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Court Orders Owner Of Peta.org To Give Up Domain
Kancer writes: "According to Boston.com a federal judge ordered PETA.org parody site to relinquish their Web address over to PETA.com. People just can't take a joke, People Eating Tasty Animals, now that is funny." It's actually a really crappy legal precedent. Using other people's trade names for parodies is not an illegitimate use of the name, and their site was not confusingly similar to PETA - there's no way you could mistake one for the other. The judge was ruling based on the name alone, with no consideration of the content.
This isn't really an issue of cybersquatting though, is it? Cybersquatting is really the act of grabbing names for profit, this is a case of a parody site. I wasn't able to see the site personally, but I'm assuming that there wasn't an attempt to sell the domain to PETA. It becomes a question of fair use. Cybersquatting isn't, it's an attempt to take a name for profit [or possibly for direct harm to an organization or person]. Parody is.
While I don't generally agree with PETA (steak is great!), I am sympathetic to their point of view. Having said that, I am not at all sympathetic to this court decision. It seems to me to be a gross violation of free speech. Before, it was primarily large corporations with huge legal departments that were responsible for shutting down "bad" Web sites. Apparently, now, the trend has spread to activist organizations as well? Maybe George W. Bush started something when he said "There ought to be limits to freedom" in reference to a Web site that was parodying his campaign. This is kind of a scary statement, not unlike his father's assertion that atheists should not be considered patriots or citizens.
This man could be our next President (well, to the Americans among us, anyway!)
How is owning multiple parody websites profiting from any of them? PEatingTastyA may be a non-profit, for all I know or care, but I don't see how it makes any difference. If there was no attempt to gain commercial benefits through confusion over a trademark that PEthicalTreatmentA has invested in, but only an attempt to express an opinion about PEthicalTreatmentA through parody or satire, that's fair use/free speech -- not commercial speech -- and well within our traditional notions of intellectual property.
(1) create my own alternate FooDNS servers, complete with a set of root servers and trees of zone servers to handle subdomains and
(2) It's popularity happens to catch on until
(3) The bulk of the world's net users are using FooDNS then
(4) At some point US courts will suddenly decide that they have the absolute power to decide what domains I can and cannot allow? And who may register what?
Excuse me, but ICANN sits at the top of the current DNS system most of us use. Shouldn't *they* have the final say on taking someone's domain name away? Why are these 3rd party courts involved and who gave them power to control who registers what?
- Confused in .au
So start a Society for the Ethical Treatment of Insects. Then you can sue PETA when their mean, nasty animals eat an insect.
Moral values? since when does morals enter into a persons diet preferance? I can see you objecting to the bbq because of your diet preferance, but are you calling me immoral because i'm omnivorous?
This is off-topic. You are replying to my .sig. I would have been willing to go into that via e-mail, but you posted anonymously, so I can't.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
That explanation would only make sense if they were *swapping* names with each other. As it is, the orginization called PETA now has two names, one under peta.com and one under peta.org. The same argument for taking the .org address away from the parody site can be used to take the .com address away from the non-profit organization site. (Or at least it could if the law was being fair, logical, and consistent.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It's like they're each trying to out-fascist the other.
--
There is no formal relationship between the TLD "org" and the type of legal entity known as a "non-profit organization".
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I think we should all go to the grocery store, buy a pound of our favorite meat, and send it to PETA.
PETA
501 Front St.
Norfolk, VA
23510
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Just a question, but does an acronym hold the same value as the full name?
How was my post any more flamebait-ish than the one i was replying to?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Nobody's accusing ol' YHVH of screwing up. But men do plenty of screwing (up). One of the results is overpopulation in many parts of the world. The land just can't support that many people. Of course part of that is due to men's other screwups. Basically men just screw up alot and that causes all sorts of problems. But cutting back on the population would help cut back the number of potential screwups, wouldn't it? Perhaps it would even mean that some people might get to eat.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Hey, what about jesus-online.com? They use that to point "Christians" to their page! I guess they figure Jesus can't sue...
The revolution will NOT be televised.
The peta.org guys have this one locked up, if they're willing to keep fighting. The right to use another's name, even a trademarked one, has been establ;ished for a long time indeed. I believe it was Jerry Falwell vs. Larry Flynt, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, which settled it once and for all, actually (IANAL, though). Everyone's favorite scumbag beat out everyone's favorite lunatic zealot, anbd rightfully so.
In other words, PETA's case is groundless. I never much liked them anyway, what with their nice little penchant for vandalism (sorry, but pouring red paint over someone's clothing is vandalism) and the hypocritical bit about how eating animals is "unnatural." Which, incidentally, isn't quite true; while it's possible to survive on plant life alone it is not natural to do so (a human cannot survive only on plant life which is indigenous to a single region, meaning the only reason it can be done at all is because technology allows us to ship it in, and thus in a "natural" state a human could not survive on plants alone). Does the fact that vegetarianism isn't "natural" make it bad? Not in the least. But don't pretend it's something that it isn't.
But I'm ranting again, and I'll probably get flamed for that last statement (please, do us all a favor and take it to e-mail rather than Slashdot). Getting back to the point, PETA has no legal grounds to stand on this time. If this guy can just hold on, he'll win.
Oh, and as for the "you have no right to profit from parody" statements I'm hearing, please go tell that to MAD Magazine and its competitors, all of whom have been profiting from parody for decades and are totally legal.
Hey! There's an idea!
There oughtta be a /. Hall of Fame, with a selection of the best posts ever!
I vote for this one, and the one about the Transmission Control Pixes and the Internet Pixes that was posted to the first DDoS discussion...
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Too late
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My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Basically, the registrars and ICANN are currently just abdicating all responsibility over the organisation of the DNS.
What the hell are they being paid for?
I have a document here http://www.yelm.freeserve.co.uk/dns/ which describes the kind of changes that must be made if the DNS is to function properly.
There is no technical reason why the existing system can't continue to function. It just needs the registrars and ICANN to provide a little organisation.
Registrations in the existing domains should be stopped, new global TLDs created with subcategories and registrars should only be given a subcategory to administer when all new entries in that domain will be essentially flat. The registrars have shown that they are incapable of administering a heirarchy responsibly.
Deleted
Deleted
http://www.icann.org/mbx/
Deleted
peta is a valid prefix meaning 10^8. It's very common in physics or mathematics. Plus, do they actually hate PETA trademarked, or do they have People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals trademarked? Big big difference.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
In my mind, using a site like peta.org for parody is a legitimate use of a domain name. Whereas buying up names and waiting for someone to offer you a million dollars, or so someone eles can't have them (like Verizon buying verizonsucks.com) is cybersquatting.
-Paul
"I'm nobody suspicious... That makes me sound even more suspicious, doesn't it?" - Spike (Cowboy Bebop)
Well if it's merely thought that's the big deal just wait until geneticists develop animals that don't have thought processes. By your argument here, we ought to be able to do anything we like to them.
Personally, I think that eating animals is acceptable; being cruel for the sake of cruelty is not. But they're different things.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Unfortunately, that's no longer an option, since Peta seems to have registered that also.
The Garden of Eden, God's perfect world, was vegetarian (Gen. 1:29-30). Immediately, God calls this ideal and non-exploitative relationship "good" (Gen. 1:31). There follow many years of fallen humanity, when people held slaves, waged war, ate animals and committed various other violent acts. But the prophets tell us that the peaceable kingdom will be nonviolent and vegetarian; even the lion will lie down with the lamb (e.g., Isaiah 11). Jesus is the Prince of Peace, who ushers in this new age of nonviolence. When Christians pray, "Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven," the one prayer given to us by Jesus, this obligates us to change our lives, to make choices that are as merciful and loving as possible. There will be no factory farms and slaughterhouses in heaven.
Theres one more paragraph there at http://www.jesusveg.com/index2.html about God not wanting animals treated badly, but basically, it doesn't say a damned thing about Jesus not eating meat at all. Nothing about the loaves and fishes. The only quotes in there are from Isaiah and Genesis, which are in the old testemant!
I just find those arguments (or lack there of) pretty darned funny.
- Basic Member - Doubles his or her intake of meat.
