My New Website OrderDirect.TV Can They Mess With Me?

[Hershon]

What is the name of your state? CA

I was fooling around with domain names the other day on GoDaddy and I was shocked that
OrderDirect.TV was available. .TV for those of you who don't know is a minor domain extension similar to .org & .net but actually stands for a nation called Tuvalu. Many people use this domain for media entertainment but it can be used for anything. I bought this domain name for around $8.99 mainly for the purpose of reselling the name. The domain selling market of which I own about 55 names is harder then I anticipated and I thought this was just going to be like "flipping" real estate. So I decided until I sell it, I may as well develop it into a website and see what happens. I should add, I would never have the balls to buy a name that was something like OrderDirectTV.com or anything else where the words OrderDirectTV are grouped next to each other without a separation of a domain suffix. I only have the words OrderDirect next to each other. Do you see the point I'm making? I was accepted into a bunch of affiliate programs- what that means is, if you say have a banner ad for an approved product and someone clicks it and actually buys the product from the company, you get paid a commission. One of my affiliates is Direct TV. So to cut to the chase, I have a bunch of banner ads for Direct TV that are almost the first thing you see on the site. My website I admit is totally amateurish, I don't have the money to do anything better & I used a free program with hosting from GoDaddy called Website Tonight. I thought about putting banner ads up for places like the Dish Network too but decided not to as I thought that would be taking things too far. I have banner ads for a bunch of other products that have nothing to do with Satellite TV or Direct TV.

If I was to get a lawyer, are any of you lawyers by the way who would do this for a %, do you think I could sell Direct TV the rights of this domain name? I do not see how this is copyright or trademark infringement. Alternatively, could Direct TV harass me for the name? I could see them making me take the Banner ads from them down. If that was the case, I could then run banner ads for say the "Dish Network", right and they couldn't tell me to cease and desist or could they?

Any advice or am I making too much out of this & I'm too small a fish for Direct TV to care about or buy me out?

 

[The Occultist]

Direct TV will likely never purchase it from you, and were you to attempt to sell it to them, you could indeed find some bullying coming your way. You may wish to research anti-cyber squatting laws.

 

[mrgonzo]

Well in my opinion that is hardly a good domain name - how many .tv sites do you see? And the wording of it is confusing, people may type in "orderdirecttv.com" not realizing that "tv" is the extension, just because most people haven't been to a .tv site.

As far as an affiliate program, they usually have guidelines on what content you can use and how you can display it - if your promoting direct tv anyway, there is no reason for them to be upset - its not like you'll be anywhere close to them on search engines.

and by the way, there is nothing wrong with buying "OrderDirectTV.com", if your promoting their product then you are not confusing the customer and their is no issue - the issue would only come when you try to sell a competing satellite service from that domain that could confuse people into thinking its direct tv.

 

[Zigner]

My Advice:
Listen to The Occultist and ignore MrGonzo