4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

http://domainnamewire.com/2014/03/28/4chan-demands-4chan-com-domain-name/

by sp8 • 12 years ago

80 76 12 years ago

binarymax3• 12 years ago

Is the name 4chan trademarked? It doesn't seem to be. Would it be easier to secure the .com if they trademarked the name first, then went after oversee?

ActVen• 12 years ago

Yes it is. http://www.trademarkia.com/4chan-85867485.html

binarymax3• 12 years ago

Looks fairly recent. Maybe that's exactly what they were waiting for.

chimeracoder• 12 years ago

Trademarks in the US don't need to be registered to be protected, like copyright (but unlike patents).

If you have established use of a mark before the registration (or use) of a competing/conflicting mark, you can defend it.

In fact, registration arguably provides no protection other than the fact that it makes it easier to search for your mark in the USPTO registry.

binarymax3• 12 years ago

No they do not, but it makes for a much easier defense. That is the whole point.

wdewind• 12 years ago

In fact, registration arguably provides no protection other than the fact that it makes it easier to search for your mark in the USPTO registry.

Isn't the trademark legally yours if you register and no one challenges for some period of time (I want to say 7 years)?

rplnt3• 12 years ago

I think it's really stupid to get domain like this, whether the name is trademarked or not. They didn't steal the domain, they just registered it (or bought it) because it was available. 4chan.org has absolutely no right to it. But since .com TLD is not really international, who knows what will happen.

iLoch• 12 years ago

TLDs are not distributed by ICANN on a first come, first serve basis. Those with rights to the name (ie. a trademark) have priority access to the TLD.

walshemj3• 12 years ago

How is .com not international it's a TLD? by definition TLD's are not tied to a geography in the same way that country domains are.

bduerst• 12 years ago

It is trademarked, though it's to an LLC called 4chan.

SworDsy• 12 years ago

I bet all the traffic to 4chan.com is from people mistaking it for 4chan.org as all it says is 'inquire about this domain'

skrebbel• 12 years ago

Is this just to troll? Even if someone looking for 4chan.org enteres 4chan.com first, isn't close to 100% of the target audience able to figure out what went wrong and fix it within seconds? (either by trying .org and co, or by dropping the tld altogether to trigger a web search).

iSnow• 12 years ago

If I were to guess then I'd say that the chance to file a WIPO complaint is just too juicy to let it pass. For the lulz and all that.

weems• 12 years ago

I see LOBC coming soon

thrillgore• 12 years ago

Delete system32

DanBC• 12 years ago

Given the amount of "open this image in notepad" malware I'm guessing 4chon wants to reduce possible attack vectors as much as possible.

I wonder what the ad revenue would be from that domain? And would m00t be able to put ads on 4chan.com?

teemo_cute• 12 years ago

Quick 'hackernewschan.com' is still available. Someone here please buy it (seriously). It would be a troll-site for highly intelligent people that will bring forth a new age in humanity. Before you down-vote my comment brother... please consider the possibilities... they once thought that flying in the air impossible... what could be next?

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

Domain squatting is so 1999 anyway.

Camillo• 12 years ago

Guys, this is serious. .org is for non-profit organizations. .com is for commercial purposes. This is why moot had to beg for donations for years while helplessly watching everyone and their cat monetize "his" "content" on a .com domain.

walshemj3• 12 years ago

Nope .org is for things that didn't fit into the big 5 one of the other bidders for .org tried to run this line and restrict .org to US style non profits freezing out charities an NGOs like Oxfam and the Red Cross - they got shot down in flames.

You going to tell JWZ (one of the early netscape developers) that hes going to have to give up jwz.org good luck with that .

izzydata• 12 years ago

The word "demands" is probably very unfitting. Moot doesn't seem like the person who would "demand" something. He would just do it and not take it very seriously and hope for the best. There is no reason to not at least try to obtain the name.

ds9• 12 years ago

It would be a very bad precedent if an owner of a domain name can gain rights to the same name in another tld just by his own site becoming popular.

US trademark law is limited to (a) commercial context and (b) possibility of confusion. If you aren't selling anything, or even if you are commercial but are in a different line of business, you should never be troubled by any trademark claims. This is how the old Beatles record label and the computer company can coexist with the 'Apple' name.

Probably many of us here are in similar situations - I have a domain name for example in .net and .org, but someone else has the .com. I don't want to take the .com from whoever it is (not without their consent, that is), and I shouldn't to have to pay for lawyers to fight them off if they make the name better known for their unrelated site.

_puk3• 12 years ago

On the flip side, I had a .com domain on backorder (I have the .co.uk), which was actually released.

I didn't get it (regardless of the back-order), but it got bought up by a domain squatting company who now want about $4K for it. It is currently parked with a horrendous page that doesn't even render correctly.

Now if my my .co.uk site were to get popular (hah!), I fully expect that price tag to increase.

It's a bizarre system.

_puk3• 12 years ago

Oh, and I had the trademark for said site..

