I Bought a Celebrity's Abandoned Domain and Connected It to Hive
Anybody remember old-school Disney Channel back in the good old days? Remember Kim Possible? Remember Even Stevens? That movie Cadet Kelly?
Did you know that we went to the Moon in 1969? Not 1968, but a year later. @lasseehlers believes NASA faked the whole event but this song proves it happened.
A few months ago I became aware that the domain christyromano.com hadn't been renewed. I waited a few months and the christyromano.com domain sat there unclaimed by Christy Carlson Romano or anybody else. When Namecheap had a 50% off .com registration holiday special; just like Francis Lurman I knew a good deal when I saw it and seized the opportunity. Then, I created the @iamnotchristy account on Hive and connected christyromano.com to the blockchain using @engrave. Voilà! Web3 unofficial fan site for Christy Carlson Romano. It's still new and needs some more work.
Image Source: christyromano.com
As far as I can tell Christy Carlson Romano still has christycarlsonromano.com registered. According to the WHOIS record for christycarlsonromano.com it is still active. Unless it is renewed again, the domain's registration will expire on June 26, 2024.
Christycarlsonromano.com has been registered since 2003. From the Wayback Machine the first archive for the christyromano.com domain I now own is April 4, 2001.
Image Source: archive.org
Between then and June 2004 as far as I can tell from archive.org snapshots of christyromano.com the domain website was "Coming Soon". The first archived snapshot of an actual website on christyromano.com is June 10, 2004. Looking at christycarlsonromano.com on the wayback machine the two domains seem to have roughly become active around the same time mirroring the same content.
The Wayback Machine appears to have archived the most changes between 2004 through 2006. Between 2006 and 2009 it seems updates were fewer and ended around 2009 when both domains went dark. Except for a brief window in mid-2019 both domains function were effectively defunct.
Image Source: archive.org
I don't know why the christyromano.com domain was abandoned. It appears that ever since Web 2.0 started gaining steam Christy Carlson Romano focused her attention more on social media and hardly any on her centralized websites. Maybe she has something planned that only needs one domain without mirroring the content. Maybe it had something to do with the recent actors' strike and cutting back on expenses. Who knows?
Anyway, christyromano.com has found its way from being a centralized official celebrity website to a decentralized unofficial fan website running on the Hive blockchain. Since The Walt Disney Company seems determined to destroy its own reputation maybe some nostalgic fans will want to reminisce and also find their way to Hive.
That is interesting and what I believe to be a very smart move on your part.
!BEER
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@rentmoney(1/10) tipped @holovision
Hmmmm ... interesting.
So, you post to the Christy Romano domain name and the content appears on Hive? I'm guessing Engrave is a WordPress plugin, like Exxp?
There could be any number of reasons why the domain name was abandoned. It could have been unintentionally. If she hired someone to manage it and they failed to keep it up, she may not know it's been abandoned. Or, maybe she's in rehab or recovering from some trauma. When she comes to her senses and begins to look for the domain name, she may want it back. In that case, you might be sued if you aren't willing to sell it back to her at a reasonable price. Domain squatters very often lose in court when a brand decides they want their branded domain name.
Still, cool idea.
Sorry, maybe I should have also wrote a little more about @engrave. What I did was import to christyromano.com from Hive. It looks like it is possible to pust to christyromano.com from the dashboard and have it also post on Hive but I haven'r tried doing that yet. Maybe I'll try that later today.
True but none of the reasons I can think of seem to be any of my business. I don't think any reasonable person looking at the history of the domain would say I was unreasonable about my belief that the domain has been abandoned. Year after year since the domain was registered in 2001 the daomain had been renewed without fail. Between 2004-2009 it was active and the last time it was used was 2019. I don't know what registrar Christy Carlson Romano used but I am sure that registrar has a grace period after the renewal deadline lapses before the domain becomes available to anyone else to register. For my regitrar it's 90 days. If her registrar also has a 90 day grace period then I know for a fact it's been at least six months since Christy Romano should have renewed christyromano.com because I could have registered christyromano.com more than 90 days ago but I waited to give the previous domain owner the chance to still reclaim the domain.
I don't know why Christy Romano wouldn't be using the process under ICANN"s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. The domain duspute process is more efficient and since that process exists courts can deal with more pressing matters than a dispute over a domain. I guess if Christy Carlson Romano shows up two years from now it would be a lot more obvious that she had in fact abandoned her domain and her only chance getting the domain back would be through the courts. After years of not hearing anything I wouldn't sell her domain back to her at any price because I would have already put a lot of my time and effort into it by then. If Christy Romano is going to dispute my claim to christyromano.com it is better that she does it sooner rather than later.
When all else fails there is the Electronic Frontier Foundation I guess.F
It sounds like you've done your due diligence. It's been a while since I looked into ICANN matters, but I just wanted to warn you of a potential pitfall if you hadn't thought about it already. Sounds like you have.
Well, I didn't just swoop in and register christyromano.com the moment I was aware that it had dropped. I did wait a reasonable amount of time to give the former domain owner more chance to reclaim the domain. There would have been plenty of time to double-check what the three main elements to satisfy are to have a successful domain dispute complaint and if any of those elements probably couldn't be met.😁
I realize of course Christy Romano could opt for a court case rather than going through the domain dispute process but then the question is why she would do that. Why ignore the more efficient and cheaper option and go for the option that makes a court system that already has arguably too many cases to go through and deal with have one more added to their queue that could be dealt with more efficiently by another method?
That is to your credit.
Dang! I just realized that instead of that large amount of text in my last reply I could have just pointed out that Henry Starling Did Nothing Wrong. If I argued that a fictional character had the right to claim a 29th century timeship that crashed in the late 20th century then of course registering a celebrity's abandoned domain isn't a problem in my view.
Oh, well. There's the short version along with the long version of why I am confident in my belief.😁
Fiction and reality are two different things. I wouldn't base my real world decisions based on the success or failure of a fictional character. lol
The point I was trying to (I though humorously) make was I could do some mental gymnastics to justify my belief if I needed to. I don't need to in this case.
I think I can understand why you would want to sympathize with her side. O.K. Let's just focus on the reality. Let me pose this to you:
I own the domains holovision.tv and holovision.mobi. This isn't hypothetical. I actually do own these two domains. I've had holovision.tv since 2007 and holovision.mobi since 2009. I've renewed each domain every year since their registration without fail.
I've been actively using holovision.tv but I have hardly used holovision.mobi except for a few years I had a few holovision.mobi e-mail addresses. Again, this is not hypothetical.
I have been using the user name Holovision on the internet for almost 20 years. Again, this is not hypothetical. I can use archive.org's Wayback Machine to prove this.
I need to renew my holovision.mobi domain by July 20, 2024 to retain ownship for an additional year. If I want to and can afford it I can renew holovision.mobi for up to 10 years. Again, this is not hypothetical.
With all that what if I don't renew holovision.mobi by the July 20, 2024 deadline and six months later in 2025 someone else starts using holovision.mobi?
I am not applying a different standard to someone else than I apply to myself.
Fundamentally domain renewal is like rent. I am an adult and Christy Carlson Romano is an adult. Adults understand rent. Pay your rent or else you lose what you are renting so someone else can rent and use it.
Since we're focusing on reality I won't bring up the whole soap opera amnesia thing. Forgetting where you live and after recovering discovering the landlord rented your apartment out to a new tenant. I don't believe soap opera amnesia should be an excuse to kick out the new tenant so you can have your apartment back though.
First, I don't sympathize with Christy Carlson Romano. As a journalist, I deal with facts. Since you seem to have some respect for reality, here are a few sources that show domain squatters can get sued:
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, domain name disputes have also gone in favor of the domain holder and not the brand seeking the domain, so it's not a done deal. Every case is different. Whether Romano goes the route of domain name resolution through ICANN or tries to use the court system to assert her trademark and brand rights, you should know that it is a danger. You might win, you might lose. Either way, there is a risk of action being taken against you. That doesn't mean action WILL be taken against you. She may decide to do nothing, even if she knows you took her domain name.
I was simply informing you of a possibility. No need to defend yourself against me. I'm not suing and don't care what you do with the domain name. But the Romano may. Those are facts.
Yeah, I already knew that is a possibility. Calculated risk is a thing.
O.K. I think I understand your position a little better now that I know you are a journalist. However, there is one thing I am wondering. As a journalist I believe you are supposed to examine both sides. I couldn't help but notice that all the examples you gave had at least one thing in common. All those cases were against people who registered domain names in bad faith. Do you have any examples in which a person registered a domain name in good faith and lost in either court or domain dispute?
Off the top of my head, I don't. But I'd suppose that if a domain name was registered in good faith, then that would favor them in court. After all, domain name disputes are really trademark disputes for the internet age and the problem with trademarks infringement is that it is almost 100 percent done in bad faith. People rarely "accidentally" infringe on another's trademark and when it happens it's done because they failed to conduct a proper trademark search in the first place. Negligence is no excuse.
That said, enforcement of civil laws depend a great deal on the details. Every rule has an exception and every exception has a contingency. Those, in turn, have rules and exceptions and contingencies.
Here's an interesting article on celebrity domain names with some excellent commentary on winners and losers.
Another thing I'd say about that is it often doesn't matter whether you acted in good faith or not. This may not come into play in your case, but if a celebrity has the money to withstand a long court battle and you don't, you may find yourself on unsure footing simply because of the economics of legal battles. But I'm sure you already know that.