- Flesh Warrior - Triples his or her intake of meat.
- Carnage Lord - Only eats raw meat. Preferably, just takes bites out of live animals.
---------------note: I'm actually a vegetarian myself. I just think that the "Vegan Avengers" concept is hilarious.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Just for background, Mike Doughney is the co-founder of the ISP DIGEX (purchased by Intermedia Communications, which then spun off a web hosting company called "Digex"). People Easting Tasty Animals took in no money, it was just a parody site. Mike has been dedicated to providing information about cult-like groups for a long time, including transcendental meditation, PETA, and Christian right groups. He makes no money off of this.
After Peta.Org was put on hold in 1996, Mike had his own domain (MTD.com) threatened by the MTD Company (that made lawnmowers). This lead him to form to Domain Name Rights Coalition to fight for the rights of domain name owners.
Rumors are that there will be an appeal of this ruling.
Seriously, didn't PETA have anyone on the ball enough to have registered Peta.org first? The other guy only got it in '95.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
No matter what the ideology, people who feel that they have to run other people's lives always wind up acting the same.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Most, however, say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Apparently they too are mistaken (as was I), as Bartlett's has it thus:
Imitation is the sincerest flattery. C. C. Colton (1780-1832): The Lacon.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
What!? Attending a BBQ in support over our rights offends you? Thats the dumbest thing I have ever heard. That would be the same thing as me saying that you offend me for eating veggies. Cows were made to be eaten.
Does that sound right to you?
HAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
That lawn thing is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. You just made my day!
-Ryan
roflmao at work
My understanding is that the parody exemption for IP rights violations applies only to copyrighted works; trademark violations cannot use this defense. I'm not saying what PETA is doing is right, only that what Michael writes about parody being permissible is inapplicable in this case.
In effect this says that TLD's are irrelevant. Average Joe Monkey can't tell the difference and so someone will be harmed. Ergo we should do away with TLD's altogether and start suing anyone who uses a string in their name even remotely similar to something I use. Including spelling differences, embedded numbers or characters and the like. And then we can can move to phonemic and morphological similarities. That is, let's sue people who use names that somehow have similar 'meaning', 'content', morphological construct or context. This way our own bloated egos will be assuaged when we see that some evil netizen is using a site whose name contains even two letters that are somehow symbolic of my site's name.
Hmm... so how would the analog of alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb work on the Web with the new .alt TLD?
Perhaps in reverse? Such as "die.die.die.patents.stupid.alt"? Nah....
Nonetheless, put me in with a vote for the .alt TLD. As progenitor of alt.drunken.bastards in a late-night hacking session years ago, I understand the need for a well-defined box to hold our anarchy.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
IIRC, when this all started back in 1995(?) PETA (the animal people) actaully owned the peta.org domain name. Then for some reason they didn't pay their Internic bill and the meat people snapped it up in a hurry.
It's been a long-running joke. Actually, I'm surprised it's still owned by the meat people. I personally think the joke's a bit old and stale now after 5 years.....
-Vic
>so I could send my vegetarian friends to it.
People Eating Tasty Animals can still be found, at http://www.mtd.com/tasty/.
Hasn't changed much since '96 (!) but neither has the taste of a nice thick juicy steak, mmm.
Two things. First, I don't see that the net is any different from any other medium. If I start publishing flyers from the Koka Kola company, they'll go after me in real life as much as on the net. Some of these decisions are clearly stupid, but in real trademark infringement cases (for example if I started an amazon.org) it seems to me it would be quite reasonable to prohibit me from selling books there.
It's not clear to me what gives the judge the power to transfer domain names, though.
Secondly, ICANN was given its authority in part by the US government, so it's not really a private organization.
That's not to say that this (and most) court decision is a good one.
No, actually the internet is the exception: it's about the only area that hasn't been trampled by lawyers and big government. I wholeheartedly agree that the government should butt out and let the internet continue running as it has been. But I think the same is true of most other industries and social structures. The computer industry is about the only industry that isn't heavily regulated. You can't say things the FCC doesn't like on the TV or radio. The FCC tells cable stations which stations they have to carry. Most industries are full of regulations, restrictions, subsidies, and loopholes.
Indeed, I think the success of the computer industry is largely because it has avoided regulation so far. If the FDA wasn't around I think medicine would be much more advanced than it is today. Had phone service not been nationalized and given to AT&T earlier in the century we'd likely have many more voice and data options and we'd probably have had DSL 5 years ago. After all, modems are just an end run against sluggish telcos that have refused to provide dedicated datalines at reasonable cost.
Pretty much any industry you pick, from health care to education to airlines to power generation has been stifled by government interference. The computer industry is about the only industry where decisions are *not* made by whomever has the most lawyers, and cases like this (and the DOJ's crusade against Microsoft) are threatening to put an end to that freedom.
Those who see the government as a threat to the net should study some history and look at the world around them. The internet is not the first case where the government trampled a free, open, and innovative culture with lawyers, regulations, and special interest manipulations. When netizens whine about government taking over their own corner of the world while supporting the same actions in other areas, what could have been a bold statement of individual freedom comes accross as special pleading. We are not the first victim of government meddling, and unless we recognize this, we will not be the last.
This is the most disturbing precedent I've seen in the last...oh...day or so (in a long string of a few years of disturbing precedents).
I find myself feeling more and more frustrated at trying to come up with something to DO about where we're going, and the handbasket we're going there in...
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
If an organization devoted to parody is non-profit, why shouldn't they be allowed to have a .org?
Did PETA even at least ASK "hey, could you at least put a link on your main page that says 'if you're looking for 'People for Ethical Treatment of Animals' instead, click here'"?
HOW the heck do we wrest control of the world back from the litigious boogerheads that seem to be running it now??????
On a side note, I've been told that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution aren't ordinary 'amendments' - they were already on the Constitution when it was ratified by the states - and therefore if it can be proved that any of those amendments have been removed or repealed (including, obviously, that pesky 'freedom of speech' one), that the union is dissolved. Anybody know if this is true?
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
No, they can't. They're an (unfortunately) very common subvariety of the American Liberal Democrat, largely characterized by an inability to see anything humorous, period. All issues are life-and-death to these individuals, who find themselves in a near-constant state of outrage that other people, institutions, and in fact the entire world does not conform to their views of What Should Be.
In the wild, they often associate with and assume the colorings of other, more palatable subvarieties of the Liberal Democrat (for example, Fruvous Liberals). This provides them with some obvious benefits, primarily the fact that they are much more likely to get invited to good parties. While in these groupings, an American Liberal Democrat's normally combatative nature and desire to verbally abuse non-Democrats can usually be repressed, at least until the entire flock encounters a Conservative (of any subvariety, either Democrat or Republican.)
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Kind of like slashdot readers.
Speak for yourself, fellow slashdot reader.
Finkployd
If I own it, the government has no right to steal it. Especialy since the US government has no jurisdiction over international property like the internet!
.com's, .org's, and .net's are managed by a US based company, making them accountable to the "laws of the land", I'd think. If you don't like that, you don't need to move, but you just need to register your names (and probably host your server) in countries with laws that are more to your liking.
Well... all the
So far as the lawlessness of the web goes... Forget about it never being regulated. The government has stepped back from it long enough and is witnessing that business and individuals have absolutely NO ABILITY to keep themselves in check in terms of controlling fraud, privacy and (gasp!) piracy. They're pretty well justified in saying "look, you all had your chance, and you've blown it".
But given the global nature of the internet, if you don't like what they might do, as i said earlier, just get a name from a non-US based entity and host it elsewhere.... pretty easy work around, compared to the days when people would spout "if you don't like this country, just leave".
I think that'd be a GREAT thing, if when you registered your name the interNIC would give you the name you wanted with the suffix you asked for (to "classify" yourself) and then promptly locked out the other suffix's from being registered... It's a little too late in the game for them to even attempt to do that, though.
But personally, PETA should be 'peta.org' not 'peta.com'. The parody site should be 'peta.com'. Why don't they just swap domains?
/dev/null.
Last time I checked, PETA was a non-profit. But then again, as someone else mentioned, net standards don't mean anything anymore...
