to be frank, any domain with "facebook" in it is illegal and can be taken back by "facebook" anytime if they wish. In reality, there are thousands of such domains and I don't think facebook will take those back unless they see a real threat from them. So, unless you are building a big project with investment of thousands of dollars, it is okay to risk it. Same thing with most other services, you are not allowed to have trademark words like "google", "wordpress", "twitter", etc in domain names, just because people do it, does not make it legal and if you grow big enough to be a problem for those companies, they will take action only in such situations or if they want a certain domain and you have it, they can snatch it by legal action as it has their trademark in it. Bottomline: purely legal answer - it is illegal. But, in reality, yes you can have it and use it as thousands of people do it.
There's no law that says you can't register that, if it was illegal as several people have stated. The domain registrants wouldn't allow them to register the domain in the first place.
Its legal...but let's say your site become so popular than facebook may create problems for you..I would suggest you take little risk because less chances of getting caught.
I'm not quite sure on what basis people here this it is "legal". Curious to learn more! ..there is an argument to say that if you buy the domain and do nothing with it then it is legal, however if you attempt to use it in the course of business (and this is wide) or sell it, or even piggy-back in any way off Facebook itself (and I don't see how you can ever argue you're not doing this!) then it's TM infringement. Bidslover I'm not sure where you're based, being off-shore, i.e. away from the US may make your personal risk lower but in terms of the .com domain this could be easily recovered. My view is you're unlikely to ever generate enough revenues to cover cost of registration and your own time and effort so why bother?!
The domain registries allow you to register anything because it's in their interest to - i.e. if I go and register 100 domains which infringe any companies TM (whether mistypes or otherwise) the registry get their money. If I then have to hand over my domain to the TM owner its me that looses out - not the registry. As I said provided you buy a domain and don't use it (or attempt to sell it) - you can potentially register any trademark. All IMHO - DYOR etc
You can own any domain, even anythingatgoogle.com, the logic here not to suggest that there is no point in owing some thing is not with your own brand. For long run, this will not help!
Is it ok to own, yes. Is it ok to use, probably not, depends on how you will use it. The main question is will your use of the domain be deceptively similar to facebook? If you are selling a paper book with pictures of peoples faces on the pages, you are probably ok.
With these sorts of domains, it all depends on how you use it. A non-profit news site or fan site should be ok. An ad-supported news site may or may not be. A site selling services will almost certainly be a problem.
I used to work in webhosting long ago, and we had to manually check all domains to make sure that obvious names like that (especially "paypal") weren't in any part of the domain name. Though I think they were more worried with people making phishing sites, there were a few cases where companies would lodge complaints against us and demand the domain name be handed over.
It more depends on your intention. If you are going promote facebook eventually no issues would be there but if you are misusing it then there would be a watch on such domain.
To be honest... just purchase the domain... I bet you won't be able to chase facebook until 2030-2040. Lol.