Experience with Fighting Domain Farming

Lost_my_regs writes "I had a .com domain name relevant only to me, no legal trademark, registered and hosted at a provider that went bust. When attempting to re-host the domain I discovered, to my unpleasant surprise, that the domain is now registered by a domain farming company (name removed). My question is: Is there any way to claim back my domain?"

Trademarks

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't give you any real advice, and IANAL, but do keep in mind that trademarks do not have to be registered in order to be valid - rather, they become trademarks when you use them, even if you don't register them.

This recently happened to me.

[J. T. MacLeod]

Domain farming causes me no small amount of anger in principle, but it recently bit me, as well. Due to problems with my registrar (joker.com--which after years of service without complaint I now would recommend NO ONE use), a domain I managed for some one else was snagged by a domain farmer.

This was upsetting enough by itself, but what really caused me to become enraged is that the same company that bought it and sold it back to me [i]IS A LICENSED REGISTRAR[/i]. Granted, they do it under a couple of different names, but it's quite clearly all the same operation, or at least willing co-operation. The fact that this sort of thing is allowed to go on shows that either ICANN allows it or is completely inept in regulating it. The only question is whether they are incompetent or swayed by money at some point in the process.

Re:Buy it

[klenwell]

Sadly, as long as pretend-to-do-no-evil giant Google keeps encouraging and rewarding these shady practices, us regular guys are utterly powerless. It would take a tremendous concerted effort to outvote Google with our pitiful dollars.

I agree this is the crux of the problem. I wish Google would move against domain farming, but as parent points out, they're the industry leader.

Had a similar thing happen to me with a domain which I was using much like the OP. I had the .com version -- wasn't commercializing it in anyway. Let the registration lapse and it got vacuumed up by a domain farmer. I just registered the .net version. Then after a year, after the farmer probably lost money on it, the .com domain was free again and I re-registered it for a longer period with (what I hope is) a more reliable registrar, Yahoo.

Please Clarify

[chill]

Names are registered with Registrars. Hosting is done at ISPs. Are you saying your now-defunct ISP where the site was hosted was also a Registrar?

If that was the case, when your site was registered was it in your name or the ISP's name? Who was Technical contact, you or the ISP?

If it was in the ISPs name and they went defunct and were bought, then you're screwed.

Re:Ask nicely

[justfred]

Back around 2000, my domain name, www.sideshowfreak.com, was at Netcom, and they somehow managed to drop it in the middle of a back-end transfer. I found out two weeks later when my emails stopped coming.

I did what you suggested, asked nicely, offered to double his transfer expenses, explained that I was setting it up for some friends doing a circus.

He was a total and complete jackass. Hurling obscenities, suggesting unreasonable prices ($100,000). I gave up. It wasn't worth the effort or the agony. I did manage to call his mom, who had the phone number that the account was registered to - the guy was in college and didn't have a phone. The poor woman sounded like she had had this conversation dozens of times. "Please, I don't know why my son is doing this, can you speak to him and ask him to stop, I'm getting so many calls, he's just out of control..." Eventually he anonomized the whois.

That domain name is STILL hosted by a domain name farmer - don't know if it's still him. I expect whoever it is uses some metric of number of hits to determine how valuable a name is, so listing it here might bump up its value.

Domain name farming should be killed. If you're actually using a domain, fine. But if you're just holding it waiting for someone to pay an unreasonably high price, someone with a legit claim (say, the previous owner) should be able to snipe it back.

who owned the domain?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the domain was owned by you, and you haven't signed any forms to transfer it, then you should ask your registar to please show you the document signed by you that approves of the transfer.

If they can't show it, then threaten to sue and then sue.

Registars need a signed transfer document from the owner to transfer domains. However if the domain was never on your name anyway then your shit out of luck.

A few months back this even got stricter because domain squaters where sending out transfer forms to companies with a bullshit letter that they should sign it. (it still amazes me that that actually worked) So now a days you can also lock your domain name, which means that before the domain can get transfered even more hoops have to be jumped. And i believe depending on where you are, theres a quarantine time, before the name can be released again.

Re:In a word, no

[nametaken]

I was wondering myself about how this happened to the poster. I assume they used a host and ALSO used the host to do the domain registration.

I've always used a separate registrar from the hosting co's. The sad fact is every jerk in the world is a hosting provider nowadays, but you know some hosting co's and registration co's aren't going out of business any time soon. Sometimes that means spending $10/yr instead of $6/yr for the domain, and then do your bargain hunting for the hosting. The name can be important... where it's hosted is a much more flexible affair.

So to the poster... make it a lesson learned, you're not getting the name back.

The most important part, perhaps, is that there are reasonable ways to make sure this doesn't happen... WE DON'T NEED MORE RULES AND REGULATIONS!

Re:Wait! Patience! They may be a "taster"..

