Report this comment to a moderator

Bakers fails to follow its own advice in Narnia saga

A present for a CS Lewis fan Goodness, what suspicious minds…One tries to maintain a sense of humour, but your continued use of the word ‘claims’ about our purchase of the ‘narnia.mobi’ domain name as a present for our little boy clearly implies a more sinister motive! Yet we haven’t tried to or made a bean; we’ve never sold a domain name in our lives. The domain is not ‘parked’ under any arrangement; what some of your readers have been seeing is actually a ‘holding page’ created automatically for unused domain names as common practice by internet registration companies, and not listed with any search engines. Here’s the statement from the registration company going to WIPO: “I am happy to state on behalf of Fasthosts that the redirection of the domain name narnia.mobi to a holding page maintained by [parent company] Sedo was not the result of a request on the part of Richard Saville-Smith. I am also happy to confirm that Richard Saville-Smith has not sought to benefit and has not benefited financially in any way whatsoever from this domain name through this redirection.” Perhaps what’s more interesting is why companies feel entitled to do this without the knowledge or permission of the domain owners; leading to the sort of confusion at the heart of this case. Being just nine when we bought the domain, we noticed our son’s birthday this year was around the time of the second film and thought it would be fun then for him and his pals to email each other ‘atNarnia’; sometimes the truth is simple…And if anyone can’t see why a parent would want to give a child who is a fan of the CS Lewis books the magical email address ‘atNarnia’, then that is a degree of cynicism to which we cannot really relate! As a fan of the books myself, I know how thrilled I would have been to have a real postal address in Narnia... Gillian Saville-Smith

23-Jun-2008

12:43 pm