Squatters do this shit every day to regular people and small businesses, but they don't have the money to convince a judge to hand over a domain.

I don’t have all the details to the case, but after reading the article I kinda think they got it wrong.

Let that man call himself Lambo and keep the domain. As long as he isn’t pretending to represent another brand, such as Lamborghini.

That's kinda how cybersquatting laws work.

Someone registered an available domain hours after I searched for it when I received our trademark. The domain was immediately put up for sale. I spent almost a year getting my ducks in a row to sue and reclaim the domain (I even had screenshots of the availability. The scammer was watching registration queries) but they let the domain expire for lack of interest. I scooped it up after that.

What the judge should have done is threaten to cut the domain name in half and see who was willing to give up their claim out of motherly love.

Both ends of this are frustrating. Buying a domain either as a purely speculative asset (as the judge correctly labeled this purchase as) so you can 1) get under someones skin enough to make them want to buy the domain from you, or 2) just buying up every popular or potentially popular domain just to sell if off is scummy behaviour that ideally this guy should never have been able to do in the first place.

The other end of this I don’t like though is the possibility of somebody being able to convince a judge that they should own your domain and then just being able to take it. In this case I think the judge ruled correctly but the idea that somebody (especially in the US government) would be able to just take away my domain on a whim is terrifying when you can’t just go to people and say “hey, the person you are going to this domain for has now moved and is now here”. Things like e-mail address, monitoring, firewall exceptions and many self-hosted sites assume that the owner of the domain does not change hands without permission, and trust the domain blindly. Taking away a domain isn’t just like taking away somebodies nickname. It’s taking away their online identity and forced impersonation.

I really wish there was a way to address each other in a decentralised way that doesn’t just push the problem down to something like a public key, where the same problem exists except now you worry about the key being compromised.

The fact that we have ways to coordinate globally unique addresses that we collectively agree on who owns what is a feat. It just sucks that it’s also something which somebody can take away from you.

Another great example of this being an economic rent problem.

Namecoin is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies, but never caught on because it's >99% domain name squatters. There's no mechanism to increase the cost of renewal to anything proportional to the value of the name, so they always renew for practically free. Consequently there's no incentive for web browsers to support it.

A domain name is like a plot of land. Right now our choices are crony capitalist ICANN with eminent domain, anarcho-capitalist crypto DNS, or sailing the high seas on an .onion address.

Steam.com

I always love these shitty “replace the enter key on a keyboard” news thumbnails. Like, ah shit, accidentally hit the “Domain Name Registration” button on my keyboard.

The court ruled that Blair lacked any right to the name and had only adopted the moniker after buying the domain.

So he wasn't rich enough to buy the domain that he paid for ?

Let A.I. have the internet. Humans are done using it.

I don't get it. Since when are similar words and cultural references and nicknames too owned by the trademark owner?

It was pretty normal for most of the age of trademarks' existence to use such derived references, including commercial use.

"He tried to claim ... a word play on "lamb" and not ... " - why would he have to?

I'm (ok, not really identifying as a fan of anything, but it's good) a Star Wars fan and I can point out plenty of such references there to other authors' creations, and George Lucas notably doesn't hide or deny that, actually the opposite.

Hrmm let's see.. am I petty enough today...

I don't really feel any sympathy for this guy.

Not sure why others are defending the defendant here. He was just a cyber squatter who had no ties to the name Lambo until after he bought the domain. His only goal was to resell it to Lamborghini for a profit.

Don't have much sympathy for this person but no company has any more right to a domain name than any of us and this sets a scary precedence.

But where will we find young sheep passing under a bar videos?

That judge is a dumbass and any precedent that 'justifies' this ruling should be reviewed and struck down. This is called theft. And do eminent domain too while we're at it.

Unpopular opinion, but the judge was right. There would be zero benefit to society to reward this absolute cybersquatter. There's an almost zero benefit to reward a corporation. Both bad, but the corporation should get it in this case.

This fucking thread 🤣

Scary! Sets precedent🤦‍♂️!

This shit has been going on for 25 years and complaining have been ripped away for this bullshit before.

Nothing burger. Judge was right.