Just my opinion. Flames to
cvoid - satellites are cool
Well, duh. There were at least three slashdot threads on etoy that I recall. Where have YOU been?
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
1. So, all I have to do is have a trademark for one domain and I automatically get two more for free because others already paid for them and my lawyers scared them off.
Actually, the point is that if the ruling had gone the other way, all you would have to do is create a fictitious organization and website to use a domain name that reflected someone else's trademark.
The rest of the story is really irrelevant. It was a mark that the average person would associate with the trademark holder; the parody was diluting the trademark. This is the real world. The internet isn't exempt from real-world laws.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
PETA is just a bleak and humourless bunch anyway.
I'll get marked down for trolling, but I just *love* to set up arguments between my gay friends, who think we can't spend enough money finding an AIDS cure, and the PETA people who think that animal research is horrible. At first they have that nice 'n' easy "we're all in this together" leftist rapport, and then the agent provacateur brings up "Oh, did you hear about the PETA lab smashup at the University? They say it set back promising AIDS research 5 years.." and boy does the fur fly, so to speak. Typically the gays end up accusing the PETA folks of being fascists and the gays end up being accused of Mengele-style barbarism in support of their hedonistic lifestyle.
Anyway, it's quite amusing.
I just sent them this:
That'll show 'em! ;)
This is a letter I sent to info@peta-online.org, terminating my relationship with such an organization.
.COM way (not the most appropriate, when Internet RFC's clearly advise that an organization such as yours should go with a .ORG domain), and relinquished the opportunity to register any other top level domains, you clearly stated that they were open for third parties to take. When PETA.ORG was taken, and filled with satirical information, it was done in a manner NOT easily confused with your own site PETA.COM. PETA.ORG's content in particular was not supposed to be taken as factual, or insulting as such, but comedic, and light hearted, since most intelligent human beings can distinguish both types of presentation. Apparently your staff cannot. And with the exhibited behavior have shown that they don't even care about our own constitutional rights. Perhaps the PETA's line of though is that it is above the Nation's clearly stated rights, or that it can play on the obvious ignorance of a few magistrates to twist the law as they see fit.
I urge you to do the same if you also think that our basic constitutional rights should be considered by such self-righteous organizations.
Hello,
I would like to start this letter by stating that will no longer donate to any PETA connected funds. It is a sad and hard decision to make, but the PETA's official conduct has forced it on me. Having been an active contributor of both time and money to a cause I still consider valid, I cannot endorse an organization that blatantly ignores basic constitutional rights.
The events that led to my decision are those related to the PETA.ORG affair. Since you made the unfortunate decision of going the
All this is, as I've said, reason enough for me to terminate any relation I may have or might have had with the PETA, as of today I list your organization in the black book of those that try to diminish our personal freedom, and feel ashamed of any relation between myself and your organization.
With no further subject, may your supporters see the error of their ways, as I have.
...and the time will have come. And the name shall be known... The Kylrathi Viper Clan.
I don't see this as an attack of moral values. I see this as an attack on an organization that attempts to force its moral values on others.
There is a difference.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
In many many ways this is an intresting subplot.
.org domain confusing people into thinking PETA.org was a non-proffit. Of course PETA.COM accually IS a non-proffit but then on same merit they confuse people into thinking they are a comertal enity not an advocacy group but posably a fair and impartal enity.
/ni-tha-point/ [FeliSpeak Translation: Not the point])
/Crulty to animals/ is ni-the-point of PETA.
McDonalds isn't above suing advocacy groups.
The presedent set here and based on a lawsute (settled in the UK so there probably isn't a US presedent) by McDonald PETA could be sued.
The big issue of PETA was the
On a side rant...
Veganism may be a noble cause (one I DO NOT support but for the function of my rant thats
PETA is an organisation for preventing crulty to animals. Veganisms brouder definition of
Veganism is a advocacy for a brouder sense of consern than is part of our current ethics.
PETA is advocacy for our existing standard of ethics reguarding the treatment of animals.
The two advocacys are comparable but not compatable.
PETA should (to be true to it's objectives and goals) advocate humain handling procedures for "for slauter" animals.
Veganism can not make this advocacy instead it must advocate the elimination of "for slauter" animals. [Elimination meaning the class not the animals who by deffinition are eliminated so long as they continue in this class of animal]
About myself. I am for the damedest trying to use nutral language. I accually disaprove of the veganism cause being imposed on the masses.
I have no problems with the message as "We believe this" and it's existence as a choice and life style. Even it's presistence in some religions to me is ok. But as a mandate apon myself I feel put apon.
I am all for the fair treatment of animals and PETA is a good cause...
Veganism is also a fair ideology...
Maybe 10 to 20 years from now children will look back and ask "Why did we eat meat"...
and maybe 10 to 20 years from now children will ask "Why was an anti crulty organisation trying to starve people?". It's a matter of prospective.
In the end PETA chouses this existence and this message. It chouses the vegan standard.
If they believe it helps them then fine. But it dosn't gain my simpathy when someone throws up a spoof website they disaprove of...
And no matter what they are... When they sue over a spoofer domain...
Has McDonalds ever sued a spoof?
Probably not.... and thats a good thing....
If not it speaks a bit of people who do...
For even a thin skinned organisation like McDonalds can take being spoofed...
If not... if McDonalds has or isn't above suing a spoof.... then PETA set a standard they may themselfs suffer for...
I don't actually exist.
Hopefully you do this in Texas, so when the lunatic confesses you can share the poor person's fate.
Blar.
Say some crazed lunatic had a dog, and a person both chained to a wall. He had a shotgun. He was only going to kill one of the two, but you had to choose which he would kill.
Which would you pick?
Blar.
I refreshed, my comment was not there. I post this and now it is there???? That was like 10 minutes ago....
As much as I don't like cruelty to animals, I wonder how peta.com'd feel if McDonald's went and sued them over their anti-McDonald's site, including obvious misuse of McDonald's(tm) "Happy Meal"(r) and Ronald McDonald(c) trademark... Sigh.. silly judge... domain-names are for rabbits.
On one hand I'm mad at this, but on the other, it IS easy to confuse the domain name. Anyone with half a brain can tell that the site isn't the real PETA, but did it make it difficult to find the real site? I can't connect to the .org site, could someone please tell me if it had a link to the real site? If so, there's no excuse whatsoever for this.
- Free tabletop fantasy gaming! Grey Lotus
What I can't believe is that PETA didn't go for the ORG TLD in the first place! They are a (supposedly) non-profit lobbying group, and as such they should have grabbed the peta.org domain straight off. PETA.COM is rather a lame domain for something that tries to appear as a grass roots lobbying group. I would have no objection to a peta.com leading to a company, but I have a problem with it pointing to a non-profit. Didn't TLDs have enforcement at some point in the past?
Lowmag.net
Actually I don't think anyone is expected to know every law, just the ones that are relevant to what you are doing. I think you will find that no one requires you to know patent laws unless you are intending to file a patent or infringe on one.
But that's just the whole problem, isn't it? How many people go out and say, "I feel like infringing on some patents today"? If you don't know every single law on the books, you can break laws without realizing it. The problems is there are 20 trillion different laws on the books and it is physically impossible to store than much information in a human brain, even if there were some way to plug that brain directly into a massive database containing all the laws. I believe the government uses some kind of optical storage technology to hold their laws because all the servers in the world combined could not possibly contain them all. There are too many laws. I know, let's make a law against that! It seems that the only thing the government knows how to do is make more and more laws regulating every single possible thing imaginable.
OK, I started out with a point but I kind of entered into rant mode there. Sorry.
I realize I don't use "proper" grammer, but the way I type makes more sense than "proper" grammer.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
-- Adam
"And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it." (Exodus 12.8)
"And you shall eat of it [the roasted lamb] this way, with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in a hurry. It is the LORD's Passover." (Exodus 12.11)
Sounds really vegetarian to me, yeah, sure. Note also that not only must they eat the lamb, but that they had to kill a lamb purchased 4 days earlier, then spread that lamb's blood on the doorframe of their houses, and then eat the flesh!
I know a lot of strict vegetarians who do exactly this every year. It's completely ethical behavior, because God told me so.
