Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Hannibal Lecter wants his domain back

Kevin Murphy, August 12, 2011, 15:40:22 (UTC), Domain Policy

The actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, best known for playing serial killer Hannibal Lecter, seems to have filed a UDRP complaint over the domain name siranthonyhopkins.com.
Hopkins, via the trust that controls his name and likeness, won anthonyhopkins.com (currently parked) in a similar case last year.
He was knighted in 1993, and siranthonyhopkins.com was registered in 2003, so it’s not clear why the UDRP complaint took so long to file.
He’s the third celebrity in the last decade to win his “Sir” domain at UDRP, after Sir Paul McCartney and Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson.
The case got me wondering โ€“ if you’re a British celebrity and you want to protect your personal brand, when do you start to think about defensively registering your “Sir” or “Dame” domain?
What kind of ego would you need to have to preemptively registered such a domain, before you’ve even received your letter from the Queen?
I wonder if any such registrations exist.
And is there a need for them?
Popular octogenarian TV personality Sir Bruce Forsyth was knighted in June this year, and yet sirbruceforsyth.com has been registered (to somebody else) since 2008.

Tagged:

Comments (3)

  1. Michael says:

    Well, SirDavidBeckham.com is taken. And unless Becks moved to Bangkok, he’s not the owner.

  2. jayjay says:

    Problem solved, in light of ICANN’s new sTLD program given the green light anyone of these knighted individuals could finance and back a ‘dot sir’ extension. ๐Ÿ˜‰
    Some great examples below (resource: wiki answers)
    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_celebrities_have_been_knighted
    AlanSugar.sir
    AlfredHitchcock.sir
    AndrePrevin.sir
    BarbaraCartland.sir
    BenKingsley.sir
    BillGates.sir
    BobGeldof.sir
    BobHope.sir
    Bono.sir
    ChristopherLee.sir
    EdmundHillary.sir
    EltonJohn.sir
    GeorgeBush.sir
    GeorgeMartin.sir
    HelenMirren.sir
    HenryCooper.sir
    IanMcKellan.sir
    JudiDench.sir
    KiriTeKanawa.sir
    MickJagger.sir
    NickFaldo.sir
    PaulMcCartney.sir
    RalphRichardson.sir
    RogerMoore.sir
    RolfHarris.sir
    RonaldReagan.sir
    SalmanRushdie.sir
    SeanConnery.sir
    TerryPractchett.sir
    TerryWogan.sir
    ๐Ÿ™‚

  3. @JayJay LOL, you got there before me with the dotSIR joke ๐Ÿ˜€

Leave a Reply to jayjay