How Did Brent Spiner Not Get BrentSpiner.com?

[fm1234]

Kind of one of Legal Issues, but since it doesn't pertain to a domain I own, I figured I'd put it in the general forum.

Brent Spiner may not be a celebrity everyone recognises, but he's a celebrity on par with deific status among geeks and nerds. Even years after his last major television or film exposure, WordTracker suggests his name gets more than 10,000 exact match searches on Google every month, plus a few thousand more for long tail and derivative terms. Point being, he is definitely not an unknown person, and has not been for some 25 years or so since he first showed up on Star Trek.

So ... how did he not just grab BrentSpiner.com from the guy who registered it, slapped up an forwarder targeting Spiner's name and redirected to an MFA celebrity site, and then apparently tried to schmuck Spiner out of a huge amount of money for the name?

(see Archive.org snapshot and this interview with Spiner, which touches on the reason his official website sites at TheRealBrentSpiner.com rather than the obvious domain right at the four-minute mark.)

Just seems kind of confusing to me, especially since the domain was originally regged at the height of Spiner's popularity (1996, when he had two hit movies and a Tony-nominated Broadway show.) And he apparently tried to get it at one point, to judge by this tweet from 2009.

Any veterans know the story behind this domain?


Frank

 

[Ms Domainer]

*

Among Trekkies, Brent Spiner is still very popular, perhaps not superstar status.

Who could ever forget his great Data?

Perhaps he should have nabbed Data.com (back in the day, when it might have been available).



*

 

[Bannen]

Still many big celebs who don't own their dot.com (like PenelopeCruz.com etc). You'd think in this age of cyber-importance anyone who is popular enough to be considered a 'star' would definitely own their own namesake's real estate in dot.com.
But even celebs are human, ha, and some of them just aren't interested in the dot.com of things just like anyone might not be interested in paintball or midget porn.
I'm a fan of Spiner; Data was one of the great left-field classic roles (like Spock) to be offered by the entertainment universe, and he filled it perfectly

 

[zoomactive.com]

While I agree with Banen, it is stupid for anyone famous or not to not own their own domain name especially .com and .me. This is all about reputation management. You don't want some ass destroying your reputation by having the .com do you? The only trick is being first to get there and then never letting it go.

 

[cdboard]

fyi, he has a role on "warehouse 13". don't know how long it will last.

 

[Reinbeast]

I thought I read Spiner was going to be in six episodes. IMDb currently lists four. So, he has either one or three to go.

And he should be given a little slack for not registering his name asap. It's stupid now not to snap up your name, but this was all the way back in '96. How many celebrities really thought about doing that then?

 

[Dave_Z]

While I agree with Banen, it is stupid for anyone famous or not to not own their own domain name especially .com and .me. This is all about reputation management. You don't want some ass destroying your reputation by having the .com do you?

Is Mr. Spiner's "reputation" even remotely affected to begin with, I wonder? If anyone's going to decide whether that's affected or not, though, it's ultimately and solely him.
Mr. Spiner probably saw there's little to no value pursuing his domain name-sake, then registered another version bearing his name. His domain name now seems to be doing fine, despite not having the one with his name only.

(Live long and prosper. Ooops, wrong line.)

 

[DubDubDubDot]

It's all about Facebook and Twitter now. Celeb's don't need FirstLast.com. They would do fine with 843nds55498f-j02.com in this new landscape.