Bought a domain... do I own the content that was previously hosted on it?

[lazorbeam]

Title. I just bought a dropped domain for a site that has been inactive since early 2015. The author seems to have vanished completely (maybe he died?).

Now, archive.org has stored every page that was formerly on the site. This content exists nowhere else. Is it within my rights to re-use the content?

 

[Ategy]

In one word or less .. NO

You'd obviously want to get legal council for a 100% answer .. but I'm pretty sure domain ownership is completely separate from copyright laws (and ownership).

The original writer of the content owns it .. unless he or she sold it ... in which case the content in question would still belong to the previous owner .. even if he/she no longer owns the domain.

 

[golan]

Nope. You have bought domain. Not website. Should you buy website, then everything was included - domain, content, design...

 

[jberryhill]

No.

 

[Geodomain]

just a little side note here at least in the early days there was no such thing as owning a domain name it is analogous to a phone number where you are assigned the phone number in the domain name language yoi are the Registrant.

Also if you ever have to refer to traffic to your website never refer to hits if your trying to have someone understand the number of unique people that visit your site hits is a transfer of data. So you want to understand how many unique hosts go to your site everyday.