from Hacker News

Uzi Nissan (nissan.com) died of covid July 2020 and the website is now down

by bmcahren on 7/1/22, 5:51 PM with 195 comments

• by mikece on 7/1/22, 5:56 PM

  Uzi battled Nissan motor company because the company thought they had the right to take the domain from a man who had registered it because it's his surname. Nissan Motors should have been slapped with a massive punitive fine for that, but instead they continued to bleed Mr. Uzi Nissan of his resources by suing him repeatedly.

  Memo to Nissan Motor Company: it was because of this act of lawfare that I personally renounced ever buying a Nissan again (even though the Altima and Maxima were excellent cars). You deserve to be punished for your actions. I regret that refusing to give you my business isn't worth more.

• by bmcahren on 7/1/22, 5:54 PM

  I was discussing trademarks and domains with somebody today and tried to show them my favorite long-standing trademark dispute nissan.com but it appears all of the website content has been taken down in May 2022.

  Here's one of the last standing copies: https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.co...

  Oh, and digest.com where he told is lawsuit story is now for sale (http://digest.com/)

  https://web.archive.org/web/20220402233023/https://digest.co...

• by zaidf on 7/1/22, 6:47 PM

  Uzi Nissan was one of the more interesting people I met as a freelancer in college. He replied to a craigslist ad and we met for coffee. He had some crazy ideas (and conspiracies:) about all the things he wanted to hire a freelancer to do with nissan.com

• by dang on 7/1/22, 8:24 PM

  Related:

  Nissan Motors vs. Nissan Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25622386 - Jan 2021 (1 comment)

  Nissan.com (is not owned by Nissan the car company) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369990 - Sept 2020 (102 comments)

  Nissan Motor's Lawsuit Against Us - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20680958 - Aug 2019 (1 comment)

  Uzi Nissan Spent 8 Years Fighting Nissan Motor Company to Keep Nissan.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16670141 - March 2018 (83 comments)

  Nissan Motors LawSuit Against Nissan Computer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15919367 - Dec 2017 (5 comments)

  Nissan vs. Nissan (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030968 - Aug 2015 (21 comments)

  Why You Can’t Buy a Car on Nissan.com – Now I Know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692059 - June 2015 (4 comments)

  Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6073980 - July 2013 (85 comments)

• by VoidWhisperer on 7/1/22, 6:23 PM

  While the content of the website appears to be down now, according to the whois[1], the website registration itself with it being registered to Nissan Computer Corp. does not expire until 2024.

  [1]: https://who.is/whois/nissan.com

• by fourstar on 7/1/22, 6:16 PM

  My brother owns (our last name.com). Our great great grandfather started and ran a fairly successful (pre-prohibition) brewery. Someone found out about our last name, trademarked it, and "restarted" the brewery with no relation to anyone in our family. The best part is they feigned ignorance when they "learned" that there were still living descendants in the area...

• by angst_ridden on 7/1/22, 8:28 PM

  I used to work at a web firm that did Nissan USA's web site. I was in meetings where they discussed ways they would finally get the domain from Uzi. They obviously never succeeded. I did learn a lot about trademark law despite myself.

• by kube-system on 7/1/22, 6:20 PM

  It resolves and loads a page for me, it has just been... updated. Wonder if his next of kin will be selling it.

• by chiph on 7/1/22, 10:19 PM

  Uzi was my ISP when I had ADSL in Raleigh and was a pleasure to work with when I had issues with BellSouth's service. I was sorry to hear about his death.

  The website was up just the other month, so this is a new development by his family/heirs.

  That Nissan Motors didn't immediately grab the domain after his passing may be evidence that domain names are an inheritable asset? Any lawyers have info on this?

• by PragmaticPulp on 7/1/22, 7:51 PM

  Did something change between when this was posted and now?

  The website is up for me, however the content is stripped down relative to the previous version ( https://web.archive.org/web/20220406221134/https://nissan.co... ). All of the anti-Nissan content is gone and it simply says "Contact Us"

  Given the events, I wouldn't be surprised if his estate is moving toward trying to sell the domain and collect any possible proceeds.

• by 1970-01-01 on 7/1/22, 8:30 PM

  I don't care what happens to NISSAN.COM, as long as it does not fall to Nissan Motors. Ideally, someone should restore it from the last good snapshot and ask for donations to renew the domain on a regular basis. I would be happy to contribute to this effort.

• by tedk-42 on 7/1/22, 10:56 PM

  As someone who had no idea who this person was or their legal troubles with Nissan (motor company), I find it strange that this was the battle he chose to fight to define who he was as a person.

  Each to his own though. Not a hill I would have chosen to die on.

• by sorokod on 7/1/22, 7:18 PM

  Nisan is relatively common Hebrew name from the month of Nisan

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisan

• by pvaldes on 7/1/22, 11:13 PM

  That lead us to an interesting legal question, could a web page be inherited by the relatives of the deceased?

• by tekeous on 7/1/22, 8:55 PM

  Should have hosted it with Njalla and watched Nissan fumble around trying to figure out who to sue

• by alberth on 7/1/22, 8:52 PM

  What’s odd is that the domain was renewed just 2 months ago (April 6th).

• by Macha on 7/1/22, 11:19 PM

  Similarly, I notice Universal Tubing appears to have given up utube.com

• by jacquesm on 7/1/22, 10:02 PM

  Let's hope that his heirs hold on to the domain name.

• by 1-6 on 7/1/22, 7:43 PM

  I wonder how much not having nissan.com affected Nissan’s business. I’m probably sure it’s tremendous.