MySpace.com Wins MySpace.co.uk
By Christopher Nickson
February 04, 2008
In a decidedly controversial decision, MySpace has won the rights to the MySpace.co.uk domain name — which was registered long before MySpace existed.
Money talks, might is right…they’re old clichés, but worth dusting off again in the light of a decision made by the Dispute Resolution Service of domain registry Nominet, according to Vnunet, which gave the American company MySpace the rights to myspace.co.uk, the British version of the domain.
Myspace.co.uk was first registered six years before MySpace.com was even born, and was a working domain. In the wake of MySpace.com’s success, however, it began hosting and taking money for ads for MySpace.
Nominet’s considered decision was that although the registration wasn’t originally abusive, it became so after it began running the ads.
"This decision is counter-intuitive at first sight and serves as a warning that domain registrations are not guaranteed and need to be secured by proactive management as well as a clear understanding of the dynamic nature of the industry,” Jonathan Robinson, COO of Netnames, told Vnunet.
The owner of myspace.co.uk might have made money from his ads, but if he’d had more patience, her could probably have made a lot more when MySpace offered to buy the domain from him – which they would almost certainly have done.