Last Chance To See 600 sq mi: Hidden
Missed Connections: Gefilte Fish...and "Chain Connections"
H-Town Rock
Rock Talk, Vol. IX
What a crazy place this Internet is. A few weeks ago, we talked about how the Houston Airport System's website sent people to a porn site for a while, and now a local car dealership is suing a company they claim co-opted its online presence for porn.
The car dealership in question is Munday Chevrolet, whose Web address is www.munday-chevrolet.com. But someone — a Manuel Suarez, according to online records — registered www.mundaychevrolet.com and used it to display porn (before you get too excited, there's nothing at that address now). The mundaychevrolet.com domain was registered using a Florida-based service; on June 8, Munday's owners, Austin Chevrolet, filed suit in a South Florida court to claim ownership of the domain. "It's obviously not the impression they want to give the public and their customers," Austin Chevrolet attorney Bill Green told the Chronicle.
Problem is that anyone can register an unclaimed domain and do whatever they want with it, for the most part. Many domain disputes end up at the World Internet Property Organization, which abitrates conflicts over trademarked names. If a company doesn't have a trademark — and Munday doesn't — the best it can do is go to court. Green said the company just wants the non-dealership site shut down so it can't display non-dealership material, which makes sense. But we still wonder: Why would anyone looking for online porn go to mundaychevrolet.com in the first place? It brings to mind all sorts of unfortunate jokes about headlights. Better stop there.
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This is EXACTLY why companies need to be smart and register every domain name even remotely close to its real name and put any names already taken on backorder so they can be the first one's in line to claim it when it gets dropped by its current owner. I'm always surprised when people get upset that a domain name they failed to claim is picked up by someone else and used for profit. That's why you have to pay attention.