The original registrant of SodaPopReview.com is upset: Admittedly due to his own fault, he let the domain expire in late 2015.
Apparently, whoever picked it up at the expired domain auctions of GoDaddy, ended up digging up the previous content and putting it live on the web site.
Says the previous owner, at the GoDaddy support forum:
“My name is Loren McGrew — I was the owner of SODAPOPREVIEW.COM since sometime in 2002. I recently started updating my other site and when I went to use SodaPopReview.com, I ran into an issue. I thought I had it in the “Owned Domain but not hosted” section of GoDaddy. I found the email and I accidentally let my domain lapse in October of 2015 via GoDaddy. Totally my fault for not reading the email entirely but I have a receipt that I paid for the domain name.
Someone is currently hosting my personal content at GoDaddy/Domains By Proxy under the lapsed domain name. They are using my hand crafted content that I spent years acquiring. Below you will find the web archive showing my created work and the current content at the site.”
The problem here is that the domain was not stolen to begin with, however, the content has been replicated, by whoever owns the domain now.
According to Archive.org, the previous owner’s content is used in the current incarnation of the domain and web site.
Soda Pop Review .com – Circa 2005.
It is clear that copying content without authorization, particularly original content, falls in the copyright infringement category.
SodaPopReview.com is now hosted on an IP in Sweden, where any DMCA notice would be rendered useless.
However, GoDaddy, where the domain is registered at, should still be able to intervene.
