Popular bulletin board asks arbitration panel to give it the 4chan.com domain name.
One of the world’s most trafficked websites is on a .org domain name, and now its asking an arbitration panel to give it the matching .com.
Image-based bulletin board 4chan (at 4chan.org) has filed a complaint with The World Intellectual Property Organization. It claims that the owner of 4chan.com is cybersquatting and demands the domain name be handed over.
4chan.com has been owned by Oversee.net for many years. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised the 4chan.com issue hasn’t already received the 4chan community’s wrath, given its reputation for rowdy behavior.
The domain name leads to a parked page monetized by Oversee.net’s company DomainSponsor.
4chan is generally considered one of the top 1,000 websites in terms of traffic. An advertising page on the site says it gets 25 million uniques and 575 million pageviews per month, with 1 million posts per day.
The .com domain at issue clearly gets some traffic as it has an Alexa ranking in the top 125,000 in the US.
That cyberaquatting term is an ugly one, and misunderstood. Playground bully tactics, hope they can get a RDNH on them.
Great opportunity to advertise Domainfest on 4chan(org) 😀
4chan.com ads don’t seem to interfere with .org.
4.org should pay for the .com or eat dirt. Oversee should monetize a porn site on it. 🙂
Hmmmm. Guy owns a piece of property 3 properties from the corner of two very busy streets.
He builds his store on it and does pretty darn well. Guy who owns THE corner lot has not built anything there…. yet.
All he’s done is put billboards up and enjoys earning income from that great corner’s traffic, some of which comes right from or is looking for the guy 3 properties down.
OOOH…… the guy 3 properties down gets jealous and demands that the corner lot owner relinquish his property to him just like any immature baby would do.
I hope he loses everything fighting this.
Jo, Finger, kill yourself. 🙂
Cybersquatting scumbag also an idiot? WHY I NEVER!
Seriously, Jo, I hope you die slow of cancer.
Jo, that’s a terrible analogy, and it says enough about your mindset that you hope someone would be bankrupted over domain issues.
I’m with Jo, they didn’t give any reason besides “we think we can put that domain to better use”.
I used to visit 4chan years ago. Kinda interesting thing about its domain history…
Christopher “moot” Poole originally registered 4chan.net in 2003 (due to it being similar to 2chan.net, the domain of the Japanese image board, Futaba Channel) but then lost it in 2004 after a Something Awful user tried to shut down 4chan by contacting Go Daddy, then registrar of moot’s domain (4chan was something of a “refuge” for ex-SA members, so there was some bad blood between members of the sites).
After the domain was suspended, moot then registered 4chan.org and stuck with it since. It’s strange that now, over ten years since the site was first created, that moot would go after the .com domain. From what I can gather, moot’s original registration of the .net domain was September 29, 2003, predating the creation date of the .com by almost 3 months (December 13). While it’s possible that the .com was registered in bad faith (either to troll moot, or siphon traffic from the actual site), it still seems odd. I wonder what moot’s motives are here. The site is extremely popular as is.
less of give me your land and more of:
NAB Australia is a successful bank and has many clients, but a bank down the road named NAB America which is completely unaffiliated with the original begins drawing customers from NAB Australia, so they sue for daman=ges
April’s Fool Day Joke!
>March 28th
Second.
Hey moot I own the domain name cheese pizza .com, .net, and.org-let’s talk!