Curiouser and curiouser...
Uh, I thought it wasn't a question of fair use of copyright, but dilution of trademark.
Weird Al *does* make money off his parodies; however, he does *not* use the names of the artists he's spoofing. He just spoofs their songs (and their image).
Copyright != Trademark.
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I've seen a bunch of posts saying you can't profit from parodies. But what about cartoons that are parodies? Aren't the cartoonists getting paid to draw those? Saturday Night Live and Mad TV parody things all the time-yet they make money, otherwise they wouldn't be on TV. So what's to say a website can't get money? Also, who's to say that PEatingTA is a parody of PEthicalTA? An acronym shouldn't be allowed to be trademarked-there's only so many possible acronyms out there.
Colin Winters
True, 'peta' is a word that means 'white lie'.
PS: Hope i spelled lie correctly. Ummm...
I think not.
http://vwx.com has the story of how its vw.net domain was legally acquired by the Volkswagen corporation via the inconvenient-for-the-little-guys policies of Network Solutions and our fine court system.
never ask a question you don't want to know the answer to
Great idea! I don't like the location though, but thats trivial. Who else is up for it?
Speaking as an ethical vegitarian since birth (27 years and counting) I'm in favor of the gathering (although unless they have something I can eat I might not attend) :)
The fact is that people have to make choices, and advocacy is advocacy. Much like the Linux kind, the way to win people over is not to turn 'Fundamentalist' and ultimately its a choice that may not be right for everyone to make. (As another Vegitarian friend described herself, "I'm a non-prosilatizing Vegetarian").
I can totally understand the feelings behind the BBQ thought, and think it strikes a nice balance between outlandish and reasonable (and funny).
Some people will always eat meat.
PETA has acted poorly.
Their reaction is to draw media attention to PETA's poor action.
This would do it.
Of course the ultimate Irony (with a capital 'I'), is if they had the cookout BBQ and included a vegetarian alternative.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
PETA's legal claim to the use of the "PETA" mark is established both by trademark statutes and by PETA's expense of significant effort and resources to identify that mark with its organization.
The test for whether the trademark is infringed is not whether the arguably-infringing mark is bitwise-identical but rather (IIRC) whether an average consumer would be confused. I think there's no doubt that a typical person who knew of the existence of PETA would expect that "peta.org" would be a PETA site. I expect your modified hypothetical title of my "Harry Potter" example would also cause confusion. (Compare the Lampoon parody titles "Bored of the Rings" and "Doon," which anyone even slightly familiar with the originals would recognize as parodies, and so there would be no confusion.)
(Of course, even if you aren't sanctioned, you do have to comply once your violation is pointed out to you.)
Our Supreme Court ruled a while back that parodies are protected (by the freedom of speech, i believe), and peta.org obviously falls well within the parody bounds. It's a good thing the Supreme Court ruled the way they did, or the radio morning show i listen to would be really boring!
I expect this to be appealed and overturned. The ruling was so blatantly blind and dumb that I won't attempt to justify my belief for fear of being redundant and repetitive.
Animals are tasty, though - no doubt about that!
In the recursive vein:
PETA Exists To Annoy
Cmon now. Animals (well, some) may be sentient, but when was the last time you saw a spark of intelligence in a cow's eye? I'm sorry. There ain't one. I worked on a farm throughout high school.
I'm a compassionate person. I don't condone animal cruelty. And I don't think that was the original poster's intent. It was instead that there is a natural hierarchy here. And following it makes some sense. We humans may be horribly evolved and all, but we got where we are because we've eaten like we have.
Bears eat meat. Cats toy with mice before EATING them. Dolphins live thier entire lives eating sentient fish...and dolphins are quite possibly smarter than WE are. Nobody's bitching about thier diets.
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
There was a similar case in Illinois within the last few years. Some McDonald had been running a family restraunt for a while in the middle of a small town, and when company with the arches decided that they wanted to move into the area with their own restraunt, they tried to sue the small family joint into the ground. Needless to say, the local population was less than pleased, and fortunately, the family restraunt won. What i want to see is someone open a really terrible chain of fast food places and try to get away with calling it "Ray Kroc's". The irony (and justice) in that would be faboo.
itachi
Instead of .alt, we have had a proposal for .god with the same properties.
voguesucks.com
Looks like they are guilty of worse than the guy they are sueing (?). He made a parody, these domains are deliberately using trademarks for libel.
think they should be careful where they are planting their petards, they might be back that way soon.
~ppppppppö
How hard would it be to set up a quick and dirty alternative DNS? given the number of people in the 'community' here it would be a good place to try... then create a couple of sites like www.coke.rocks (because it would be a great TLD) dedicated to the history, science, and future of partially burnt coal, quick anonymous email to coca cola ("hi I recently used a new dns service, and was SHOCKED to find..."), and see where the chips fall...
I don't really know enough about networking, or have the servers.
~ppppppppö
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I will use vacation and fly wherever this happens. I coulnt possibly imagine any batter way to spend my vations than going to a PETA Barbeque with a buncha my fellow Slashdotters.
IM THERE
-Spunt
:wq!
Just wondering.
True ... but doesn't the point carry across to any organization that simply exhibits a willingness to litigate? Y'know, I could *almost* support PETA ... at least as a corrective to the extreme "they're just animals" kind of view out there. But, given
Simply reinforces the idea that all lefties are rigid and humourless, and it doesn't help their cause much (the good points they make will be obscured by these bad ones). Bad news. Bad PETA. </rant>
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Similarly, I could write a "Harry Potter" parody, but I can't title it "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," because that would clearly confuse people looking for the actual book.
I think you've made a slightly bad analogy. A more appropriate analogy would be:
You could write a "Harry Potter" parody, but you can't title it "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Bone".
Remember, they are PETA, the website they own is PETA.com PETA.org is slightly different, just as "Sorcerer's Stone" and "Sorcerer's Bone" are slightly different.
I'm not a lawyer, but it stands to reason that unless they specifically hold some sort of leagal claim to "PETA.org" they shouldn't automatically have rights to it.
so because PETA owns the rights to PETA, I wouldn't be able to start a company named PETA, which stands for Personal Eating Tiny Ants? They are two different things, which PETA.org was different... in fact it was the TOTAL OPPOSITE of PETA.com
Write your Representative: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
I'm a little confused by the term "moral vegetarian".
A Moral Vegetarian is someone who eats only evil plants.
I don't see why this is a "crappy legal precedent." Take any Weird Al song, Saturday Night Live commercial or other parodies. The names are not exactly the same as a trademark or copyritten work, but there are changes in spelling or words. This just seems to be an extension of the regualar law applied to the web.
If God didn't want us to eat animals, then why did he make them taste so good?
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Don't know if anyone's still reading this stuff, but here's a Sluggy comic that has PETA in it. It's pretty funny too. Here it is.
How can you not believe that the original poster's priorities are screwed up?
Holding something as an opinion means believing in something which necessitates thinking of something else as untrue.
The "everyone is right in their own way" attitude really pisses me off.
So you're saying that pretty much everyone in North America is a mass murderer and you're one of the only ones admitting to it?
So you really believe that by buying that coffee machine you're intentionally killing a child. And you buy the coffee machine anyway? That's awfully nice of you. Too bad your enlightened perspective didn't go to someone with morals.
Can you just as easily pull out a gun and shoot someone in order to take their money? You seem to be stating that there's no moral difference.
One last thing. How often do you think about this besides when you're in Starbucks philosophizing or posting to Slashdot?
You know, I really don't see anything wrong with that. All they're trying to do is achieve their goals through whatever means they can, and they're sticking to their values.
The fault, in my opinion, lies with the judicial system, for not being just.
On a side note, I don't really understand why the organization is _M_ADD. Do mothers have some sort of special insight into drinking and driving. It's seems as strange as Artists Against Racism.
I love animals. . .they're delicious.
It all boils down to one thing.. If animals weren't meant to be eaten, they wouldn't have been made out of meat.
