If Cybersquatting wasn't illegal would it be ethical?

Instant Sunrise · Post by **Instant Sunrise** » 2006-01-02 03:53am

If someone owned joebob.com, and THEN the company named the movie joebob. That person would be okay. But if a production company announces "Joe Bob: The Motion Picture", and then somebody else buys the domain name joebob.com so that they could sell that to the production company for a huge profit. THAT is illegal, and unethical, as well as borderline extortion.

This is a real world example of the bad kind of cybersquatting.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-01-02 04:29am

Why, exactly, is it unethical? Since the production company knows about the movie or product long before the public does, how hard is it to drop $20 to pick up the domain before letting everyone know? Since they didn't do so, it could be argued they don't care. If they made a mistake, why can't someone profit from that? If a product is announced, is it unethical to buy up some commodity to place yourself in a position to supply it? Is investing in relevant resources to sell to a new factory 'borderline extortion' now?

Frankly, since every url I remember seeing for a movie ever has been something lame like ring-the-movie.com or whatever, it seems that illegal or not this sort of thing is de rigeur, and I just can't find it in my heart to care. Actually, how (effectively) illegal can it be, since examples are so widespread?

Instant Sunrise · Post by **Instant Sunrise** » 2006-01-02 05:21am

IIRC, most cybersquatting comes from people who site on domain like gogle.com and other typos. Or from people who snatch important domains right when they expire.

For example, RandomCorp has a domain for their site of www.randomcorp.com on which the DNS entry expires on 10/2. Some cybersquatter gets this info from the sites whois entry, and waits for midnight to strike on that day. Snatching it right then and there before the company has chance to renew it. Using that to get money.

Lets say that you hear from the vine of grapes that Maxis is working on a game called "Pee"[1]. Would it be legal to go down to the USPTO and trademark "Pee" and sit on it that trademark? Most likely, yes(IANAL, I don't really know). Would it be ethical to buy up this commodity (trademarks) and place yourself in a position to supply it? Probably not.

Because domain names and trademarks fall under the category of intellectual property, they play by different rules than physical property. The biggest difference is that with a domain name, you can only register www.randomcorp.com once. and it only can be leased to one person at a time.

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1: reference to Penny Arcade strip

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-01-02 06:18am

I just don't get it, though. The uniqueness is a significant difference, but there is a difference between domains and trademarks. I imagine there are criteria that need to be met to acquire a trademark (like with a business name), whereas I could simply buy hundreds of thousands of domain names for no reason, just to spite the world.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2006-01-02 05:12pm

How do you prove that someone is illegally cyber squatting, or is it just assumed that anyone that gets in the way of a large multinational corporation is breaking the law?

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-01-02 05:32pm

Keevan_Colton wrote:How do you prove that someone is illegally cyber squatting, or is it just assumed that anyone that gets in the way of a large multinational corporation is breaking the law?

Presumably, if a person buys up a previously trademarked domain name, or permutations thereof, he is cybersquatting. At least, that's the drift I'm getting from skyman8081 and Lord MJ.