I asked a similar question when I was in school getting my business and marketing degree.
As long as it's been published in a paper, magazine, or web site, and date stamped as Snowmobilefanatics.com,
Erick can prove that this name was his on a certain date and thus, in effect, snowmobilefanatics.com is copy righted, but NOT SF.com.
In order to enforce this, Erick would be spending a ton of cash in courts etc, but according to the schooling and my head of department in particular, Erick can make it stand up in court that snowmobilefanatics.com is his.
The other part is that Erick obviously owns the domain name snowmobilefanatics.com, and so it's protected that way as well.