

Michelin Guides forgets to renew domain name, becomes "Michel in Guides" - danso
http://eater.com/archives/2013/02/07/website-of-the-day-michel-in-guides.php

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petercooper
I got my full name in .co.uk from a similar mishap (there's a large car
dealership in the UK called Peter Cooper, curiously). Bizarrely they never
came after me or even got in touch and bought a new domain instead, though
it'd have been a harder case to fight given it's my actual name.

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mdp
I always just assumed you split your time between writing and running a
Volkswagen dealership in Southampton.

<http://www.petercoopergroup.co.uk/>

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petercooper
Are you aware that I also own an entire village in NYC?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%94Peter_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%94Peter_Cooper_Village)

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gus_massa
In the Archive WaybackMachine
(<http://web.archive.org/web/*/michelinguides.com> ) most of the previous
captures look like parked domains, except one (Feb 2012) that is in Chinese
and the autotranslation say that it is some kind of "micro bloging site".
(Whatever that means, I still don't understand it.)

So this domain probably was never an official site of Michelin as reported in
the article.

(Official site: <http://www.michelintravel.com/> )

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milliams
I believe companies usually claim back 'stolen' domains with trademark claims.
I wonder if the his claim that it's "Michel in Guides" will do anything to
hold this claim at bay.

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nathanstitt
Not always, and not quickly. See <http://nissan.com/> for an example that's
been dragging on for around 10 years or so. He's not squatting on nissan.com
per se, but in my opinion is fairly close to it. It's a David vs. Goliath
situation that's for sure, I'm amazed he's managed to keep the domain.

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UnoriginalGuy
> He's not squatting on nissan.com per se, but in my opinion is fairly close
> to it

That doesn't make sense.

Sounds like you, and several other people, think that anyone who is under-
utilising a domain is automatically "squatting." That the biggest user of a
property is entitled to it...

He runs a business, the business is called "Nissan Computer(s)." That to me is
the furthest thing from squatting...

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nathanstitt
I disagree & believe it does.

Where is he advertising the business on that web site? I see it mentioned in
the header but that's not even a link. Instead he's running adds for insurance
on it.

In my mind it comes down to what visitors of the website expect to see. I
believe that the only possible expectation for someone visiting nissan.com is
to see Nissan Motors. (At least in North America, I'm aware that Nissan is a
popular name etc)

I'm not saying that he's even a bad guy here. If I was in his shoes I'm sure
I'd feel exactly the same, he had the name first, even before Nissan Motors
existed. But, times change. Leaving aside the legal questions, I believe that
there would be less confusion caused if nissan.com pointed to Nissan Motors,
therefore it would be _in this case_ a social good thing to have it be so.

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nwienert
That's a personal opinion (and you're entitled to it) but the fact is he has a
legitimate claim to the name and that's all he needs. If Nissan Motors wants
it badly enough, they will convince him with money.

Until then, I (and the law) fully support his right to the domain.

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nathanstitt
I agree it's not a legal issue. The law is pretty firmly on his side, as it
should be. I believe that things of this nature are too fuzzy to be encoded in
law, it's more of a "I know it when I see it" type of thing that reasonable
people can have differing opinions on.

However, a really stupid part of domain law is that Nissan Motor's can't
convince him with money. If he had offered to sell to Nissan Motors or
attempted to negotiate a price in response to an offer by them, that could be
considered evidence of squatting and he could have lost the domain in court.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act)

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oellegaard
They made a stupid mistake, they should not be allowed to get it back.

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ajross
That's maybe going too far. Clearly this is a prank. The current owner has the
right (abstractly -- honestly I have no idea how this works in French law) to
express their opinion as parody, and Michelin shouldn't be able to use the
trademark as a cudgel to suppress that.

That said, the proper remedy here is for them to buy back the domain name at a
fair market price (whatever that may be, again I have no idea). The owner
shouldn't be able to "ransom" the name for an unfair price, either.

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darxius
Why not? It was their mistake, they forgot to renew a domain (something even I
keep on top of). The guy bought it legally and is now hosting his own website.

I don't see how the company would have any right to get that domain back if
the guy doesn't want to sell it. Then again, IANAL.

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phillmv
That's not how trademark law works, and in this case, for good reason
<http://www.chillingeffects.org/domain/faq.cgi#QID245>

Fucking with a guy who thought MikeRoweSoft was funny? Probably not cool.
Losing out on MichelinGuides for a dude who set up a prank? Eh, I'm siding
with Michelin in this case.

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JonnieCache
Reminds me of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft>

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ErikAugust
A company I used to work for had many clients (over 6000) and many would
forget to re-register their domains. About one or two out of these clients a
year would have the misfortune of a squatter swooping in and trying to extort
them.

One client even had the misfortune of their domain redirected to a porn site
when cash demands weren't met.

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m4tthumphrey
Genius.

Moral of the story: Auto renew FTW.

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WA
How does that even happen? My domains get renewed automatically.

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EwanToo
There was a story on here the other day which basically revolved around people
removing their credit card details immediately after purchasing domains, to
prevent auto-renewals - they managed to mishandle removing their details, and
deleted the domain involved.

Some people are odd!

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UnoriginalGuy
You're mis-remembering that story.

GoDaddy (their registrar) charges more for auto-renew than for manual renew.
So people wishing to save money disable auto-renew for that registrar.

GoDaddy's interface is really bad, and somehow when you remove your CC
information it also asks you if you want to remove the domains entirely too
(default: yes).

People click through without paying attention (thinking "it is just my payment
info, what can go wrong?!") and BOOM their domains are gone.

Naturally GoDaddy charges a fee to restore the domains...

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slant
Oops indeed!

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gabipurcaru
This reminds me of a guy in a game, his nickname was "Penisland". Pen Island.

