Dr. Neil Hair

Another high profile case of cyber squatting with a pleasing outcome. I'm always coming across students who think its a great idea to buy a few domain names because they're there. I blame the domain name suppliers in part for in some cases helping to artificially hike the value of a name. Confusion though still exists in a number of cases, you cant for instance purchase a friends domain name and expect to keep it if this is done in bad faith. In simple terms this means you cant then go ahead and post compromising pictures of the individual partying in Bermudas or sipping beer through a funnel.  A costly court case to recover the domain may ensue and you're left paying costs. Confusion does exist however in areas such as the misspelt domain name - a marketers nightmare once again - mircrosoft was a good example of this as was amazom back in the late 90's (they own it now but at the time this forwarded you onto competing e-retailers sites). I also recall the rit sucks fiasco of the late 90's, what started as a harmless prank soon led to the lawyers getting involved. What was interesting about that site was the fact that it's primary purpose was to offer a forum for people to complain. Granted some of these weren't legitimate but some did prove interesting reading. That's another story. The point is - who owns the right to a 'bitch back' domain? Interesting times…