Never underestimate the value of a good domain name! As any website owner will tell you, http://www.rose.com, by any other name, is likely to lose customers.

About a week ago, my colleague’s nephew, Kevin Bortnick, found himself in a domain name predicament. His plight is interesting and he has graciously permitted us to blog about his situation, which provides some useful context for a discussion about domain name disputes.   

Kevin is a talented website developer who used the name “KBortnick” or “KB” for his internet business. In November of 2005, he registered the domain name kbortnick.com for a period of four years, at a cost of about $10 per year. Although the domain name expired in November, 2009, he explained that “I was moving out & had a bit of a money crunch, so I figured I’d renew it in about a month, because it really wasn’t worth anything & I figured it would be fine….”   

A couple of weeks ago, he attempted to re-register the name, only to discover that someone else had purchased it. That unknown ‘someone’ had immediately put it up for sale on a website that auctions off domain names, http://seto.com, subject to a minimum bid of $480. As you can imagine, Kevin was livid. “The highest I’ve ever seen my domain name appraised at was about $30”, he exclaimed, “and most places didn’t even give it that!”   

(I empathized with Kevin’s situation. Over Canadian Thanksgiving, while I was sitting before the computer in a state of turkey-induced lethargy, I was suddenly roused from my stupor by the discovery that the domain name “pamelapengelley.com” could be registered for the low, low price of just $10 a year. I may soon write a post that is entitled “How I learned the hard way that just because you can make a hideously tacky personal flash website dedicated to your glorious self doesn’t mean that you should make one.” But I digress…)   

Kevin’s dilemma got me thinking –  is this what is known as “cybersquatting”?  Is there any remedy for this sort of thing? Does Kevin have any recourse?

In fact, there are a couple of different mechanisms for resolving a cybersquatting dispute, and my understanding of them was greatly assisted by some basic knowledge about the development of the Internet and some tech-related acronyms like “DNS”, “IP” and “ccTLD”. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, then I ask for your indulgence while I lay out some of the basic IT background. It’s a bit lengthy so if you are computer-savvy, you may just want to skip part 1. Read the rest of this entry »