And none of this is to say you've done anything in bad faith. You can be sued even if you do everything right.
I didn't just grab the domain when I became aware that it was available. I've been considering this for awhile and then decided. You've only been considering whether or not I should have for a day or two.
Maybe give yourself a few more days. Research what "cybersquatting" is exactly. Read the UDRP policy. Stuff like that.
Or have an AI do your investigative journalism while you learn to code.😁
Sorry, sorry. I know that's a sensitive point.😁
Oh, and add "nominative use" to the list for you or your AI chatbot to look into.
In case you're busy because the python lesson about threading isn't going as well as you hoped you can just look at this page link below. You don't even need to scroll down on the linked page. Super easy, barely an inconvenience. Ask Ryan George if you don't believe me.😁
https://fairwindspartners.com/is-nominative-fair-use-of-domain-names-ok-for-a-business-that-is-related-to-a-brand/
You're welcome. 😁
O.K. So you never said either way what should happen if after using the name Holovision for almost 20 years I don't renew my holovision.mobi domain in July. I guess according to what you have replied that as long as I have a trademark on Holovision I should be able to just show up later and have little problem demanding holovision.mobi back even if the next person who registers holovision.mobi is using it legitimately in their own way. I am not sure why you think the domain renewal process exists then since trademark would be a license to renew whenever a trademark owner just feels like paying the renewal fee.
Also not sure why you think the domain dispute process exists. According to you trademark infringements are almost 100% bad faith. The evidence you provide is a list of one-sided outliers. You aren't interested in the good faith claims as much so maybe that's why you perceive the percent to be so high. Is it the word "million" that impresses you? If a person that registered a domain in good faith wins the dispute they just prevail. I would think as a "journalist" that believes in that almost 100% estimate any stories of an underdog defeating a trademark owener and keeping a domain would be just as interesting of a story as a trademark owner getting millions of dollars. Maybe even more interesting depending on who the trademark owner is that the underdog was against. When asked if you had any examples of filing in good faith but still losing you didn't seem interested in even trying to go and find one. That would affect your estimate, wouldn't it?
I wonder if you believe almost all copyright "fair use" claims are made in bad faith? If I went through your blog how many examples of fair use would I find? Are you a naughty copyright infringer or just a blogger that feels that sometimes freedom of speech trumps a limited monopoly?
I sure would ike to know how you arrived at that "almost 100 percent" estimate? Was it Disney? It was Disney that told you that, wasn't it? You can tell me.😁
Yikes! You just went off the rails.
I don't believe any of the things you just ascribed to me. Now I'm done.
Really? You dpn't believe any of the things? For a moment I thought that meant you went back and edited out that part about "...the problem with trademarks infringement is that it is almost 100 percent done in bad faith...". Nope, it's still in that reply of yours. Literally the stupidest thing I have heard or read in quite awhile. I check out @lasseehlers' blog whenever I feel like seeing something stupid but that almost 100% thing of yours beats what @lasseehlers offers.
Don't be so modest @allentaylor. That's an accomplishment ... of some kind I guess.
Anyway, this post is about my getting an abandoned celebrity's domain and connecting it to Hive as an unofficial fan site. While trying to keep you somewhat on topic and away from general trademark you did in fact drag me off the rails. No argument there.
Could have done without the stupid bomb you dropped but I am glad you are willing to move on so we can get back to what this post was originally about.
I didn't drag you anywhere, dude. You went there on your own. My only point was that you could get sued. I never said this phantom celebrity of yours would win. You concocted all that fantasy stuff on your own.
Fine. That is a very big brain point that I could get sued by the "phantom celebrity" and I am not only impressed by your large I.Q. inference but also secretly jealous of your ability to use logic.
You said you were done. Can you please actually be done before I start posting about Even Stevens and Kim Possible? I am totally unaware that Disney could technically sue me for copyright infringement if I use a single image without their expressed written permission to refer to an important scene in one of my episode reviews even if i give attribution. Ignorance is bliss and you giving me a list of all the times Disney has won suing people that sold homemade silkscreen shirts of Kim Possible on e-bay would make me feel doomed.
I'm happy for you.
Wow, that sounds cool. I am going to tweet this. Hope you get visitors and people start to give Hive more recognition.
Nice! Thank you for your support.👍
Also, in case you aren't aware there is a poll for what kind of content christyromano.com should focus on to begin.
https://peakd.com/hive-120019/@holovision/what-kind-of-content-should-christyromanocom-focus-on-first
So far it looks like a tie between "Alternate between Kim Possible and Even Stevens episode reviews" and "Other (Please reply with a suggestion)". Hopefully some more votes will come in soon to break the tie.
super interesting post and activity here. I certainly feel like a nostalgic fan after having watched Even Stevens as a kid. I would love to see this type of activity as productive for the platform. Sincerely hope it is well received by celebrities and fans alike.