Genghis the Engineer
2nd Jun 2008, 15:14
Can anybody advise what, if anything, I can do about this?
A few years ago, my brother (resident at the time in the UK, although he's now living in Spain) registered the domain name "surname.org" (surname being our family name), he did this fairly cheaply through an ISP in Australia. This worked very nicely and various family members had webpages and Email addresses using "surname.org".
A few months ago the website stopped working (he is still paid-up until October this year), the Australian ISP didn't reply to any of his Emails about it, nor when I tried to get involved, mine.
On the offchance they'd gone out of business but not announced it, I tried to re-register it - but was told I couldn't because it was registered to my brother, and the registration was valid until October.
Then, this month I discover it's now listed as owned by some Chinese named "gentleman" with an address in Guangzhou, who has just camped some minimal advertising c**p onto it (along with, to add insult to injury, a picture of an aeroplane). There is also a small advert in the corner saying "Buy this domain" - so I clicked on that, which allowed me to register with a domain name broker called "Sedo" and make an offer. I offered E60 - which is about what it'd cost to register it (sans cyber-squatter!), and they came back with a counter offer of around E3,000! At this I sent back a message saying "look, it's not yours, but I don't mind paying a nominal sum to get it back". At which they simply withdrew any offer via SEDO and firstname.org is still up there, complete with adverts for Ikea, Cheating Housewives and a handful of mail order catalogues.
Now, if any of the players here were in the UK, I'd like to feel that I could make some formal representation and just possibly some form of fair play would prevail. Involving people in Australia and China who I can't readily communicate with - I really haven't got a clue.
Can anybody suggest anything that I can possibly do here, save either give-up or wait for our thieving Chinaman (who according to seems to own over 7,000 other domains) to let his registration lapse, then jump in and re-register, which will take a while I imagine since it's shown as registered until next April.
G
A few years ago, my brother (resident at the time in the UK, although he's now living in Spain) registered the domain name "surname.org" (surname being our family name), he did this fairly cheaply through an ISP in Australia. This worked very nicely and various family members had webpages and Email addresses using "surname.org".
A few months ago the website stopped working (he is still paid-up until October this year), the Australian ISP didn't reply to any of his Emails about it, nor when I tried to get involved, mine.
On the offchance they'd gone out of business but not announced it, I tried to re-register it - but was told I couldn't because it was registered to my brother, and the registration was valid until October.
Then, this month I discover it's now listed as owned by some Chinese named "gentleman" with an address in Guangzhou, who has just camped some minimal advertising c**p onto it (along with, to add insult to injury, a picture of an aeroplane). There is also a small advert in the corner saying "Buy this domain" - so I clicked on that, which allowed me to register with a domain name broker called "Sedo" and make an offer. I offered E60 - which is about what it'd cost to register it (sans cyber-squatter!), and they came back with a counter offer of around E3,000! At this I sent back a message saying "look, it's not yours, but I don't mind paying a nominal sum to get it back". At which they simply withdrew any offer via SEDO and firstname.org is still up there, complete with adverts for Ikea, Cheating Housewives and a handful of mail order catalogues.
Now, if any of the players here were in the UK, I'd like to feel that I could make some formal representation and just possibly some form of fair play would prevail. Involving people in Australia and China who I can't readily communicate with - I really haven't got a clue.
Can anybody suggest anything that I can possibly do here, save either give-up or wait for our thieving Chinaman (who according to seems to own over 7,000 other domains) to let his registration lapse, then jump in and re-register, which will take a while I imagine since it's shown as registered until next April.
G