[Bert64]

It might be fun to show fake interest in worthless domain names...
If you can make these squatters think your interested in some pointless domain, they're more likely to hold on to it for longer and try to sell it back to you for an extortionate rate.
So we find some worthless domains, offer well below what they want, and when their counter offer comes in just say you'l wait for it to expire... Get them to renew the worthless domains for a few more years.

Re:Ask nicely

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say it's more like "domain investing" rather than "domain farming". It's an industry and 100% legal. Not referring to cybersquatters and typosquatters here, obviously, but there is nothing wrong with buying generic domains. Everybody is allowed to buy and own as many domains as one wishes. You can do it, too. I would say if you lose a domain because you forgot to renew it, then that's your own fault. But don't blame the person who bought it. By the way, it's likely that he ended up paying more than $10 for it, because that's just the annual registration fee and the one-time acquisition fee should be $50+, depending on the value of the domain.

If your domain registrar shut down and you lost the domain due to this, contact ICANN and file a complaint. You should not lose your domain because of a registrar making bad business. If you forgot to renew it that's another thing, but I believe you're entitled to your domain if you lost it due to bad management by the domain registrar you used.

And FYI, $100,000 isn't necessarily an unreasonable price for a domain. Just imagine a generic domain driving hundreds of potential clients via direct navigation traffic to its owner's website. Each of these clients could be worth thousands of dollars. So you see, targeted traffic makes generic .com domains highly valuable. It's definitely not unusual that domains are traded at prices higher than $1,000... maybe even as high as $1+ million.

D.

Re:In future use the trade mark rules

[Anonymous Coward]

First, never let a web host be all the contacts in a domain registration. It's hard to prove you're the registrant, admin, or billing contact when you're not the registrant, admin, or billing contact. Register the domain yourself, and configure the DNS to point to your web host's servers. If they don't like that, then move on, as many other big boys are okay with this.

Registering your trademark or servicemark (for services) with the USPTO helps, as long as someone else doesn't already have the domain in another legit service or industry. (Multiple people can register the same mark, as long as they're not in the same type of business. For example, you can probably register Dell for home painting services, without conflicting with Dell computers.)

Filing a DBA with your local county office also supports your claim. Hopefully years beforehand, not after the fact. Having a legit local business license also helps. If you're legit, do legit stuff.

Lastly, don't assume a parked domain is really parked. Maybe they don't want or need a home page (http://www.something.com) but are hosting other services on other subdomains or ports (http://ah-ha.something.com:8084) such as databases or emails. I have several domains that seem parked, but there are 100s of gigabytes of data and services being hosted, and those who know the URL get to the services. Not having WWW may make it seem not as worthwhile to try and hack. A way to find if a domain is more than just being parked is to do a Google search. Also try a DNS zone transfer (if the DNS server allows) and see what other subdomains exist. A port scan may work, but you'll probably piss off a firewall or TOS or two and get nuked.

One way to get it back....

[pokopoko3k]

A friend missed renewing her domain and it was snatched up instantly by a farmer who wanted her to make an offer to reclaim it. it was definitely a unique name that would be of no use to anyone who didn't have her (very unusual) name and her line of work.

A lawyer friend sent a letter to the new owner, basically saying the obvious: you have no use for this domain, and you need to give it back or we'll come after you.

The company returned the domain to her instantly, with apologies for their "mistake".

I'm sure the letter arriving on stationary from a huge, powerful international law firm didn't hurt.

Anyway, what they are doing is obviously cybersquatting, which is illegal. And if they're trying to make a quick buck here and there, they certainly can't afford to defend themselves against thousands of lawsuits.

Re:In a word, no

[billcopc]

Yep, having your domain and hosting with the same company is asking for trouble, because they basically control your site end-to-end in that scenario. Having them as two separate companies makes it much more difficult for any one party to kill your site, and I'm not even talking about uptime issues - this is purely political.

The other issue is do you know what happens if/when you move your site to a different hosting provider ? Will you encounter resistance, either in the form of a blanket policy restriction, or uncooperative customer service ?

We've seen all sorts of abuses in the industry, there's no good reason to give any company so much control over your site. Is it really worth the $2.00 you might save on a bundle ? I think not.

Re:I dont think so

[cecil_turtle]

I think it depends on the amount of traffic the URL receives. I had the same thing happen to me, but the link farm was just using one of those 7 day trials or whatever and I guess it didn't generate enough traffic to be worth it, so they canceled it and the domain was available for me to re-purchase (not from them, just to register it normally).

Re:One way to get it back....

[phoenixwade]

A friend missed renewing her domain and it was snatched up instantly by a farmer who wanted her to make an offer to reclaim it. it was definitely a unique name that would be of no use to anyone who didn't have her (very unusual) name and her line of work.

A lawyer friend sent a letter to the new owner, basically saying the obvious: you have no use for this domain, and you need to give it back or we'll come after you.

The company returned the domain to her instantly, with apologies for their "mistake".

