Words fail me, did none of his family or friends try and point out what was wrong with this 'new business idea'? And if not why not?
Snapchat domain squatter loses comedy £1m URL sellback attempt
"I thought we [could] change one letter of a big brand and make a business and it [would be] alright," wailed a photographer who tried to blag £1m from Snapchat before Nominet stripped him of his ripoff domain name. The dot-UK domain name registrar published a dispute judgment earlier this month detailing the comedy of errors …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 10:53 GMT Version 1.0
There are plenty of sites with common names that post completely unrelated contents - do you really think that Boris owns (or should sue) the company running the Tory web site ?
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 16:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
People like that don't accept advice that they have a flaw in their business "plan". They believe they're just so much more clever than everyone else, and that the naysayers are just jealous of their superior intellect.
Conversations start with "why don't the scientists just do ___...?".
See also injecting disinfectant. Why didn't doctors think of that? Well, it must be cauz I'm so smarter than them, not cuz it's not a good/practical/safe/sane idea.
Sorry, not meant to get political, just trying to come up with an explanation.
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 09:26 GMT andy 103
Jog on chancer
That last quote should just read "I didn't realise the law applied to me"
Isn't it interesting how these people are apparently capable of setting up and running a business... Yet, when it comes to something that doesn't work out how they wanted, they're completely oblivious?
It's almost like he's talking out of his arse.
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 10:35 GMT Pascal Monett
There is scum, and there are idiots
If you "add one letter" to a domain name and honestly believe that you're doing nothing wrong, you truly are a wonder of stupidity.
On the other hand, if you fail to track your domain renewal dates, you're just run-of-the-mill stupid and you deserve to learn the hard way.
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 11:15 GMT xeroks
do you feel lucky, punk?
The tone of that message suggests to me that he maybe received a friendly letter from snapchat's lawyers, possibly outlining in simple terms the implications of them taking him to court. like being asked to pay costs when they inevitably won.
With some realistic numbers attached, shit would have gotten real, I reckon.
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 14:09 GMT Dave 32
Trademarks
Trademark law is complex and not intuitively obvious. For example, the same name can be use in different fields with no conflict. The prototypical example is Delta Airlines and Delta plumbing fixtures. Another example is Nissan Computers and Nissan Motors, over which a long running legal spat emerged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Computer
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Tuesday 28th April 2020 17:11 GMT Patched Out
Re: Trademarks
Not to mention the trademark dispute between Apple Corps, the Beatles' record label, and Apple Computer. As I recall, the dispute was resolved when Apple Computer agreed not to have anything to do with creating, publishing, or distributing music.
Oh wait ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
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Monday 4th May 2020 03:36 GMT William Old
He was unfortunate not to get away with it... others do!
It wasn't such a bad idea... there's a bloke(?) called "Skybeans" in a terraced house in a residential area of Swindon who registered him/herself with Nominet as a UK individual some years ago, and is making good money picking up orders from UK customers for cheap eyewear via a Web site at goggles4u.co.uk.
But he or she is committing criminal offences in breach of UK consumer protection legislation by pretending to be American Eye Vision Inc., an American eyewear company that runs an affiliation programme and sells eyewear through goggles4u.com - he/she just pockets the affiliation payments and, whenever a customer complains about late/missing/shoddy products, points them at the US company's complaints contacts. A trawl of consumer forums reveals many unhappy customers.
An additional requirement for VAT-registered entities is for the VAT number to be displayed - again, this information is missing, because of course a US-based trader doesn't charge VAT, but a UK customer is liable for VAT and duty if either or both is levied when the ordered eyewear arrives in the UK. It's no surprise that the goggles4u.co.uk site is almost identical to the real one, but carefully states in the "small print" that "Goggles4u Eyeglasses (www.Goggles4u.co.uk) has been acknowledged as American Eye Vision in 2010, registered in the state of California... The company itself has been operating since 2002-2003."
The important difference is, of course, that Skybeans is in Swindon, England, which - unless there has been a thermonuclear explosion in Wiltshire between this being posted and you reading it - is in England and thus subject to English law, and ought to be prosecuted and the domain closed down, but the registrar (123-Reg Ltd) says it's Nominet's responsibility. Nominet (you can see where this is going, can't you?) won't take any action because "it's not their responsibility" even though the registrant is breaking Nominet rules and... well, you get the idea.
So one might assume from the Snapchat result that in this case, Nominet's soporific sense of responsibility was awoken by a handsome payment from Snapchat for its assistance. Ordinary British people, even when being routinely hoodwinked by a "Third Millennium Del Boy", don't merit a similar standard of service...