Official Luthiers Forum!

I just discovered that someone has registered the domain name mjfranksguitar (my domain is mjfranksguitars) and put up a sham website with no meaningful content. It appears that they pasted a poorly translated page pertaining to electric & acoustic guitars. Dummy me, I kept that domain registered until 2015 and decided to put the (S) at the end of guitar and have been using that domain ever since.

Other than contacting the website and paying the ransom, are there any legal means to have the website taken down? Any good advice is appreciated, especially if you have been through a similar nightmare.

Mike Franks
www.mjfranksguitars.com

I have run across these sham sites before. I thought they were just trying to steal customers, I didn't realize it was for extortion.
Hard to believe this could somehow be legal

I'd contact twitter, Facebook, pintress etc. As well as any sponsor links and let them know they are involved in fraudulent activity

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

I went to the pirate site and there is a "+" button, on the right side of the screen, with links to over 100 social media sites that allow you to post about the fake site on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Hopefully you can get this resolved without too much trouble.

_________________
John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds

First - are you sure its been picked up by somebody else and its not just the registrar's boiler plate website for any given miscellaneous name?

Now... I am going to play a bit of a devils advocate here..

I dont see how these people "hijacked" anything.... You decided to quit paying because you didnt want it.. When you gave up the name - you allowed someone else to pick it up... Then some time in the future - your registrar allowed somebody else to pay for the name... And its not like you noticed this an hour or 2 after you quit paying - its been 2 years and you now just noticed this....

You dont get to keep the name forever when you dont pay for it.. Sorry.

Now - its 2 years later and you decide you want the other people out.. Not because you want to maintain the domain - but because you want them out of it.... And it sounds like you dont want to pay for it - you just want them gone..

Theres no fraud or malfeasance here... No doubt you were well aware of the possibility that someone else could pick it up if you dropped it about 2 years ago but decided you really didnt care....

So.. Instead of trying to backdoor someone - if you want it, contact them and see what it will cost to get it back. Or you could decide you still dont care about it at all... Sounds like this website of theirs isnt trying to rip you off... Its not a clone of yours... None of your customers will mistake it for you..

"I dont see how these people "hijacked" anything."

You blind?

He never had the domain MJFranksguitar. His is MJFranksguitars. The people who registered the domain that is very close to his either did so knowingly or it was a coincidence. If the owner of that site shares the same name it may be a coincidence. If not then it might be a ploy to trade on the good reputation of Mike Franks. It would be interesting to know if the owner of that site has also registered domain names similar to other builders domains to direct traffic to his business.

Clay says

" Clay says "

Yup!
I should have read his post more carefully.
Still I think Mike has a legitimate gripe.

Bloody Pirates!

_________________
Jim Womack

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for. "
Will Rogers

Look at me, look at me. I'm the webmaster now.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

And yet another good reason surfaces to keep my lazy butt from putting together a website. Thank you.

I'm not sure what the complaint is.

I had a look at the website and it's not selling anything, though it does have some feeble guitar content.

If the registrant is asking Mike for money, then he has a genuine beef and a possible claim under ICAAN's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy.

If not, then the complaint seems to be that someone has registered a similar name. But you can't have a monopoly over everything similar to the name you've registered. For example, what about mfranksguitar (.com .org.net etc), mfrankguitar, franksguitar, mjfguitarss, etc etc? What about .us, .co.uk, .fr, .de and all the other country domains of the world? Where would your rights end?

The way the system works is that registration is on a first come first served basis. If it was registered "abusively" (which requires the claimant to have a registered or, as in this case, unregistered trade mark) there is a process for dealing with that in the domain name system.

If the registration meets the system rules, but is illegitimately taking trade away from another person's website there are legal mechanisms which can be used, but going to law has to be a last resort.

But similar trading names - they're just inevitable and ned to be coped with.

Whois.com provides some info: https://www.whois.com/whois/mjfranksguitar.com