Is this even possible?

[Roy Hersh]

I was doing a brief Google search and look what I found ...

ivdp.com domain name is for sale. Inquire now. http://ivdp.com
Buy ivdp.com for USD 3,500. This premium domain name is available for purchase! When buying ivdp.com, your transaction is processed and protected by ...

[Eric Menchen]

So I presume you were looking for https://www.ivdp.pt/

Yes, it is very much possible. There are plenty of people and businesses out there looking for and trying to predict web domain names, and registering them. Registration is very cheap, so if they get one for $3500, they can go out and try a bunch more. In a few court cases companies have won the right to "their own name," but $3500 is a lot cheaper than legal fees. And in this case, who is to say that the IVDP is the only valid claimant?

[Roy Hersh]

I see that the Http vs. Https is the reason they are trying to sucker someone into paying for the initial site, as without the "s" it is fairly meaningless to own nowadays. Thanks Eric!

I was going to warn friends at the IVDP, as I thought maybe they are letting their site registration lapse by accident or an oversight.

[Mike K.]

Eric was pointing out the ".pt" suffix for Portugal. Many (all?) countries have their own suffix, plus there are a bunch more (.gov, .edu, .com, .org). So the Portugal site is https://www.ivdp.pt/, but you could have a "French" version as https://www.ivdp.fr/, etc., etc.

[Moses Botbol]

Redirect IVDP.com to an adult site and wait for the 10K payment to reverse course.

A friend's punk rock band (a famous one at that) owns their domain name, but some Russians have spoofed the DNS to redirect requests to a gambling site. I mentioned this to them, but they're not technical enough to fix the broken record pointing the domain name to the correct IP address.

[Eric Menchen]

I see that the Http vs. Https is the reason they are trying to sucker someone into paying for the initial site, as without the "s" it is fairly meaningless to own nowadays.

You own the domain, cnn.com, fortheloveofport.com, etc. "http" vs. "https" is a protocol issue, and independent. They typically run on different ports. And there are other protocols, like "ftp". If you own the domain, you can run whatever protocols you want.

[Glenn E.]

Eric was pointing out the ".pt" suffix for Portugal. Many (all?) countries have their own suffix, plus there are a bunch more (.gov, .edu, .com, .org). So the Portugal site is https://www.ivdp.pt/, but you could have a "French" version as https://www.ivdp.fr/, etc., etc.

For example, the domain name for the USA is ".us". However, it's rarely used because US organizations tend to use the more common suffixes that Mike listed.

The internet originated in the US so we've been using the generic top-level domains all along. The country-specific suffixes were added later, and one was added for the US at that time, but it was done more to be complete than because there was any real need for it.

[Yev Nyden]

Good point on "http" vs. "https", which refers to the protocol to be used when accessing services running on a host reachable by a certain domain name, and which has nothing to do with the domain name registration or ownership.

Domain name, in this case ''ivdp" is certainly unique but only within a specific, so called gTLD (generic Top Level Domain) namespace. So, you can buy ivdp.com, but that still leaves "ivdp" name available in other gTLDs - for example, .net, .org, etc. Each of these (.net, .org, etc) is a separate gTLD registry (a database where the name records are kept) independent of each other. You can buy one or all - your choice. It is common for large companies to buy many or all of them to prevent leakage of their goodwill or brand value. For example, check out 'google' with .net, .org, .is, .to, etc...

Also, if you want to find out who owns a particular domain, a wide range of tools is available, for example, the official https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup or (a better one :)?) - https://www.domain.com/whois/whois/?search=ivdp.com . However, most of the personally identifiable information will be redacted from the records. You may find out the registrar - a proxy company which handles registration on behalf of the registrant/owner. I can see that "ivdp.com" registration was requested by fabulous.com, and looking through the rest of the records for this registration, I spot a strangely named fallback DNS server - THIS-DOMAIN.NAME-IS-FOR-SALE.COM It's not hard to guess at this point that you can buy this domain. :)

Btw, in case you will be trying to lookup the Portugal version, the lookup service may not be available for all gTLDs. Specifically the .pt gTLD is most certainly managed by the country of Portugal and has its own services to access information in the registry. So, I don't think you will be able to look up "ivdp.pt" on the icann.org or domain.com.

On a related topic, it is not actually possible to buy a domain name - it's only possible to rent it. When you "buy" a domain name, you have to confirm your ownership every year or so though some registrars may have auto-renew services to extend the "rent" automatically for you. The official max "ownership" time (according to ICANN) is set to 10 years I think. The "fun" part here is that occasionally, the auto-renew doesn't happen, and your domain name registration expires at which point anyone can try to purchase it. There are companies that do that intentionally - looking for expired records, buying them, and then asking ransom from forgetful owners... I've seen that happen (luckily not to me). :)

Cheers,