This admin is seriously asking to be sued (domain squatting/ransom)

Well, it's an interesting story I read online, it involves a forum community, and it involves someone trying some rather ridiculous promotion method of questionable legality:

Infinity Ward Blackmailed over Modern Warfare 4 - News

In simple terms, this group bought the domain 'modernwarfare4.com, and then said to the developers of the Call of Duty series that they'll only sell it if every single one of their forum members gets a free copy of a game that's likely to be released in about four years. It's an interesting idea they had for promotion (although closing registrations on their forum basically killed any benefits of the publicity), but isn't this kind of thing usually illegal, and often something that can be resolved via trademark disputes? It's not as if they're going to get away with a good faith argument if they've set up a ransom site, asked for free video games and sent a demanding letter to the company.

 

if I represented the company, I'd register modernwarfareiv.com and start naming my games with Roman numerals.

 

Maybe, just maybe the lamest PR stunt I've seen in about 6 months.

It won't end well for him at all.

 

Infinity Ward will just ignore it and host the future game's site on a subdomain like the others. If the individual with the domain is in the U.S. or the E.U. (or it is registered within those regions), then Infinity Ward can also just submit a cybersquatting motion to the court and be awarded the name for the normal registration price.

 

lol love it when people try to scam and it backfires - I admire what he tried to do make some extra cash if he said instead of buying this domain for $20 you can have it for $30 I could admire him for it as most people love a little bit of extra cash but asking for copies of a game that is four years away for each of their 69 members or whatever it is is just rediculous.

That is like me registering vbulletin.com.au and saying - Hey vB you can have that domain if you give me a free license and the works - I could see them kicking my butt with all court documents haha.

 

Between this, and Twitter users' new tactic, trying to have Threadless print T-shirts with their websites' URLs on them, I don't know which is the more stupid way to advertise. This is definitely the most stupid way to get free games, though.

 

CNN has been doing something like that too, offering t-shirts with headlines on them. Can't imagine anyone would buy them unless you were featured in that story.

 

This is definitely the more stupid way of advertising. I can't believe they actually think they can get free games by buying a domain about a game that might not even ever exist and 'holding it for ransom' personally. Compared to that, the T-Shirt idea is a tad more plausible as a method of advertising.