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.<p>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?
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.
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.<p>[1] <a href="http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html" rel="nofollow">http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html</a>
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?
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).
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?
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.