Rick Brewster, the developer of free Windows image editor Paint.NET, announced on X that he has finally secured the paint.net domain after a 22-year standoff, meaning the app can at last be downloaded directly from paint.net rather than the longstanding workaround address GetPaint.net. For over two decades, the original owners of the paint.net domain either refused to sell or demanded what Brewster described as “lots and lots and lots of money.” The impasse ended after the squatters made a critical error in December 2025: they redesigned their version of paint.net to visually mimic the actual Paint.NET app’s download page, routing traffic and ad revenue through a site that traded on Brewster’s software and branding without authorization.
Brewster filed legal claims for copyright infringement and domain squatting — given the redesigned site was directly profiting from his work — and won the case with the assistance of a lawyer. WHOIS records show the domain’s ownership transferred around March 10, 2026. Brewster is currently migrating content to the new domain; GetPaint.net will stay active as a permanent redirect rather than go dark, as he noted there are “22 years of links out there that still need to work.” The domain paint.net was first registered in May 1996 — predating Google, PayPal, and Paint.NET itself by years — which is why the app launched on GetPaint.net in the first place and why reclaiming it took the squatters overplaying their hand.