I'm sure the letter arriving on stationary from a huge, powerful international law firm didn't hurt.

Anyway, what they are doing is obviously cybersquatting, which is illegal. And if they're trying to make a quick buck here and there, they certainly can't afford to defend themselves against thousands of lawsuits.

Either you left out an important bit of information in your anecdote, the "Cybersquatter" blinked in the game of chicken, or this is a cute story that propagates a myth.

I can register any domain I want (and do look at the recently available lists most registrars offer to their clients) without any legal ramifications... The only time it's illegal, as I understand the rules, is when a domain is grabbed up with the intention of profiting off of someones trademark and bad faith registration can be demonstrated (I remember the Mike Rowe Soft thing from a few years back... He was fine until he offered to sell the domain to Microsoft, at that time, the extraordinary fee (Several grand for the domain I believe) was proof of bad faith...

Re:One way to get it back....

[pokopoko3k]

I think you missed the point. They obviously have no use for the domain name www.akikosmithbakery.com (not her real name or business) and so they were clearly squatting on it. There is indeed a law against cybersquatting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting) and while IANAL, in principle this is the kind of thing it should prevent. Even from a non-legalistic point of view: everybody has occasionally made a mistake and not paid a bill on time. Whether it's due to an emergency situation, carelessness, or whatever doesn't really matter; a small mistake shouldn't invalidate all of the time and effort you put into your site, your brand, etc. These bottom-feeders who want to profit from this mistake are doing nothing of value, just messing up the system. i'm happy to see them lose. So in this case, justice was done and the dickheads lost. p.s. look at me me me me first, i'm entitled to everything! oops, did i just say that out loud?

Re:One way to get it back....

[Buran]

Maybe. But the rules are rules; you lost it, and you didn't renew it. You knew when you registered a domain that it wasn't permanently yours. You have to keep paying. You aren't exempt. If someone else wants to use that domain name for whatever you want -- and there was no mention of it being a protected mark -- then they can. That's the rules. The rules apply to everybody.

If she wanted to be able to whine that her stupidity lost her her domain, she should have registered it as a trademark. If it had been registered, that would have been mentioned in the post (although if I'm wrong I want to know; but in that case, a trademark law firm would have been sending the letter).

Don't want to lose your hard work?

Don't do something stupid like forget to pay your bills.

Don't like it?

Don't be stupid.

(Yes. I have done very stupid things before, but I knew the rules applied to me too. I dealt with it. I didn't become an entitlement whore who expected other people to give up things that were rightfully theirs).

Re:Types of registrars

[pongo000]

What a silly, inaccurate post. Despite what the parent is inferring, no ICANN-accredited registrar can simply steal a domain name you rightfully own and appropriate it for themselves or someone else. A "throwaway domain"? What, exactly, is that? A domain I register might be very dear to me, and I certainly wouldn't consider it a "throwaway domain." Properly registered and locked against transfer, it doesn't really matter what registrar you use.

Sure, there are differing levels of customer service, but other than that, there is simply nothing to support the parent's claims.

There might even be some libelous elements to the parent post, considering that the parent has not provided any evidence that supports his claims.

C'mon, moderators. Don't fall victim to slashthink.

Re:In a word, no

[nametaken]

If I let one of my domains expire, it's really none of my business who or why it gets picked up afterwards. All I need to know is that I let it expire.

If I don't like that GoDaddy picks them up after expiration... then I shouldn't use GoDaddy. If I use GoDaddy, and it gets picked up by them after I willingly let it expire, it really isn't your place to complain that you can't have it. It was never yours, and you're not entitled to it. Sorry.

The fact that someone bought the domain you want and put ads on it may tick you off... it's happened to me... but I don't think it's illegitimate. So long as they're paying for the name and hosting, I don't get to cry foul. Similarly, if I buy a site and put a lame site up that maybe only three people in the world are interested in, tough... that's my business.

Again, we do not need more rules and regulations.

Re:One way to get it back....

[Jimithing DMB]

So if microsoft forgot to renew a domain they owned (like taht'd ever happen), I could jump it myself and do whatever I like? Rules are rules, after all.

Funny you should mention this because Microsoft did indeed forget to renew microsoft.com a few years ago. Some guy bought it and pointed it back at the servers so microsoft.com would keep working and then called MS and said.. uhh.. hey, you probably want your domain back.

As far as I know, MS paid him for the registration fee and maybe a small amount as a thank you for keeping microsoft.com up and running but that was about it.

Re:Types of registrars

[elronxenu]

Network Solutions has appalling customer service.

I transferred all my domains away from them a few years ago. Their systems were primitive; their processes were set up to make it as hard as possible to make changes, particularly any change like "transfer a domain away from them".

And they're very expensive. It's not about being stingy, it's about not getting value for the $35 a year or whatever it is they charge, when other registrars will provide better service for $8 or less.