Just a wee nit to pick but I think that the MacDonald that is the current clan chieftan spells his name Ranald... And since I share his surname I find this entire situation quite interesting. I will not do business with this company in any way shape or form as they have co-opted my name and subjected me and my children to endless bad, insulting and generally anoying jokes from the less sophisticated people we encounter... MacDonald....
morturii
Be sure to write us after your hair and fingernails fall out.
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
There is at least one flaw in your point. (disclaimer: there may be more but I'm not interested in this enough to find them)
.com and .org are not US properties.
PETA did not own peta.org. Therefore there property was not taken. Therefore your analogy of me taking your clothes for a parody is not valid.
You can argue that they have a right to ALL peta.XXXXXXX sites all you want. But the fact is that they didn't own it at that time and current law doesn't give them the rights to all peta.XXXXXXXX names just because they happended to trademark PETA in the USA. Heck, what about peta.fi? Do they own it in Finland? (I have no idea if PETA is trademarked in Finland, so maybe they do.) Even if they do,
Absimiliard
It's buried, but here's the email address for the US : info@peta-online.org Other countries can be found at: http://www.peta-online.org/about/cont act.html
It's inconvenient to treat plants with respect as well, but no one seems to have any problem with that. In fact, people go out of their way to be cruel to plants...
No shit, man. I just tore up a sticky budlet, jammed it in my pipe, and after applying fire several times, I could hear faint screams of agony from in there. D00d, it was weird.
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Since peta.org is down, here's a link to the old
petd.org
But PETA is a terrorist organization. Who stalks people, damages property (not just throwing paint but slashing tires damagig vehicles ect.) and do confront hunters and other "mean people" sometimes with force. This is well documented just not published due to the fact that it is not politically correct to do so.
Got a beef? Plug a name into the Bizarre Rumour Generator!
A person starves to death in this world every three and a half seconds. 75% of those deaths are children. Let me ask those of you who have given money to PETA something: If you had to choose between sending a donation to PETA and saving someone's life, which would you pick? I only ask because you already made the decision. You could have sent that money to any of a hundred charities that struggle daily to keep people from starving to death, but instead you chose to let someone die so that you could feel good about yourself. Sure, it's easy not to think about it, but it's still true.
I don't like most animal testing, and I don't think animals should be treated with unnecessary cruelty, but those of you who support PETA at the cost of human life have your priorities seriously out of control.
-brogdon
Go to www.hungersite.com
This tagline is umop apisdn.
What a load of shit. Sue those bunny-huggers before they decide to burn the constitution.
Lee
Um, profiting from someone else's trademark in parody has been declared protected free speech by the courts. Just look at the career of Weird Al to see a prime example.
That's the closed thing to a contact I found.
Definitely.. saying nice things goes much farther..
-V
I had thought that slashdot was a good, solid, reliable source of news articles, littered with an intelligent comment and a word of wisdom from the editors. Obviously I am dreaming of the slashdot of old, as this dips*** of an editor has shown me otherwise.
Since when have all of my computer using comrads come to the conclusion that copyrights apply when enforced for our purposes, but that they are non-existant and useless when they do not benifit those of the geek world. A trademark is a trademark is a trademark! Domain squatting is never acceptable. Regardless of the content, michael.
Furthermore, peta.org was a purposeless site which aimed to do nothing more than ruffle feathers and spread hateful material. This would be the same as if some sort of white power group had siezed the domain naacp.net and were using it for their hate material.
Michael, you should be ashamed of yourself.
We were just talking about this the other day, all these internet laws. A company like Sony has rights to Sony.com, .org, .net...etc...whatever they want. You have to have legitamite claim to the name in order to keep it.
It is alot of crap. If you buy it...you should own it until your contract becomes void. Tough luck for a company who finds that thier internet address was already taken. Buy it off the other guy. Good investment.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
PETA is not a terrorist group. They are banal, not dangerous. Far too corporate for that.
(Disclaimer: I am an ethical vegan. On the other hand, I think the PETA people are pretty much morons in general.)
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-jacob
-jacob
Because PEatingTA got to peta.org first. PETA was a little slow in the domain-name game, but they're making up for it in volume... :)
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-jacob
-jacob
Sorry to be politically ignorant, but I've never heard of SinnFein, so I don't understand your analogy. Care to explain what they are and what their relation to the IRA is?
(I do, of course, know what the ALF is.)
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-jacob
-jacob
Read what I said again. Anyone who decides they're part of the ALF is part of the ALF. Saying "they" did something is not meaningful.
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-jacob
-jacob
I didn't quote the dictionary for fun, I did it because the original poster asked me to define what a terrorist was. So I gave him a definition. That's all. By going into more detail I was trying to show what a ridiculous statement it really was: the IRA is a terrorist group and the PLO has been a terrorist group. PETA is not and has never been a terrorist group. The fact that that some members have on occasion thrown pies and paint at a few people doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel safe turning the keys in your ignition tomorrow morning because you're afraid that PETA's gonna get you.
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-jacob
-jacob
Both statements are extreme, but that does not necessarily make them untrue.
That, and saying either is likely to make reasonable people think you're an idiot.
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-jacob
-jacob
Should have said this the first time:
:)
About the ALF, they're not exactly a terrorist organization. They're a kind-of quasi-terrorist quasi-organization. For one thing, there is no such thing as "the ALF," IIRC: if you do anything illegal to mess with the meat/animal exploitation industries, you become part of the ALF just by claiming you are. There isn't any central organization. However, one of the rules is that you can't actually hurt any animals, "human or otherwise," though you are allowed (and encouraged) to damage property. Not quite terrorism in the traditional sense, because the people who came up with the ALF definitely did not want to hurt people physically, only economically.
So, like I say, they're kind of terrorists and kind of an organization. They also have a cool logo.
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-jacob
-jacob
Actually, the "Hitler was a vegetarian" thing isn't quite true.
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-jacob
-jacob
But they settled out of court.. so no precedent was set. Good find though!
I don't know about you all, but I call this 4th of July. :)
Of course, there could still be a press release.
I sig, therefore I am.
Not to defend them, but Peta's certainly doing nothing unique, original or new in this regard. They're taking advantage of long-standing legal precedent which has recently been applied to domain names.
I don't know what made the client's profit versus non-profit status make a difference though; there's precedent for profit-making entities selling items parodying trade dress and logos. For example, Mad Magazine, Spy Magazine, even major newsweeklies (Newsweek for example, has run parodies of McDonald's trademarked logo.)
The folks running Peta.org could've done what Peta (and the American Cancer Society and many many more like them) has been doing all along -copped 501(c)(3) status (non-profit viz. IRS) and paid themselves very well.
For more in-depth info about trademarks, check out http://www.inta.org - International Trademark Association, whom I'm not associated with in any way.
-Schmaltz
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
This is a wonderful ocassion! Never before has any group of people in history been as humiliated and taunted as PETA has been.
My Celebration plans:
Eat a big ass steak.
Buy my kid a Baseball glove.
Get a new leather wallet.
Go hunting.
Go fishing.
Give a dog a beer.
Light up a cigar for a cat.
Club a baby seal.
Party on.
So, to respond to both of you, one of you needs more of a sense of humor about things and the other needs a little more nutritional information before posting insanely ignorant statements.
The one site that I looked at had quite a bit of misinformation, but the name is still funny.
heh, ignore my drunken post before... i thought this was a reply to mine. guess i need to learn how to use the slashdot interface better.
-lw, moron
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
I used to have respect for PETA.
I used to believe these people had a right to their beliefs, and should be allowed to practice them however they see fit.
I used to think that maybe they had some good ideas.
Now, I have lost all respect for PETA.
Now, I believe I will not be able to treat these people decently.
Now, I know they are animal fascists, and they should no more be allowed to exist than any other dictator.
SETA (students for the ethical treatment of animals) held "anti-meat" days every once and a while at our high school. they'd serve veggiburgers and veggi-hot-dogs, and generally offer a meat-alternative.
No one interfered with them. We brought real food to eat, but never did we interfere with their sales.
We thought it would be cool to do a fund-raising campaign along the same lines, and held a "Steak Day" every once and a while. Our class would grill up steaks, kabobs, burgers, etc, and sell 'em off.
The SETA folks tried to block off the enterances to our grills, physically stopped people from buying steaks, and were a general nusiance.
