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Comment by terrellm | Hacker News Reader

So not only are they content thieves, they are also cybersquatters with names like:

  starwarsanswers.com
  iphoneqna.com
  facebook-questions.com
  nfl-questions.com
  squarespaceanswer.scom
  astonmartinanswers.com
  volkswagenanswers.com

And that's just the first 2 pages of results.

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Buying great domain names is just a great/smart/effective strategy.

But cybersquatting isn't something where a person is operating in the gray area of the terms of service, it is something which is clearly illegal.

Now that is something you might expect some low end affiliate to do, or maybe an innocent technique by a person ignorant to what they are doing (if they are doing it on just 1 name)...but to raise venture capital and then deploy it on illegal marketing strategies is a bit extreme.

It would have been nearly as helpful/beneficial to do something like footballquestions.com (instead of nfl-questions.com), and it wouldn't have been illegal.

The curious question is why take VC money if you want to take the low road? Do the investors realize the latent risk embedded in this activity?

Jason claimed that the Youtube founders should have handed their sales money to the original content creators. I wonder if he thinks the same way about money made from JASON cybersquatting on someone else's brand?

And I would love to here Jason explain how/why he feels the 2 are in any way different from each other.

Actually Aaron, you can use a domain name with a brand in it.... take a look at wipo and you'll see dozens of examples of this. I've posted one below.

That being said, if someone had a problem with our Toyota Answers site or iPad Answers site we would discuss it with them.

Not sure that you understand what the term Cybersquatting means. Cybersquatting is when you sit on a domain name that is the same as someone's brandname and you try to sell it back to them.

What we are doing is creating a forum for the public to discuss a product or service. We also take the time to do a popup to keep people from being confused.

There are many internet companies that do this including the publicly traded Internet Brands which runs sites like corvetteforum.com.

Here's the Wipo link for you to get caught up...

best jcal

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000... Based on the foregoing discussion, the Panel denies the Complaint under the Policy 4 (i) and the Rules 15. Complainant, Lockheed Martin Corporation, failed to show that the disputed domain names were confusingly similar to its trademarks. Therefore, the Panel orders that the disputed domain names <lockheedsucks.com> and <lockheedmartinsucks.com> remain registered in the name of the Respondent, Dan Parisi.

I recently googled ugg boots and found that the lawyers for UGG told Google to de-index some sites that had ugg in the domain name. That's uncool.

I knew a guy who had "timex" somewhere in his domain name and the lawyers for Timex did a cease-and-desist on him.

These trademark and IP lawyers are crossing the line because they know they can go after small-time operators who can't afford the legal team to fight them. And then that sets a legal precedent of a long series of wins that gives trademark and IP lawyers more ammo to use on even more cases, like a snowball.

Also Aaron, I would read this article... :-) http://www.seobook.com/how-choose-great-domain-names

If you would have read that article (and followed the advice) you wouldn't have registered names like nfl-anwsers.com ;)

i had to look:

google-questions.com/tip_guidelines

how timely is this google webmaster video?

youtube.com/watch?v=RlNPRonDxuU#t=2m57s

the key part about domains google seizes starts at 2:57

Great citation.

Years ago I registered AdWordsBlog.com and AdSenseBlog.com & then pinged a Google engineer so they could transfer them in. Its the polite thing to do. I did the same thing with SethGodin.net. If you see some stuff like that out there then why not try to help people out who have spent millions of Dollars building up their brands.

The opposite of the above, to register the domain names & then to try to cash in on someone else's branding efforts is a lower rung strategy.

For a person like Jason to cybersquat, and then compare his auto-generated for profit websites to sucks sites protected by free speech laws...it really doesn't sit very well.

I think you're once again trying to spam Hacker News with your own personal vendetta against me Aaron.

Most brands love when folks make fan sites or communities.

You're being intellectually dishonest here, using the term squatting when in fact that's not what we're doing. Take a look at Internet Brands and their forums for automotive:

http://www.internetbrands.com/our-brands/automotive/

They provide independent forums, with trademarks in the domains, for almost every car brand. These forums are high-quality and valuable.

If someone wants to make CalacanisSucks.com, CalacanisTalk.com and CalacanisQuestions.com I'm fine with it. Go ahead... talk about me all day long.

I mean, you're doing that anyone Aaron.

Seriously, you are a link baiting machine Aaron. However, don't you think it's a little sad that the most attention you've ever gotten in your life is when you're attacking me.

The folks on HackerNews are sick of Calacanis-Baiting... give it a rest please. I hate seeing my name on HackerNews.... in fact, can someone create a Chrome Extension that removes all posts that are by aaronwall and mention mahalo/calacanis?

thanks!

I can't speak for anyone else, but if you took "The folks on HackerNews are sick of Calacanis-Baiting" and removed "-Baiting" from the end that would be pretty accurate.

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