Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

http://www.yalelawtech.org/ip-in-the-digital-age/why-nissan-com-isn%E2%80%99t-a-car-website/

by Flopsy • 13 years ago

99 82 13 years ago

jusben1369• 13 years ago

Lost in this overview (and I couldn't really tell the point of the overview) are the probably 10 000 + people per year who go to this site by mistake. It's odd to me that Nissan didn't just offer him those 7 figures worth of legal fees and solve it (or maybe they did to no effect)

ciokan2• 13 years ago

I'm sure that the same efforts and patience invested in negotiating with the man would have bought them the assets. Bully is bully dude got mad.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Who is the bully? Squatters are just taking advantage of their advantage of the internet to loot someone else's brand, similar to patent trolls. Two sides to every story.

yogo• 13 years ago

Exactly. My first thought whenever this topic comes up is why a company that big simply can't make him an offer he couldn't refuse. Maybe he's stubborn or something but I have to take the little guy's side here.

Maybe they should get nissan.co lmao. Wait, nissan.co leads to Mazda. Hmm, it's not immediately clear to me what the relationship between nissan and mazda is.

Edit: nevermind, it seems to take you to a random car related destination. After checking it out further the dntx.com domain takes you to mazda first, then some other car search site, then finally a site with an empty template.

thejosh• 13 years ago

nissan.co takes me to a super shady website. http://betterlivinginsider.com/biz/AU/lp01A.htm?t202id=79166...

badclient3• 13 years ago

I've actually met the guy and did some contract work for him. After hearing the story from his mouth, what stuck with me is his utter dislike for the Nissan CEO and Arabs. He seemed very passionate about Israel and cited Nissan's Arab CEO as a huge part of why he dislikes that company.

cju2• 13 years ago

It's quite strange to see Carlos Ghosn described as an Arab. As far as I know, he has never spoke publicly about Israël.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn

YokoZar• 13 years ago

Racism has always been a bit strange to me, but the idea of turning down a literal million dollars because of it is just unfathomably alien.

Amadou• 13 years ago

Ugh. Yet another example of why you should never meet your heroes...

Hrundi• 13 years ago

This reminds me of the domain http://steam.com, which has the following text in the frontpage:

"This domain is not for sale."

I'm sure Valve could drop a ton of money to aquire that domain.

toyg• 13 years ago

I suspect they initially thought they could just bully the guy. By the time they understood he actually was on solid ground (it was the 90s, lawyers didn't know anything about our intertubes), it was too late: smallbiz owners like Mr. Nissan can be the hardest mofos once they get personal. I bet he's still proud he didn't accept their offers.

It's old news anyway, very well-known. I'm always surprised when stuff like this comes up on news sites, I tend to forget the web is full of goddamn kids these days ;)

derleth• 13 years ago

I'm always surprised when stuff like this comes up on news sites, I tend to forget the web is full of goddamn kids these days ;)

Yeah, they wouldn't know a Fuzzball if it bit them on the ass, and nobody knows the true meaning of Flag Day anymore (uh, either of them).

dasil003• 13 years ago

I'd actually not heard of this even though I've been on the Internet since 1989.

eli• 13 years ago

shrug

How many of those people actually decided to buy a Toyota because the Nissan site didn't load on the first try? I think people overestimate how much a domain name matters.

Theodores• 13 years ago

The design of nissan.com takes me back to the days before the '.gif' patent war.

jsumrall4• 13 years ago

I looked at nissan.com, and its a shame that the site is basically internet trash and lame ads.

spydum• 13 years ago

Had to find some way to pay those attorney fees...

jsumrall4• 13 years ago

It would be really interesting to know how much revenue this site earns him.

ciokan2• 13 years ago

Apparently the man's virtue and principles worth more than whatever you would put instead of those "internet trash and lame ads"

jsumrall4• 13 years ago

All the people who go to "nissan.com" looking for info about their car and having to spend more time finding the site, while small for each person, add up to a lot of wasted time in total. All for an insurance ad. Taking the web owners rights out of the equation, it seems like a misuse of the domain. Yes, I get how he bought it first, but it just seems wrong.

damian20002• 13 years ago

It looks like it was created in FrontPage 98. That said, the buttons on the left work and he is actually running a small business selling computer products and services (such as programming @ $90/hr).

badclient3• 13 years ago

I was trying to negotiate a deal with him to advertise my consulting services on his site. We also bounced ideas about turning the domain into something more meaningful.

8ig83• 13 years ago

What's more, the site is holding up just fine under the _crush_ of HN visitors. Static HTML FTW. :)

okwa• 13 years ago

The HTML source says FrontPage 4.0, but Wikipedia says there was no version 4 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage#Versions

fsck--off• 13 years ago

Wow. I think the source code belongs in The Daily WTF. Just look at this gem:

  <form name="menuform4">
  <p>
  <select name="menu4" 
  onChange="window.open(menuform4.menu4.options[menuform4.menu4.selectedIndex].value);
  return false;">
  <option value="http://www.nissan.com" selected>People's Opinions &nbsp;</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml">Page 1</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_2.shtml">Page 2</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_3.shtml">Page 3</option>
  
  (Snipped about 500 lines)
  
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_503.shtml">page 503</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_504.shtml">page 504</option>
  <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_505.shtml">page 505</option>
  </select>
  </form>
              </font></strong></b>
              </td>
            </tr>
          </table>

aegiso• 13 years ago

I wonder how much simpler our browsers could be if we didn't have to worry about rendering and styling this breed of dated spec-breaking insanity.

krapp• 13 years ago

It is, probably, the stupidest pagination scheme i've ever seen.

Though back in the day, I thought using form dropdown lists for page navigation was cool too. Of course I never had 500+ pages either.. and I got over it.

btown• 13 years ago

Not significantly simpler. I'd imagine that the module that parses malformed HTML into a hierarchy is separate from any rendering-related behavior. EDIT: But I'd love to be proven wrong.

badclient3• 13 years ago

Mr. Nissan used to run a small computer shop in the 90s. He's pretty old school guy who's had to hire shit load of developers over the years for various pages of the site. I was hired at one point to fix an issue with their contact form.

8ig83• 13 years ago

True, but also keep in mind the site is still up with this spike in traffic.

Must be Varnish, Nginx, CDN edge servers, sprites, gzip, pre-fetching and efficient CSS selectors.

vdaniuk• 13 years ago

Maybe it is just a static site?

sgt• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if everyone sees your sarcasm here...

GhotiFish• 13 years ago

I'm going to take that comment with me to the grave. Well done.

comatose_kid• 13 years ago

If only he had gotten the domain for his first name, he wouldn't have to worry about legal issues.

ebbv3• 13 years ago

This post is clickbait with basically zero content. The story of Nissan.com is well known to anyone who's been around the web for long. After all the battle started in the '90s.

This article is saying "The web is important! Nissan Motor Company wants to own nissan.com!"

No shit.

cantankerous2• 13 years ago

Hadn't heard about it until now. I've been around the web for, I dunno, two decades. Seems interesting enough.

ebbv3• 13 years ago

Ok so great you missed it, maybe you were sick that week. But it was all over in the late 90s and early 00s, and there's no new developments and no new insight in this post.

k3n• 13 years ago

I found it very informative, I mean Wikipedia[1] only gives a scant 140-ish word overview of the subject (and basically the same thing on the page for Nissan Computer itself), and though it does give 3 references, 2 of those are PDF's from the court judgements and the 3rd is an expired link to the USPTO. Oh yeah, Nissan.com[2] actually contains the most information, though it looks biased and sensational (to be expected). Otherwise, I'm not finding just a whole lot of recent information about this out there. I see a Wired article from 2001, and a Salon article from 2002, but other than that the chatter is few and far between.

Meanwhile, the site that OP's article was posted on is "the course website for the suite of law & technology courses at Yale University offered by Elizabeth Stark and Brad Rosen" (which is apparently CPSC 183, 184, 185 at Yale University). Publish date of the piece was 2011. So as far as sources go, I'm not sure how much better you could get than this. Not even a single ad, and right under 500 words, which is a nice size for a short take on the subject.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan#Nissan_Motor_Co_v._Nissa...

2. http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php

ebbv3• 13 years ago

This entire article can be boiled down to:

"Hey did you know Nissan Motors doesn't own nissan.com?"

"They don't? Wow."

Everything about it is obvious. It's providing no content. The fact that the site has no ads and is made by reputable people means nothing. It's still just an old (and very simple) story with no new information or insight added.

The reason you're not finding much/anything out there is like I said this story started in the '90s, everybody already knows about it except people who weren't around then, and even so, there's not much to tell.

This is an anecdote, not an informative article.

mateja• 13 years ago

"The court ordered NMC to pay $58,000 as cost under rule 68, this is less then 2% of what the cost was to defend this case."

It has cost Nissan Computer $3M to defend itself? For a local PC repair shop? Either he's highly principled or just lying.

laurent123456• 13 years ago

a final injunction which allowed Nissan Computer Corporation to maintain control of the domains Nissan.com and Nissan.net so long as it neither advertised nor mentioned/made disparaging comments about Nissan Motor.

First thing I see on nissan.com is a massive "Nissan's motor lawsuite against us" with crossed Nissan logos and "it could happen to you too", then a massive ad below this. Doesn't Nissan have a case that not only he doesn't respect his side of the bargain but he's obviously using Nissan's popularity for his own benefit?

abjr• 13 years ago

No. He no longer has to refrain from posting or linking to disparaging remarks about Nissan.