I guess that's just characteristic of these people. They interrupt you, that's their Right to Assemble Peacefully. Interrupt them, you're breaking the law.
Assholes.
I guess I see it as my personal duty to interfere with them now.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
I guess that's just characteristic of these people. They interrupt you, that's their Right to Assemble Peacefully. Interrupt them, you're breaking the law.
How in the world did you extract "you can't parody us" from this comment? I was commenting about my experiences in high school, not the PETA lawsuit. Read more carefully next time.
And there's more to the 1st Amendment than Free Speech - The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble, for example.
Freedom of Speech is a very touchy subject, especially when the Internet is involved. Any time there's a court case having even remotely to do with the Internet, expect a lot of (unwanted?) attention.
But the point is, domain names should not be subject to copyright laws. So PETA didn't get a chance to register PETA.org - BOO-HOO. Try and register it when it expires, if it isn't re-registered. Why penalize the early bird?
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
I think (while maybe not a perfect example) that this is exactly what we need Data Haven's like Sealand for. This was not illegal in any real sense of the word, he was not pettling drugs or child porn. He was spoofing a known national identity. When a controversial organization such as PETA decides that they need a web site they are opening themselves up to a slew of attacks; both from crackers and other individuals who do not agree with their point of view. This individual has the right to say whatever he chooses, if he decides to put it on the web so others can freely access it, all the better. If PETA felt that people could be confused by a mockery of their own page about eating animals (that did not look like the actually PETA page) maybe they should reconsider who their target audience is.
Had this been at the data haven what would have happened? This man had not violated any of SeaLand's rules. Would the page still be up?
Also is anyone yet mirroring the pages content? Just because the justice system is being short sited in setting precidents doesn't mean that this page should not still be available.
"Peta means People Eating Tasty Animals."
There! I have just used PETA without a trademark. Whoops, I just did so again. Even worse, I used it to mock them. Now slashdot will be imminently facing a court order to take down the site. Bwa ha ha.
This has the potenetial to become even worse than a DOS attack: A Lawyer attack!!
nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
If you support the 1st ammendment, but only as long as noone says anything offensive, you don't support the 1st ammendment.
It may be time to brush up on your history, veggie.
-Peter
Slashdot cries out for open standards, then breaks them.
Just a thought (always the mediator)...
How bout a veggie BBQ? Grilled portabella shrooms make great burgers (as an example). Aparagus is yummy grilled too.
That way, you still get the charred smell (Mmmm...ribs) and you get the support of the less asinine vegetarians.
Hrmm?
(Me spill chucker work grate. Knead gramma chicken.)
Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
PETA is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) organization, ID No. 52-1218336.
Can we now SUE THEM over squating on a
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www.securitygeeks.com
http://whittenburgs.com
Atlanta is Peace, love and traffic jams!
Which has to be one of the more pointless things about your constiution I can see...
This is the 21st century. If no-one else in your country had arms, why would you need them? We certainly don't need them over here, and consequently neither do our police. This means we have a far lower murder rate, which can only be a good thing.
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Andy
Woah, calm down. That reaction is uncalled for. I did not call you constitution pointless.
Barely any police in this country have firearms. The nearest unit to me (at this moment) that has access to firearms (and the authority to use them) is around 150 miles away, in Edinburgh. Also, your comment on involving the police in cilvilian matters is a bit of an underinformed statement. If you are referring to Northern Ireland, where protesting crowds have been frequently known to have elements armed with automatic weapons, then that is slightly different than the majority of the country. I also remember seeing archived film of your National Guard getting involved in civilian matters during protestations less than 30 years ago. Is it still the case now?
I am not meaning to anger you, so please do not flame me back. If I am underinformed, then educate me.
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Andy
I think this is an interesting observation about the internet in general. The net is usually known as somewhat of an anarchy, where no one single person's or entities apply globally especially considering the internationality of the whole thing. You have your freedom advocates, your speech advocates, your techies, your gardeners, your corporate enties, your geographical governements, as well as pirates, bootleggers, scammers and n'er-do-wells all occupying the same collective virtual space.
This ruling is simply more proof that the net is never going to follow any concrete rules layed down by anyone. While the government (US or other) seems to believe that they will control the net eventually, they will only succeed in spreading this feeling of anarchy about the net with actions such as these.
"where no one single person's or entity's rules apply globally."
Sorry, didn't preview. I should have.
SinnFein is the political wing of the IRA, basically the public mouthpiece/spokespeople.
I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
I agree with you, anon. You've put your finger on something there.
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"I got three words for you: Learn to fucking type"
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
PETA is a leftist-extremist Animal rights activist group, and they exist so that idiots like you will open your fucking eyes to the real problems in the world. Their stance is that eating meat and wearing fur is a barbaric remnant of our past, and we humans have evolved past that into a more civilized way of living; that we can indeed survive on a plant-based diet, indeed that world-starvation would be stamped out if the meat industry would stop consuming all of the world's water, grain reserves, and polluting its ground water, etc, etc... I don't think you're very aware of the tortuous and inhumane conditions animals are put through, and if you were, you'd become a vegetarian like me. So you're saying "oh wow, this hippie is way too serious," and well, yes, I guess I am pretty serious. About as serious as I get when I hear a racist joke. I find ignorant attitudes toward this issue to be on par with ignorant attitudes toward say, sexist or homophobia or racism, etc, etc. And no, I'm not a hippie. Anyway, I find there to be WAY too many macho/inhumane/cruel geeks all over this site, it gives me a rather bleak view of the world I live in, and of our future.
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"I got three words for you: Learn to fucking type"
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
This is a little different just because of the way our society is. People, in general, see themselves as being better than anything else on the planet.
This depends completely on your definition of "good" to which better is relative.
In this case morality does enter into it since according to society-as-a-whole's morals killing people is not just wrong, but illegal.
Personally I'll agree with this one but subject to my definition of "human".
Rapists, child molestors, and anyone threatening me aren't covered by my definition
---CONFLICT!!---
I'm a little confused by the term "moral vegetarian".
The term sounds like it should mean that you find it morally wrong to eat animals. This makes no sense.
So if I revise this to mean that you feel it is morally wrong to kill to feed yourself, then that makes you a hypocrite.
Plants are just as alive as animals, they feel pain, respond to their environment etc.etc.
Morally there is no difference between killing a plant and an animal. The only difference is that animals have those big brown eyes to look into.
You can be morally opposed to killing to survive, in which case you will starve to death. Rationalizing which living things it is and is not ok to kill based on some arbitrary factor is hideously immoral.
Given this I suppose you must have another meaning for the phrase which is much less intuitive. Could you please clarify your meaning?
---CONFLICT!!---
Their idiots anyway
ROFLMAO!
You're killing me with this. Seriously, my stomach hurts. Stop it please.
---CONFLICT!!---
IIRC, parody websites are allowed by this law, registering the domain and telling PETA "You have to pay us $1 trillion dollars" is not.
Seems like they are not non profit.
i have misplaced my signature.
I'm not 100% sure about this, but whitehouse.com may well be the site for the UK porn mag 'Whitehouse' which is named to spite Mary Whitehouse, a famous pro-censorship campaigner.
They are not arguing against the PEatingTAs right to use PETAs trademark to profit from or parody. The argument was simply over the use of PETA.org - which is the natural place I would go to if I was looking for PEthicalTAs website.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Hmm, based on their list of registered names, petasucks.com should pass the bar.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
if it's intentionally trying to confuse children, then it would fall under the "confusingly similar" umbrella and probably could be stopped with court action on mcdonald's part.
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DeCSS source code!
you must amputate to email me.
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you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
The law cited here applies to "famous marks", not to trademarks in general. DuPont, Buick, and Kodak certainly qualify. I don't see PETA possibly qualifying here; if this was really the basis for the case, PETA had some really amazing lawyers.
Hi. Sorry for the loud title, but it is necessary to get my point across.
If the owner of the domain was looking for a resale of it, as the P. Ethical T. A. press release indicates, then I don't see what was wrong with the decision. If the owner didn't get the domain registration for commercial gain, then that's a different story. (But clearly, just the guy saying that PEthicalTA would probably make an offer to pay him to transfer the domain name registration doesn't mean that reselling it was his original intention or even that he would sell it if asked to.)
