Rights to a domain name

Im a member of a voluntry tourism committee that have recenctly set up a website for tourist information on our town. When registering www.(mytownname).ie I had to give reasons as to why i was using it and my connections with the town. There was no problem with this as i am from the area

The problem is there is a person from my county that owns www.(mytownname).com. He is not from the area and the information he has displayed on this page does not do the town justice.

Has he any right to own this domain name?

Giblet

Why wouldn't he? He got there first.

Danbo!

Anyone can buy any .com address if it's available.

The IE addresses are a little harder to get, you need to prove your company name, area name, birth name, etc.. depending on the domain name.

Giblet

Giblet wrote: »

Why wouldn't he? He got there first.

I was just making sure as I had to go through alot to get the same .ie address. If I was not from the area I did not have much of a chance. Thought it might be the same with the .com but obviously I was wrong

seamus

There is a ICANN Dispute Policy for disagreement over the rightful control of domains. These generally involve cases where someone is using a domain to breach trademarks, "cybersquat" for the purposes of making money or otherwise abusing the freedom of the domain name system for their own nefarious purposes.

As no trademark is involved here, there's not a whole lot you can do, this other guy has the same right to the domain as you do.

The .ie system is a little more restrictive but by and large you can register most things .ie if you can state an intention for the domain. There doesn't necessarily have to exist a limited company or business name so long as you can state some degree of claim or purpose for the domain.

E.g.
http://www.cult.ie/ or www.culch.ie

Thank you for the helpful answer Seamus. I was almost sure this was the case from my research. Oh well off I go to try and get him to sell it