

I think the problem is that it allows folks to build off an existing brand name.

I'm all for good competition, but I do still think we need unique branding. And I don't think you can expect a company to buy every variation of every URL that uses their name brand.

For example... if I created a new softdrink, great. Maybe I'll rival Coke or Pepsi. But if I call it PepsiCoke, that seems like I'm just cheating them.
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Postby jbullard » Tue Jan 08, 2008 9:52 pm

True. And I agree but at the same time if it is illegal then maybe ICANN needs to disallow registration of similar top brand names. Just nip the problems in the butt right off the bat. But people use it for their gain and don't truly undersand the domain name system which is why most people get in trouble for doing things like that. :yesnod:
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