HW: .com

[Paul Mather]

On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Guido N. Vacano wrote:

=> Well Andy, maybe hawkwind.com should be renamed (ala Primus)
=> hawkwindsucks.com, and a big banner should be put up saying it's a way
=> unofficial site. I think Hawkwind has a right to "hawkwind.com", but it'd
=> sure be nice if they had pursued the claim in a less heavy-handed fashion,
=> and without the involvement of lawyers. Hell, why couldn't they buy the site
=> name for $100 or so to compensate, at least in a small way, all the work
=> that had been put into it, and continue on. This all reminds me of when Mike
=> Holmes was compelled to stop publishing his Codex, because of similar legal
=> nonsense.
=>
=> I'll bet "hawkwindsucks.com" is available . . .

Currently, it is.  But, most others are not.  For example,
cybersquatters appear long ago to have jumped on hawkwind.net and
hawkwind.org.  Hawklords.com is taken (by Capt. Cloud, I seem to
recall), as is hawklords.net.  (Hawklords.org seems to be free.)  Given
you can register domains for <$10/year these days, maybe Hawkwind should
snap up the ones that are still left, and reclaim those that have been
cybersquatted by default.  (Consider it a business expense.)

All this "getting the domain back" strikes a chord here.  Recently, due
to administrative bungling on our part, we lost control of a domain we'd
registered (which shall remain nameless, to protect the innocent:).
One day, its www. address pointed to a WWW site detailing a major
international conference, the next (literally so) it pointed to a
vanilla shopping/banner ad site!  Someone trawling the lists of recently
retired domains had bought it up immediately it had expired, and pointed
it to the vanilla site.  I guess the people that do this figure that a
source of hits is a source of hits (never mind if it is what people
are expecting)...

One of our lab members looked into getting the domain back.  It seems
there is an official arbitration procedure, but, the minimum cost to go
through it is $1500 for the folks initiating the claim.  Luckily for us,
a phone call and a deal got the domain transferred back to us by its new
owner for only $75.  (Like I said, we were lucky.)  I note the owners of
hawkwind.org want £2000 for it (or £240/year to rent, though you can
"use now for a good idea" for free:).

Personally, I always thought "hawkwind.net" was the better domain name
for the band's dissemination activities (as .net is used by many band
sites, at least in jam band circles).  But, as I said above, that
appears to be gone (although available for bids in excess of $50, it
seems).

Finally, personally, I think the band have treated Andy Gilham shabbily.
Last time I saw a band treating loyal fans like this, the words
"Metallica" and "Napster" seemed to be involved. :-)  You simply can't
buy bad publicity like this.  Good one, Hawkwind!

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa