What you are talking about used to be a common practice before the
net world and made some people some money.
Now the courts favor the individual or corporation whose name it is.
It is called cyber squatting. It is not illegal, per se, but I would
let the person know and possibly help them develop it. But you could
never hold on to it.
Stewart
At 12:56 AM 10/6/2007, you wrote:
Okay, here's an admittedly strange question: Is it always
inherently wrong, improper or maybe even illegal to register someone
else's name as a domain name, particularly if they are a prominent person?
By chance, discovered that a rather "hot" and prominent person
(whose been on Oprah twice fairly recently) actually does not have a
website, at least not one that shows up on GoDaddy, using the name
and .com or .net. This is someone I have been trying to get in
touch with and likely will be meeting fairly shortly. Was thinking,
for various reasons I won't go into, of grabbing this domain name
and later letting them know. I would not ever charge them anything
and would happily give them the name should they want it themselves,
and will, if I have a chance, encourage them to get a site up,
because this is someone who could do a lot of good for a lot of
suffering people if they had a site (including clips from their
Oprah appearances). One thing I'm thinking of is creating a site
for or related to them or their interests, partly as a way of
showing them the potential benefits of having their own site, and
thus potentially reaching so many people.
So given this context, would it still always be inappropriate to
appropriate someone's name as a domain name? One other reason for
doing this is to prevent someone else from scooping it up, simply to
sell, sit on or otherwise exploit financially. Have to admit, if I
did this, would probably also be tempted to use it to direct
interest and traffic, which I might then redirect to my own site or
blog (still not created yet) but if I did this it would be to
promote, as an advocate, the same sort of things this person
promotes, such as when she goes on Oprah.
Am I low-life, unscrupulous, morally-defective scum for even
considering this? If so, and I can buy this, what about all these
people and companies maybe that seem to simply snatch up domain
names, to be used commercially in various ways, beyond really
creating any real content ( such as reselling domain names to simply
profit on giving someone one they really want). Should only people
with a specific name be allowed to get sites using their name or
have to approve of giving it to someone else? Why isn't or
shouldn't a name considered legally as if it was private property
for certain purposes, including commercializing it?
Randall
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Rev. Stewart A. Marshall
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Prince of Peace
Ozark, AL SL 82
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