Shinkei7• 12 years ago

It's not that it's 'more popular.' That's not the debate. The debate is that the .com site is being squatted. If it was some 4chan interior design company with even some legitimate business, then the debate would be over. Do you think it's a bad precedent if Google becomes popular and you can show that a person subsequently registered all the single permutation misspellings of Google and then tried to sell them back to Google? Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if they didn't buy them at huge markup? Go read about the Whitehouse.com history.

pbhjpbhj5• 12 years ago

Define squatted (or define legitimate use) - if the owner is using the domain for email and simply finds serving advertising provides some income, is that squatting; given there is no confusion issue. If they have a project in hand, or bought it to give to their child when they're 18, or ... are all those squatting?

How about, as for me, they renewed for a client and then the client didn't pay but now wants "their" domain back. Is me having that and serving ads to recoup costs (rather than wasting time on courts), is that squatting?

Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if they didn't buy them at huge markup? //

Extortion and practices intended to affect the business of a RTM are already unlawful of course.

brokentone• 12 years ago

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehouse.com

gaius• 12 years ago

I remember when Gap (the American clothes company) sued Genesis Access Point (the Irish dial-up ISP) and won, back in the 90s. That's when it all started going to shit.

Shinkei7• 12 years ago

Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "coming soon" sign that's been up for 5 years. The site is undeveloped, commercially zoned and represents essentially a burden for the community from both the unrealized tax revenue as well as eye sore and lower local property values. Plus the brand confusion, misdirected out-of-towners, etc.

So take this analogy to the internet, admittedly the 'real' costs may be lower--transmitting a few billion bytes is cheaper than road maintenance, fire and police protection to the unused property--but the societal cost is the same. The property should be fully realized and transfered to someone who will use it. This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. There is a public interest that is ethically sound. But at its heart, the people who cybersquat are a nuisance. They have no bona fide interest in the domain name and likely acquired it just to 'own' a property that they think they'll be able to flip one day.... it's the same sh*t as the real estate bubble, heck... bubble of ANY KIND. Fact is, I am glad this system of arbitration is in place because if I was Bill Gates and some guy named Joe Smith bought my name.com and didn't have a fan page or other relevant property, but just intended to sell it to me for a 10,000% return on his 'investment,' I would be pretty pissed off. I really don't see the other side of this debate. These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. It has created all kinds of negative effects like shotgun domain bidding, poaching, pricing bubble, artificial scarcity, ID theft, the 4chan.org issues mentioned in this article.... need I go on?

chrismonsanto• 12 years ago

This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell.

Not quite--eminent domain is also used to take property from people who ARE using it. And I think that is where that debate gets very thorny, because the compensation is not always worth the costs of uprooting someone from their home.

Shinkei7• 12 years ago

I agree with you--it's an oversimplification to make my point in this one extreme example, but that's why we have courts to decide the grey areas--hopefully fairly.

A good example of current use of eminent domain is highlighted in this article from HuffPost about border properties on Texas/Mexico land. The gov't is paying a lot of money, but only if you have the sense/resources to hire a lawyer and fight for more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/landowners-seized-b...

noonespecial2• 12 years ago

Eminent domain hits the skids when it takes property from someone that is living there and pays them the market price for someone who wants to sell to someone who wants to stay. Those are different prices indeed.

pbhjpbhj5• 12 years ago

Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. //

Sure it does. IF you own it.

These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. //

This is capitalism. The more damaging domain as you suggest is real-estate. Online the problem becomes simply "oh example.com wasn't right, example.org ... oh, ya, there it is". That might be a very minor annoyance for some people for a couple of seconds.

The problem I see with the "they're not creating a mall" argument is that to the logical conclusion that means that if you have a swimming pool and aren't using it as much as the public feel you should that it can be confiscated. Or, say, you have 2 cars - well clearly you can't drive both at once; repossession by the state, et cetera.

Now I've got some pretty communist sensibilities but unless we're going to implement the whole system and treat all properties in this way (I'd really like to use one of the many, many over-priced vacant commercial premises in our city) then I can't see how you can really move on this?

Shinkei7• 12 years ago

if you have a swimming pool and aren't using it as much as the public feel you should that it can be confiscated. Or, say, you have 2 cars - well clearly you can't drive both at once; repossession by the state, et cetera

This has nothing to do with what I said. Neither a swimming pool nor a car is a scarce resource. Now if you owned the only bridge to an island and didn't allow people to use it, or charged them extortionary rates... then we can begin the debate.

Sure it does. IF you own it.

I'll tell you what, go let your house collapse from disrepair, attempt to assert mineral rights in your backyard and then pour raw sewage onto your land.... we'll see if the zoning code enforcement, county lawyers and EPA respectively come knocking or not. Despite your assertion, there is very little that we actually own in the real property market. This is because it is in the public interest to have the many protections that we have.

nivla2• 12 years ago

Alright let me take your example and turn it around. Say someone decides to build a big fancy complex mall on Main St that will not only generate 10's of thousands employment but also attract a good amount of tourists. They finally found the plot of land, bought it and put up a sign called "Coming Soon". Pushing the paperwork, completing the construction would take 5+ years. In the mean time, someone read about this big project and decides to built a mini mart called Main St. Shopping right around the corner and demands the original Mall should be renamed. Now what? Now who is creating a bigger waste?