This whole thing is moot doctrinally, though. I don't really how you can violate someone else's trademark by using an acronym of your own name.
The contents of the website are irrelevant to the decision. After all, it's the domain registration that has been supposedly made in violation of trademark laws, not the website attached to it. The case isn't about any web pages that may exist.
The "must transfer" provision that keeps popping up in these cases just blows my mind. A domain name registration isn't a good, it's a service. Cancelling the registration should be sufficient to comply with trademark law.
Of course, these strange US Internet-related laws popping up are usually inconsistent with current and traditional practices, not to mention existing legal doctrine, are usually full of a) (un)intended side effects that are never discussed by legislators or the general public, and b) loopholes big enough to drive a planet through. =) The large body of Internet case law that seems to have appeared out of a doctinal void, pretty much at random, doesn't help either though. e.g.: Talking of someone providing a service like DNS as if individual domain names are "property", from a legal point of view, is a little bit f***ed up, if you ask me...
My usual example of the last point is the following:
Suppose I ask some guy on the street where the nearest McDonalds is, and he says "Well, there's a fast food place over there", and directs me to a Burger King. Suppose that he did that because Burger King is paying him to do that to everyone who asks for directions to McDonalds, does that mean McDonalds can sue Burger King for trademark dilution? I don't see why it would be illegal, unless Burger King (fraudulently) is claiming that they are McDonalds.
(If I had, at some point early in my past, lived in the US, I would have left long ago for saner pastures...
I especially like countries with an "existing laws" + "hands-off" approach to the Internet. )
The scary thing is though, each site contains the exact same amount of porn as the other! (wink wink) *cough* clinton joke *cough*
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
I agree that it is a horrible precedent. We can only hope that apellate courts have more sense. Shouldn't web sites be ruled the same as parody in other forms of media, such as movies and songs? On a personal note, I really wish I had seen PETA.org before it was taken down so I could send my vegetarian friends to it. :)
They can sue about 1-10 people fine without drying up their resources, but what happens when we all go out and register domains and parody them. They'll have to divert resources away from corrupting the youth of america ( Eh, see, propoganda works for both sides ). So get out there and take a domain.
I for one am registering: NoFishing.org , a parody of NoFishing.net .
Here are some domains that you can have (or just register NoFishing.org before me):
And then there's always the lesser domains.
-----------------------------
Well I'd club a baby seal,
you know i wouldn't ingest it.
I'd tell my vegan girlfriend,
you know i wouldn't suggest it.
Well all my shoes are leather,
and I don't care wheter or not.
All the cute little animals were to be shot.
(this is funny, mark it as such)
metalgeek
metalgeek
windows, just another pane in the glass
This weekend Lenexa, KS is holding their annual Kansas State BBQ Cookout. This has been going on for about 15 years, and now its a pretty big event. It started as just a local thing, but for the past many years, its been growing by about 20 teams a year. I wasn't planning on going, but maybe PETA convinced me...
Hmm, I searched his message carefully and saw no mention of asshole vegans, although I did read an amusing analysis of existing information layered with sarcasm. I do thank you for posting this, however, as it is eternally amusing to me to see this sort of response to sarcastic wit. The irony in nailing down the imagined point that you are trying to dispute is just too rich. To quote yourself:
What was the point of the message that you replied to? Think really hard.
On a side note, I don't really understand why the organization is _M_ADD. Do mothers have some sort of special insight into drinking and driving.
No, the founder of MADD just realized that if she had decided to assist one the many existing organizations attempting to help reduce the amount of drunk driving that occurs, she would have only been a peon; by creating her own organization, she gets to enjoy the power and cashflow of heading a large organization, which is far more important than joining an existing organization to make it even stronger.
I agree that there should be some new TLDs created, just to generate some room before web addys start looking like AOL addresses (www.turner6554.com or some nonsense) but I think that addresses should be free-for-all as well. Screw cybersquatting laws and whatnot; you get there first, its yours. Giving the government the ability to regulate domain names based on content just makes it that much easier for them to slime their way into other areas of the Internet and regulate content. I suspect in five years, its going to be completely regulated by a multinational organization made up of reps from all different countries and ideas like Freenet will be right down the crapper due to Freenet servers not even being allowed to be connected to the Internet; after all, what rich corporation is going to support a project like Freenet, and what is a governmental organization going to support that isn't backed by big cash?
.parody TLD sounds pretty cool, it'll just become another invitation for those of us who don't have lawyers on call 24/7 to take it some more from those that do.
I don't suppose annyone is working on a new version of the Internet that is totally unrelated to the existing one, are they? I'm afraid that the one that we currently have is screwed; might not be too bad today, but it isn't getting any better as time passes. While having a
So psychological warfare does not fall within the bounds of "terror"ism? While the American Heritage Dictionary definition specifies "unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence", I would think that the use of psychological attacks, such as, oh, throwing paint at someone as a representation of blood and screaming that they are a murderer or distributing "Unhapy Meals" portraying a clown as an axe wielding psychopath to children who have no concept of political motivation, qualifies wholeheartedly as terrorism. I have no problem with the members of PETA having their beliefs, but when my daughter runs out of the circus tent screaming in terror because she saw a clown in the center ring and thought it was going to kill her with an axe because some psychopath wanted to promote their political agenda while she was playing in the McDuck's playground, you can bet your ass that her daddy is going to protect her from ever having to deal with that again. Your right to protest stops where my daughter's sanity starts, as at that point, you are in the same league as any of those bomb-happy nutcases that love to blow up Embassys, except, of course, they've never attacked my family directly.
That is by far the funniest goddamned thing that I have read in a long, long time. Thank you very much for posting it.
If this does come about, someone needs to make sure /. gives the get together some good index page coverage...
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
In America, we're often told that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Citizens are expected to know every law, regardless. Why not Judges?
Or write to them.
Nothing has worth defined all by itself. This doesn't mean we don't have any worth, but that worth is arbitrary. It might be 0, 1, -13, yellow or infinite, but it's really undefined until we specify more. And when you do, you never define a universal worth.
Now an actual worth have no value in itself either. Just like the "infinite respect for worms"-argument. It doesn't tell you enough on how to live your life. Even when you know precisely how much it is (ie, work-hours, salary, bank-account, happiness, amount of sex, friends etc). What do you decide to do based on your assumptions and judgements of the world? Not only that, but you will also have assumptions on the results and consequences of your actions (which always turns up different than expected). Now what do you do with this information again? Do you want to maximize egotistical gains, do you want to share with others, become famous, listen to your parents, ride horses, etc, etc...
This is all the questions of life. We have free choice to respect worms more than we do humans. So in order to define the world around us, we need to decide how to live our lives and vica versa. It's an endless feedback process. There may be final universal values that are... universal. However, I don't think judgement (worth), doom, salvation and power have anything to do with them.
If you didn't catch all this, don't worry. I believe you're right that people who want to save worms are a tad hysterical, but nevertheless they are on to something. They give a different view of things that we should consider.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
For those that want to see the site in question (since PETA.org is no longer up), the owner of the page moved the site in 1996 to this URL: http://www.mtd.com/tasty.
The "E-Mail Peta" link is simply a link to mail info@peta-online.org. I'm going to write them there.
It seems that every point made in the case against PETA.ORG could be made against whitehouse.com, that oh so naughty purveyor of porn with the Pennsylvania Avenue Address.
Why then hasn't the government made any steps to prosecute whitehouse.com? Perhaps a case such as that would be more likely to test boundaries in a more decisive way, for better or worse.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Thats what they act like,all there missing is the vegaterian L.Ron.Hubbard . They can say what they want, but dont say anything aganst them or they'll send Lawyers after you.Peta may have been founded on a nobel cause but they have lost sight of it and have become fundamentalists ,and I predict their movement will suffer becuse of their myopia.
We've already got animals without thought processes.
They're called Nielsen viewers.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Peta.org has one purpose: deliberate misdirection. It was bought because Mr. Doughney was aware that people will go there expecting the real PETA site.
