I'm not sure where to stick this question. But here goes.

I'm starting a forum for a niche topic, however it's come to my attention a group of people are trying to develop their own forum within the same niche and topic subjects. They have a chaotic phb (I think that's what it's called) temporary forum hosted on someone's personal site and have a 20 member following of their "e-friends". So they have yet to purchase their domain due to lack of leadership and whatever else that holds them back. They have been sitting on the project for a 3 months now as they develop their temporary forum to see if it's worth going full steam ahead.

So my question is, the domain they've said they wanted is available right now, would it be wrong of me to purchase their domain, and create a site off it for my own purposes like a psuedo-blog? The purpose of course is to prevent them from moving from their temporary, fledgling forum to something that would be a potential competion for my forum.

I will probably won't purchase it, but the thought had cross my mind. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

if you want to lock it, it isn't to expensive and you can just send that domain to your actual domain. Or add it in cpanel as addon domain. Or just use it for something else like a link directory for your niche market

Pricing for a domain isn't to expensive these days except if you have some exotic extension. At least 'they' can't use it anymore

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Squatting only applies to trademarks and copyrighted names IIRC.

Grab it and use it.

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What about violating intellectual property? They came up with the site idea.

Doesn't really matters, unless and until they register the domain or trademark, they don't have any legal standings. Though they might just try to mess with you, apart from that there is nothing much they can do!

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I would grab it for sure, their problem for posting what url they wanted.

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Okay the consensus is to "steal" or grab it before they do.

Now I have to figure out if it's worth $20 a year (domain+private reg) to squash out the potential forum competitor. Thoughts on this?

Thanks!

You will not eliminate potential competition in your niche. They can come up with a similar name and domain and use it.

Since neither of you have a legal claim to the name as of now, when and if a conflict arises in the future, if one has money, it may go to court.

If you consider this advice stealing, your post right there will be referenced in court and you already lose.

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vBPicGallery - The photo gallery for vBulletin forums.
Talk to bikers around the world about motorcycles.

Who said anything about stealing? Ths is not their domain. Its available. Just grab it.

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Well, I'm sure someone could make the arguement that it's their intellectual property and they had an intent to use it as they get organized. I asked my lawyer friends this question, they said something to that effect; what I was doing was monopolizing the niche. If it were to be taken into court, I would likely lose on the intellectual property grounds since having a similar topic forum and my intent was to keep them from growing. They already have banners, signature banners with the domain acryomn, etc. They just don't have the domain. Silly them.

However, even still, I'm tempted to just grab it because most likely no one is going to go the court route for a forum's domain.