Hey everybody,

A new pizza restaurant opened up in my city several months ago and I started frequenting it. I got to know the owner from being there regularly and offered to put together a simple website for him.

Just weeks before my offer, a local cybersquatter bought up their domain name and published the restaurant's menu on it without authorization. The restaurant owner battled with this company over his domain name for a few months and got nowhere so he decided to choose an alternate domain name which I purchased and designed a website for.

Yesterday I e-mailed the cybersquatter asking them to kindly remove the content displayed on their domain. Without any response to my e-mail they went ahead and displayed this restaurant's actual website (my website inside a frame) from their domain without permission.

Now some might think that they are doing this out of the goodness of their heart but companies like that have an ulterior motive. My guess is that they are hoping to establish the website's existence on their domain name and then attempt to charge the restaurant owner for future use of it. For this reason I feel that we should request for them to remove any content related to the restaurant.

The restaurant owner is not interested pursuing any type of lawsuit at this point and it doesn't appear that anything can be done about this without spending a good sum of money first.

Does anyone here have any suggestions on how to handle this?


Thanks

An ICANN Dispute is the first course of action.

http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm

Yes, I had researched the ICANN dispute previously and it looks like it would cost about $1500 in fees to file the dispute, something that the restaurant owner isn't interested in paying. I can't blame him. Why should he pay out of his pocket to correct the wrongdoing of another?

Do you think I'm on the money in believing that their only reason for displaying the website on their domain is to establish the domain name for the purpose of attempting to profit from it later?

Thanks for your response.

The problem being of course that if he takes no legal or documented action at all, he could lose the right to any future action to recover the name, and if it is his business name it could prove to be costly.
While the current "owner" of the hostname is actually showing the restaurant details it would benigh on impossible to show "bad faith", which is obviously much easier to contest (and prove) than a "cybersquatting" dispute would be. And yes it would appear (on the information provided) that "cyber squatting" or website "hostage taking" is the intent.

Realistically the major benefit of getting the hostname that is the same as the business name, is the "type in" value.
You can of course offset this by branding a hostname to the business name, so the other hostname becomes a less valuable proposition to the current owner and he allows the registration to drop.
I know of a few people who have done this and "waited out" the squatter.

I definitely understand your point. Ultimately it is the restaurant owner's decision whether to pursue this or not and I think he is most interested in establishing the alternate domain name, rather than fighting for the other name.

His restaurant's full name is Sgambati's New York Pizza, and the domain name that I have set up for him is www.sgambatisnewyorkpizza.com. The domain name that was purchased by the cybersquatter is www.sgambatispizza.com.

I suppose the next step is to request that any and all content relating to the restaurant be removed from their hostname and see if they oblige.

The expiration of the domain name is not until Feb 2010 but I will be watching the activity on it when that date nears. If they realize that they are not going to get any money out of it, maybe they'll let it expire.

Both domains have been registered with godaddy so my first contact would be godaddy about content copying, i think you can bye bye to the domain but i would agree with you on the reasons they are doing this.

This is just a suggestion and I don't know how effective it would be, but...

Why don't you add a "frame buster" code to your pages or block their IP from
the server? Wouldn't that prevent them from showing the site on their domain?

To be perfectly honest, neither of those hostnames are especially good for branding or as "typeins".
They are a bit too long and "clunky" to be really memorable. Fine for print and "real world" branding, but web marketing needs something a little "snappier".

I don't know exactly what someone with a name like Sgambati would use for a good "typein". The name itself is unique and hard to remember even after you've heard it a few times.

He's not really looking to market himself on the web but rather display information about his restaurant and pictures of menu items for those who may have never eaten there.

I will certainly look into frame buster code / IP blocking. That's a great idea....and I didn't even know it existed...still learning.

Thanks for all your input guys. Great help

UPDATE: I put in the frame buster script and it works. I also did file a complaint with GoDaddy's support.

gambatis

You want people to say "Let's get pizza from Gambati's tonight" and they go online and either book a table or order a takeaway / delivery

it's all about the marketing

I took the frame buster one step further and had it navigate to a specific page on my server that tells the user that they are being redirected to the new website.

GoDaddy replied to my complaint saying that they can't do anything about the content copying without a court order based on a domain dispute.

Because the complainant is the one who has to pay for the dispute I can see why this type of infringement is so common. Very few probably want to pay that kind of money for something that should be theirs in the first place and the cybersquatters know it.

Originally Posted by RichO

I took the frame buster one step further and had it navigate to a specific page on my server that tells the user that they are being redirected to the new website.

Take it another step further and spell out the infractions of the cybersquatter (including his name, to be evil) so that anyone who visits the site knows what kind of jerk he is.

Maybe something to the effect of:

"This domain has no relationship to XXXX Pizzeria and has attempted to steal content from XXXX Pizzeria without authorization. Help XXXX Pizzeria get this domain back by emailing John Doe at blahblah@gmail.com or calling 555-1212 and telling him that he's an unethical prick.

You will now be redirected to the correct website at www.domain.com."

(Okay, maybe not the "...and telling him that he's an unethical prick" part, but the rest should be good to go. Maybe he'll cave when spam bots start harvesting his email address and people hopefully call him.)

That's a cool idea, and very tempting, but I don't want to turn it into too much of a battle. If I were to take such measures, they would be forced to take countermeasures so that content does not display. I wonder if they would even go so far as to copy my content directly to their server. That would certainly open up a lawsuit.

As it stands, anyone who attempts to visit that domain will be given the correct information. Fortunately this restaurant is still in the stages of getting their name established so I don't believe that too many people are going to visit the cybersquatter's domain and as the web crawlers pick up the content of the correct domain, the other one will hopefully diminish away.

Yeah, I guess so. You may not want to stoop to their level, but it sucks that they've already made it difficult for you. It's pretty disappointing when a local guy is already trying to steal a brand name for some money.

Good luck.

That redirct idea is Gold.. Unless the thief changes their website again to disinclude your redirect.

You definately do not want the first thing people see when they go to the site be something like: "E-mail this cyber-prick and let him know he's a thief..." Battles should always be done without public awareness in these scenarios..

gDAMN that pizza is making me hungry

I learned a lot from reading your thoughts, guys. Thanks. Yes, public display of dirty linens will not be good for a pizza restaurant. Hmm, Gambatis sounds delicious.

Why not use the frame against them? Write some htaccess to display something the "cybersquatter" would not want on their page.

Dude, that redirect is GOLD