Acquiring a domain name that is a famous deceased person's name.

Honouring the dead or winding them up by building a website?

[justbrowsing]

Apologies for what feels like a very newbie question,

I'm thinking about making a small site with information about a dead artist/author fella. He's been dead approx. 30 years, give or take.

I'd like to use his name as a URL - and it is available in certain TLDs. If I register it and use it, am I liable to get into trouble with his estate or otherwise?

I certainly don't want to annoy or inconvenience anybody, but it just seems silly to use an obscure domain name if the principle one is available.

Any advice?

[edited by: Webwork at 10:58 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2006]
[edit reason] Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[kevinpate]

Will it honour the memory of the artist, including his or her work, or will it be a vehicle to draw in folks to the site in order to sell something, irrespective fo whether the site is designed to sell hard items, text links, SE program ad space or space to other advertisers.

Making $ off the name/likeness/reputation of another is as often as not an idea that is neither for the faint of heart, nor the thin of wallet.

[wmuser]

You can get into troubles as according to US copyright laws,the writer/artist is holding the right on his work for his lifetime + 70 after his death
After teh death his relatives will hold the rights

[justbrowsing]

Yes, I don't think it's worth the risk of upsetting anbody, really. I wasn't going to use any of his copyrighted work on the site, just an information site collating what I have about him offline. But I think it would be silly to do it without using the available URL and the subsequent Google benefit from having the relevant keywords in the URL. Back to the drawing board for another idea...