Domain Registration Related News
Lord of your domain
November 2004
You might reasonably think that a decade after
the internet started to be widely known, all those
amusing spats about name ownership would be
ancient history. Not a bit of it.
Henry Maxwell, bespoke bootmakers to, among
others, HM Queen Elizabeth II, discovered the
problems of domain ownership earlier this year
with henrymaxwell.com. The company failed to
re-register it and when it expired it was bought
by someone else. Now type henrymaxwell.com into
your browser and you get redirected to a site
whose robust content is more about booty than
boots.
"Were to blame really," says general manager
Peter Martin, "we just werent interested enough
and we let it lapse." This is, he explains, a real
problem for smaller companies. Henrymaxwell.com
had been registered through a third party which
provided email and web services. But these were
fairly expensive, so the business rather lost
interest. And, when it lapsed, a pornographer
jumped in and snapped it up.
Naturally they were aghast. But, says Martin,
There was nothing we could really do. We looked
into getting it back but that was far too
expensive." Luckily Henry Maxwell is not the
companys main brand (which is Foster and Son) nor
does it do a huge amount of business over the
internet. So they took it on the chin, dropped the
.com, registered .co.uk and changed the
stationery.
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