"Injunctive relief may not restrain Nissan Computer from placing links on nissan.com and nissan.net to other sites that post negative commentary about Nissan Motor; to this extent, the relief granted is overbroad, reaches non-commercial speech, and runs afoul of the FTDA and the First Amendment."

Source: Last page of http://www.citizen.org/documents/CourtofAppealsRulingNissanM...

8ig83• 13 years ago

Here's the site Uzi put up regarding the lawsuit. Last updated October 17, 2007...

http://ncchelp.org/

Edit: Here's the original PR...

http://web.archive.org/web/20000510174513/http://www.ncchelp...

felipelalli2• 13 years ago

Domain isn't important since Google.

pbreit• 13 years ago

The article inexplicably fails to mention if Nissan [car company] ever simply offered up a large amount of money to transfer over the domain. It's pretty human nature to dig in when you are attacked.

jdeibele• 13 years ago

It would be interesting to know how the process would go - if he just accepted an offer, then Nissan might take him to court saying he was squatting on the name. Or he might be OK if they approached him first. IANAL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

glennon• 13 years ago

Since Nissan is the only major international company unable to acquire their first choice of domain, it appears an outlier. The lesson perhaps is that the market, coupled with the dispute resolution system, works well with respect to web domains.

kayoone2• 13 years ago

I simply do not understand why Nissan Motorcompany dont just offer the guy a good pile of money. He has all the rights to use the domain, as its his name, and simply bought it first.

That or spend millions and a decade on lawsuits that lead nowhere...

davidiach• 13 years ago

It's possible that they have tried that at first.

kayoone2• 13 years ago

If they did, it obviously wasnt enough ;)

brazzy2• 13 years ago

He has all the rights to use the domain, as its his name, and simply bought it first.

Neither of those would be sufficient. The decisive factor is that he's actually operating a legitimate business under that name.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

How is that a factor? That means that anyone can take my domain by registering a company with the same name and suing me for it.

srathi• 13 years ago

There is a similar story about Armani brand and a person named A.R. Mani.

robflynn• 13 years ago

What was the situation with Dodge? I can remember in the early-late 90s (heh, 1997is?) that dodge.com belonged to some financial group. The actual Dodge car company had 4adodge.com, I believe.

le205• 13 years ago

How much traffic do you think they actually lose by not having Nissan.com? I would have thought as soon as someone looking for Nissan cars visits that URL, they would realise it was not the right site, then try the ccTLD version i.e. Nissan.co.uk, or simply search "Nissan" in their search engine of choice.

It's a bit like Google AdWords - some choose to bid on their own brand keywords, but are they actually gaining incremental visitors, or just spending budget on acquiring traffic that would otherwise arrived for free anyway?

quaffapint2• 13 years ago

Used to work for a credit card company, MBNA. They wanted mbna.com, which was owned by Mercedes Benz, North America. Not so amazingly enough, hand Mercedes a million or so and voilà we now had mbna.com, and why Mercedes is now mbusa.com.

smcl• 13 years ago

You might mean "voila", not "wala"

quaffapint2• 13 years ago

Yea, that would be a wee bit more accurate.

dano414• 13 years ago

MBNA is a horrid credit card company. They love mandatory arbitration clauses; that always favored that shitty company. I will be glad to eventually write them off in BK court.

IgorPartola• 13 years ago

A friend of mine operated a movie review site that mentioned Netflix in the name. Netflix sued him, but settled out of court by having him change the name, and buying the original domain for a few thousand dollars. They then let the domain expire.

barking• 13 years ago

Nobody remembers urls any more (if they ever did).

If I type the word nissan into the address bar on IE, firefox, chrome or opera I get a page full of links to the motor company.

felipelalli2• 13 years ago

Domain isn't important anymore: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nissan

itazula• 13 years ago

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. was founded in 1934. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Company#Nissan_Mot... And the word "Nissan" was used before that as a stock market abbreviation in Japan. The name Nissan, however, was probably not well-known outside of Japan. Mr. Nissan had probably never heard of the company. He was first to register the domain name, and presumably Nissan "the company" had the same opportunity at the time. But it is disturbing to read comments such as this on a page (http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml) linked to from his home page:

"Mr. Nissan,

I congratulate you, and thank you, for your perseverance in standing up for what is honorable and legitimate, for each of us and our children. NMC's attempt to leverage their size and importance (as it is the Asian way), will not be tolerated. I will post your information for everyone I know to read and boycott their products."

Boycott! Wow.

After reading several such posts, I wonder if the posters realize that Nissan has factories in the U.S.

Someday, I speculate that the current nissan.com will be subject to a cyber attack in a case of mistaken (or "mistaken") identity. What goes around, comes around.

So, while Mr. Nissan has the rights of "first dibs," he should realize that real damage is being done, and that he is fanning flames that do not speak to the "better angels of our nature."

Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

Related Stories