trademark Trademark Issue - Namesilo Deactivated Our Domain - 14+ Year Old Domain Effectively Causing Our Business To Cease Functioning

[Albert Wesker]

Dear Namesilo Team,

Domain Deactivated
I was informed our domain was deactivated which occurred at 11:30 PM EST on February 3, 2024.

Our Business
We run a forum marketplace and Namesilo decision to deactivate the domain has caused our business to cease functioning, critical emails which access certain accounts to stop working and will ultimately would lead to our business closing after over 10 years of being operational if this isn't fixed. We run a legitimate business in the United States that has over 1.6 million members, tens of thousands of visitors daily, 22 million threads, 15 workers and over 1,000+ freelance sellers who depend on our platform to make a financial living. For myself, my family depends on the income I receive from this business and our livelihood is immediately impacted now. Thousands of people depend on our site to generate income for themselves.

NameSilo Live Chat Support Response
After speaking with the Namesilo live chat team, they said it was due to a trademark dispute. That a complaint was filed with the Namesilo Abuse Team and they deactivated the domain. That we need to email support and they will respond within 24 hours. A few hours later, I was informed by the same team in chat that a company filed a single complaint over a single post that someone else posted, the company worded it to sound like we were doing something illegal and without any notice or explanation, Namesilo deactivated the domain. The company could have directly reported it to us through our DMCA takedown links, this was never done (I checked). They went straight to Namesilo and reported it. Namesilo instead of forwarding us this complaint just deactivated the site didn't respond back to us or give us anytime to rectify the situation.

Per Namesilo Abuse Reporting Procedures

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All abuse reports must be made via our abuse reporting form.

Once we receive abuse complaints, we follow the steps as listed below:

• We determine if the complaint is directly related to usage of our services. For example, as we do not provide web site hosting, we are not the party storing or distributing any allegedly-infringing content, sending out email you may consider spam, etc.
• If the complaint is directly-related to our services, we will contact the registrant and/or account holder and ask them to respond to the complaint within 72 hours. If they respond, and we find their response satisfactory as not being in violation of our terms, then we close the complaint.
• If we do not receive a response within 72 hours from the account holder or registrant, and we find the report(s) in the complaint as in violation of our terms, then we may take additional action at that time.

Please note that we are not a shortcut around due process. We are not an arbiter of trademark, copyright, intellectual property, etc. disputes. There are established processes in place for dealing with many common disputes, but we are not to be used as a shortcut around those processes. We are also not a law enforcement investigative body. We are a domain registrar. We do not believe it is the role of domain registrars to determine what is legal and what is not. This is the purview of the legal process within the locales in which alleged offenses occur. Please do not contact us with the goal of circumventing the legal process. Remember that we are a domain registrar and not a government agency, a police force or a judge of legal matters. Please do not ask us to determine if content on a web site is legal or not. In the vast majority of such cases, that determination is not objective and there are nearly always areas of disagreement between parties. As a domain registrar, we are not to be used to render decisions on these matters unless directed to do so via a court or similar agency of adequate jurisdiction, or indisputable evidence that a violation of our terms has occurred.

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Our Response
We have not received any notice of any trademark disputes from Namesilo or any other party ever in 10 years of operating our site. As a forum with over 1.6 million members, 22 million threads, we often receive GDPR, DMCA takedown requests. We have links on our site to specifically request content taken down and we are up to date on these requests. It's very possible that they might submit the complaints directly with Namesilo Abuse Team instead of directly through us. However if there are any disputes, we will gladly resolve them immediately. The problem is we were never informed what needs to be removed / what links etc. They just disabled the domain without any notice or explanation.

We are pleading with the namesilo team to work with us to get this resolved. Any issues we will gladly resolve and if it's a domain you cannot support on your platform, we will be happy to transfer the domain to another DNS provider.

I have contacted @namesilo and @Kristaps @ NameSilo as well.

 

[Albert Wesker]

I opened this thread to seek legal assistance how you guys would handle this.

On my end I figure I will give namesilo until Monday to resolve this. I don't want bad blood, I want this over with and resolved professionally on their end. If they do that I will gladly mark all my issues resolved and move on.

However if they aren't going to assist me here, what are your thoughts on how I should handle this? I already have an attorney out in Arizona who can handle this matter and has handled "other" issues in the past not related to this domain but business contracts and domain acquisitions.

 

[Albert Wesker]

This issue is resolved.

You can close this.