Things are not always black and white. If Google decides to squat on a domain for a future project, would you still called it squatting? Or them owning Google.io despite not having a business in these tiny islands be considered squatting too?

Dylan168074• 12 years ago

For the domain analogy, if they have a mini mart then they are actually using the address in a non-squatting way and nobody has to rename. (and an enormous under-construction mall is clearly not squatting either)

A future project will go a good way toward keeping a domain, probably not indefinitely, isn't usually relevant to the squatting case.

TLDs don't actually signify location so getting company.xyz is not squatting.

Shinkei7• 12 years ago

In the mean time, someone read about this big project and decides to built a mini mart called Main St. Shopping right around the corner

Are you trying to stengthen my argument? You've just proven that they were doing the very thing I'm arguing is unethical. Now if they incidentally named their shopping plaza this name and they can prove it was coincidence... well then we have an argument.

As for Google.io, they DO have a business there... and all over the internet. If there was an existing business there named Google that say delivered math lessons to homeschoolers, then I would say Google could not legitimately claim them as squatting.

This is a "I know it when I see it" standard. It's usually pretty obvious what is squatting and what is not.

Lambdanaut2• 12 years ago

Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit

Under US law you sure do.

You also have to define "waste". The owners of 4chan.com are obviously holding onto their domain because they see it as a valuable asset. I doubt they'd see this as wasting their property. They're watching it grow in value.

Your argument would virtually have us outlaw anyone from holding onto an asset if it could immediately be used better by somebody else.

As a counter-example: Why should anyone be allowed to horde gold? There's a gold shortage and it would be of much more use in computer manufacturing.

That's obviously insane, and yet it's essentially the same scenario.

I understand that it would be better for the common good if 4chan.com was owned by 4chan.org, but if we're playing the game of Capitalism, then these are the rules.

dsego• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

doomrobo• 12 years ago

*hoard

I actually just found out that it's a homophone with horde (I thought they were spelled the same and had different meanings).

mikeash2• 12 years ago

Eminent domain isn't used to avoid waste. Rather, it's used to acquire land that you need for something important.

As far as I understand it, if I'm wasting a bunch of land and refuse to sell it, but there's a million acres next door that you can buy for pennies and your project will work just as well there as it would on my land, there's no case for eminent domain. Go buy that other land and build there.

Eminent domain is for stuff like, we're building a highway from here to there, and the only reasonable route is through there, and that's where your property sits, so we'll take it from you even if you don't want to sell, because this highway will have a big public benefit that outweighs your personal property rights. If the highway can just move half a mile to the left to the land of someone who wants to sell, then you do that instead.

On the internet, all property is adjacent and nothing has to be in a particular spot. The supply of domain names is effectively infinite. I don't see the case for taking one just because the owner is "wasting" it. You don't need that specific domain, just buy the one "next door", which on the internet is all of them.

jarradhope• 12 years ago

The supply of domain names is effectively infinite

If you don't mind going to places like, adjkdhad3fnnkjd.com for all your future services, at which point domains lose their intended use, you might as well just remember and type out the ip number.

mdesq• 12 years ago

This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell.

Actually, a lot of the debate about eminent domain is who is on the receiving end of the property. Eminent domain is supposed to be about the taking of private property for public use. E.g., building a school. It gets a lot more dicey when you start taking A's private property and making it B's private property.

Macha• 12 years ago

I own a domain name that is basically mynamemyindustry.com . It is of zero value to anyone else who doesn't share my name, which isn't too common.

Someone bought myname s myindustry.com and occasionally sends me an email that it's going up for auction soon and enquires if I'm interested. I've just ignored them in the hope they get the point. They have been trying to make it seem like there's lots of other demands, when there's absolutely no reason to buy it other than the kind of similarity to my domain.

It can't even be profitable typosquatting. Nowdays the domain just redirects to a newer domain of mine and has been for a number of years, so in the unlikely event that someone tried to type in my current domain exactly and mispelled it, they still wouldn't end up on that domain. The only reason I keep up the registration is Google's inability to swap the primary domain on Google Apps.

Havoc• 12 years ago

I wouldn't want to be on the receiving side of this request. If its approved then it creates a bad precedent (as ds9 indicated). If its rejected then the person rejecting it is likely to piss of the 4chan crowd - and unlike many other 4chan attacks this is a cause the entire 4chan user base can get behind.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Interesting, I've never met a domain squatter that didn't have a price, but setting that aside for now, is the word '4chan' trademarked? Ahh I see it is [1] as of March 5th of this year. This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[1] http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html

trentmb• 12 years ago

4chan.com was created in 2003. Does 'prior art' exist for trademarks?

w0rm• 12 years ago

yes, trademarks do not need to be registered and can be used before filing for it.

jitendrac• 12 years ago

if 4chan.com is not cheating or bluffing with 4chan.org, it should not be handed over to 4chan.org.

4chan demands 4chan.com domain name

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