This is funny and shows what can happen if you don't keep an eye on your domain name renewal.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/09/family-first-nz-forgot-to-renew-its-domain-name-lost-it-to-pro-gay-marriage-group/

New Zealand’s political climate isn’t too dissimilar from ours right now. They’re mulling over plain packaging, a carbon tax, a fibre-broadband network and the controversial issue of same-sex marriage. A staunch opponent to the marriage equality movement is Family First New Zealand — a political party that recently collected 50,000 signatures against the move. Little did they know that as they passed around slips of paper to be signed, their domain name had fallen out of registration. It was then swooped on by none other than a pro-Marriage Equality movement.

haha it happened to uq.edu.au yesterday

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/09/the-university-of-queensland-forgot-to-renew-its-domain-name/

The domain name system is so broken, don't even get me started
It's an industry dominated by pieces of shit, scheisters, and downright criminals.

last edited by thermite at 15:27:07 04/Sep/12

All is fair in love, war and attacks against the family first party.

I would say it won't hold up just because 'family first' is in the actual domain name which is a registered trading name.

Especially given the fact they were previously using it they will get it back - however it will take a bit of time and probably some legal expense as well.

I can't see why. Once a domain name expires it is freely available.

Agreed. I know nothing about the whole domain name change but i mean tough tits, they fucked up and got caught out. Same thing would happen in plenty of cases where not doing something by a certain date allows another person/party to get in on the action.

Easiest example i can think of is our current first house. Our application process was beaten by another couple who obviously didnt have their finances and loans in order cause after 2 weeks or whatever passed, they still didnt have their shit approved where as we had preapproval, real estate agent approached us and we did the deed immediately. Do i feel sorry for the other couple? Fuck no.

Not sure about the legal definition of close and substantial but marriage equality could probably make an argument there is that link.

The comments of the Gizmodo article say some pretty agreeable things:

Well, they bought “familyfirst.co.nz” and they are campaigning about FAMILY issues that they want put FIRST. So considering the address was available and relates directly to the cause they are promoting I don’t consider it squatting.

The vagueness of the party name is their own damn fault. They wanted to make people think they were high and moral by ‘putting families first’, well someone else decided they wanted to put out a different idea of what families are – ie, inclusive. Marriage equality is about letting people *have* families. I don’t see much more that’s family first than that…

Any party that obviously tries to have a manipulative name can fuck off to be honest. Though I do understand that they wouldn't want to call themselves the Christian Social Conservatives cause then they would get even less votes. The "Liberal" Party isn't much better, it's always funny explaining to non-Australians that our major conservative party is called the Liberal Party and seeing the looks on their faces. And don't even get me started on Communist (ex-)countries' names like the German Democratic Republic and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea!

doesn't sound feasible hermi
even registrars that don't have automatic credit card renewal give you months of notice when a domain is coming up for renewal. how could someone keep a site unavailable that long, let alone their telephone numbers

It's an industry dominated by pieces of shit, scheisters, and downright criminals.

Totally agree, and I would know - I used to work for AusRegistry.

which of those are you, raven?