A website name

Hi Guys,

This is a strange one.

I registered the name of a town that i live in www.town.com www.town.net
and set up a small local web site, about the town etc. This was grand and i didnt take much interest in it until i started getting emails about people wanting to buy the name. One american offer tried to take me to court saying that the name should not be mine becuase it was spelled similiar to a product they had. Anyways this passed off but i still kept the name.

Then last year, i was approached by a local committe in the town who also wanted the site. I told them it wasnt up for sale and if they wanted it they could use it. They took the business approach about selling advertising space etc on. but for me this didnt work out becuase i wasnt well known.

Soon enough appears www.town.org set up by this committe.
Next appears somes signs in the town saying www.town.org

I didnt really care becuase i was still getting alot of hits each day and i server google ads so i was happy.

My question : as they are also targeting locals for advertising space i see this town.org people as a competitor to me (Would this be correct?)

One of the members of this committie is the local councillor.

Do i have any grouds to say to them to take down those signs saying www.town.org becuase really they are using unfar advantage over me in putting them up.?

Any one any opinions on the above?

I would like to fight back against this one becasue i think they really have gone behind my back on this and becuase they are a local committie is hard.

Is this something the competition authority could have an opinion on?
Should this be something that the local councillor should not have allowed?

there is a www.town.ie registered now if this was to appear in the signs that would be fine beucase fair enough it would be the official name?

I don't think it's strange at all. You've an interest in your town and you did something about it, many moons before your elected representatives thought about it. Too bad for them.

.com. .org, .net is a free-for-all and they're sold on a first-come, first-served basis. They may have bought .org as a holding strategy and now, with the .ie name on its way, they should leave you alone.

Personally, I'd be more worried about a company claiming rights to your domain name. Don't enter into any discussions about selling your domain - it can be used against you later.

Your right about the holding strategy but still why would they waste their resources on advertisig .org when .ie is taken by the council and most lilkely will be given too them.

I did not enter into any discussions, this was handled by email only and that was that, i think it was a hoax personally.

Do you think i should make them take the signs down around the time stating their web site. They have an unfair advantage over me, and i think i have ground to demand this to be taken down?
Any thing from law that could back me here?
its affecting me becuase the business now think oh there is only one website thats the .org but infact i get alot more hits, beucase users by default type .com with out thinking?

sluice44 said:

I don't think it's strange at all. You've an interest in your town and you did something about it, many moons before your elected representatives thought about it. Too bad for them.

.com. .org, .net is a free-for-all and they're sold on a first-come, first-served basis. They may have bought .org as a holding strategy and now, with the .ie name on its way, they should leave you alone.

Personally, I'd be more worried about a company claiming rights to your domain name. Don't enter into any discussions about selling your domain - it can be used against you later.

Click to expand...

I doubt you have any grounds to have them taken down just because they give an advantage over you, everyone is entitled to advertise.

It may be possible that the placement of the signs is contrary to planning laws or is trespassing on someones property (although I suppose it may be on council property given the involvement of the local councillor?)

Is this local committee some sort of local grouping for the promotion of the town? You mention a business approach. What do you mean by this? Is it a for profit scheme or are they using the ad revenue to promote the town? If it is for the benefit of the town it is perfectly acceptable for a councillor to be involved. In fact that's almost a part of his job which is to represent the interests of his constituents. I think the only thing that would be questionable would be if the councillor and some cronies were somehow making a personal profit out of this venture but from your post I am not clear if this is so.

Whether the domain ends in .com or .org is largely irrelevant to the advertising issue unless they are trying to misdirect people into believing they are accessing something which is unique about your site. You certainly can't have any exclusive right to a towns name (unless maybe the local council contracted with you which I don't think is the case here).

I personally don't believe that you have anything that you can do here. As has been mentioned above, there are no restrictions on the .org, .net, .biz, .info and .com names.

A bit late now, but I'm sure its obvious now that you should have registered all possible names at the beginning to maintain your exclusivity. Then use just one of them as your main name, and redirect all other versions to the main site. I've done this myself to protect my domain name exclusivity.

If you're only using Google adverts, then it's hardly your primary source of income, so I don't believe it's anything worth getting upset about.

Are you not taking a "dog in the manger" attitude here?

Finally, unless these people you talk about are wholely and complete professional and organised (which it doesn't strike me that they are), then if you make a concerted effort to keep your site topical and up to date, and make sure your keywords are optimised for the town, purely on quality of the site alone, you should keep your visitors, and increase them. These people wouldn't appear, in my opinion, to be able to match this if they're going about things in the way that they are.

Tip:- A lot of people don't know that you can type a web domain name into the Address field of a browser. They will open up whatever their default homepage is, Yahoo, eircom etc, and just type the domain name they saw on these signs you speak about.
So if you optimise your keywords to include the names of the domain names that you don't have, you'll still get the visitors. I too have done this for my site and I've ended up getting top of a google search if you type in anything to do with my competitor websites.