.org instead of blindly typing .com as they usually do.
How insightful. Can we call you in court as a witness?
You can also explain to the judge how Mr.Doughney knew that users would try to connect to this world famous site by typing
Adam:What kept you?.
Adam:What kept you?
God:Rome wasn't built in a day
The judge ordered them to give up their web address ?? Were those the judge's exact words? What the fsck's a web address? Does this cretin of a judge know anything about domains? ... I've got a domain called nike.net because I'm a fan of Greek Gods and the Goddess of Victory in particular and I'm an internet service provider. My business is going rather well and I have 50 000 subscribers each with an E-mail address and the possibility of having their personal web pages hosted for free. One of my subscribers decides to use the nickname "sneakers" 'cos that's been his nickname since he was a kid. He opens his personal web page account which becomes sneakers.nike.net and sure enough, three weeks later along come the big boys with a lawsuit. The judge says yes, this is theft of identity and tells me to hand over the "web address" ...
Here's a hypothesis
Well, anyone care to develop this scenario??
Let me add that I'm not targeting Nike company in any way but just using a famous name as an example -- and anyway you'd have to be pretty dumb to name a domain nike.net -- but this could easily happen with a less familiar name. Like PETA. How many Slashdot readers had heard the name PETA before today?
Adam:What kept you?.
Adam:What kept you?
God:Rome wasn't built in a day
hmm.. well maybe if your family has rats for pets. but any parent who doesn't teach their kid that killing is a "bad thing" has more to worry about than their kids watching "Survivor" (of idiots).
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
GREAT IDEA! I actually like this. Who wants to be responsible for the organization of such an event? Being out on the east coast I'd have to drive 1/2 but I'd be willing to show my support (and love) for Perfectly Edible Tasty Animals! Might even drag my grill out with me to help roast a few. If I'm really lucky I might hit a few tasty things on the way out there.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
jeeze. who said anything about trying to offend vegetarians, open source programmers or the eff? sounds like we just wanted to organize a bbq and eat some animal flesh. anyone is welcome (regardless of being flesh-eaters or not). actually we can roast veggies too, they're just as yummy. i'd still like to see some huge collection of /.'ers gathered together having a fun time and good food. i may not be the best at organization (you should see my desktop) but i'll help whoever wants to start!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
But killing for food is distinct from killing for any other reason. The rats killed on Survivor were for eatin' since they hadn't caught any fish, IIRC (I didn't watch it).
petaonline.org
peta-online.org
peta.com
peta.org...
how many domains do these people want?
The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all of my grits
That shit's good.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
This is exactly what I don't understand. I'm pretty positive that parodies are completely legal and protected by law (that's why SNL can say just about anything they want about a company/product/person because they are parodying it (and thus is not slander/liable/etc)). Could the guy be sued for using PETAparody.org?? Doesn't that stop from consumer confusion, one of the common basis(es?) for copyright infringment? If so, why is VerizonReallySucks.com not protected? Is it because it doesn't have an explicit blinking Parody tag on the page??
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Actually this is wrong. If I register a domain for myself that is my name and a company trademarks that name and tries to take my domain from me, they CANNOT. As long as I did not register it in bad faith (intending to sell it later for a profit) my name is legally mine and no company can steal a domain from me. In the mrjones.com example, The real Mr. Jones would most likely win against MRJ-Ones since his name _is_ mr. jones and thus he has a right to keep it.
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Especially when the Unhappy Meal (TM) is an orignal invention from Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank. I would expect to see a lawsuit from them sometime soon.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Hey you person of low intelligence. People Eating Tasty Anmals is just as valid a name for an organization as any other. I would join that than peta.com. Stop interfering with my peta.org coorporation.
Take this personaility test.
i just sent info@peta-online.org this mail:
I am writing to inform you that your idiocy in going after the site peta.org will not be tolerated in the Unites States. Get out of the United States. We do not need your kind here.
As a result of your highly irresponsible behaviour I will got out of my way to oppose the goals of your organization, even though that was not the intent of peta.org. I hate you.
Even though you hide behind stupid lawyers and judges in my society you are a criminal.
Go to hell,
PM,
Eater of tasty animals
Take this personaility test.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
however, petareallysucks.com is available. :;grin::
EveryDNS. Use it. It works.
AC's need not reply
News just in. US lawmakers were left with egg on their face today when it was revealed that a week ago, due to an oversight, they allowed the law prohibiting murder to expire.
"Most of us were on holiday, er I mean "fact finding missions" at the time and just thought somebody else would get around to it. I mean, it's so obvious" claims one legislator.
Justice was only preserved thanks to Slashdot reader Mike Chaney who, after the law expired at 12 midnight, called up the central law registry at 2am and renewed the law by paying the $200 continuation fee.
"I knew the law was coming up for expiry so I kept an eye on it. But I really didn't expect it to expire and was surprised when it did. The delay between expiry and me renewing? Er, I mislaid my credit card or something, er, yes, that's it" he said
The president of the US has sent Mr Chaney a cheque for two-fifty as thanks. He says he plans to spend it on cookies.
In unrelated news, the police have still found no leads in the seven day old homicide case in which technology billionaire Bill Gates was brutally murdered. Critics are claiming that the police are behaving as if they "don't give a damn".
Dear Sir or Madam:
Congratulations are in order for your organazation's recent win in destroying PETA.org. Nothing could possibly demonstrate more clearly your organazation's lack of humour, which may allow poeple to take you more seriously. Your contempt for free speech may prove to be common ground with the companies you fight, enabling a more productive dialogue. Undoubtedly this is a step in the right direction, and will probably be remembered as PETA's finest moment. Sincerely, jackson@netway.com William Peterson
Their Reply:
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts about PETA's lawsuit against Michael Doughney for his use of the domain name "peta.org."
Here at PETA, we pride ourselves on having a healthy sense of humor and can appreciate the temptation to parody our sometimes "over-the-top" tactics. However, the use of the name peta.org--the very address that most people would naturally think of if they wanted to reach PETA online--passed beyond the bounds of a harmless parody; it was an intentional hijacking of people who legitimately sought PETA's site to learn more about how to stop animal cruelty.
In the peta.org case, instead of taking customers under false pretenses, the cybersquatter took in Web surfers, confusing and frustrating them and ultimately, hurting animals, something that PETA undeniably takes very seriously.
Mr. Doughney is free to parody PETA on another site--we have no objection to parody per se. In fact, Doughney has had his parody on another site for the past four years. PETA has never sought to impede or interfere with that in any way. However, we began to feel that his motivations were less than pure when he went so far as to try to sell us back a domain name that he knew rightfully belonged to PETA. We decided to let the courts decide. The court found that Doughney had a bad faith intent and "clearly intended to confuse, mislead, and divert Internet users."
PETA has a duty to protect its members and other honest inquirers. Doughney's meat-eating site lured people in with the PETA name and then championed leather goods, hunting, and all sorts of other activities that PETA combats due to the animal suffering they cause.
PETA aggressively and diligently fights for animal rights in every way that we can. This Web site is integral to our work and will allow us to reach people more effectively and as a result, save more animals' lives.
Sincerely,
Alisa Mullins
Correspondent
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Yeah, but haven't you noticed that fair use has totally gone down the crapper lately?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Waiter: Okay, who ordered the broiled fish with honeycomb?
Here's an article about the whole thing.
Old Stoggy men in archaic looking robes should not be able to rule on issues centuries past their state of mind. Does this now mean that if my name was Fred and a company/organization named Fred, Inc. existed, that I should not be able to purchase fred.com or have to relinquish it (after paying for it) if that company wanted to use it? I seriously hope not.
Governments need to realize that the only ones with legislation powers on the internet are those who run it.
Two wrongs do not make a right. PETA should not have ringlingbros.com registered. I think petasucks.org is really there for the first one to get it, peta or otherwise.
It is actually an excellent legal precedent. PETA is a trademark. While I do not agree with the corporate "if my trademark is in the name, you cannot use it", this is an example of someone squatting in PETA's legitimate namespace, .org, and depriving them of the use of their trademark.
If it had been PETA.com, I would be on the other side of the fence. No one would expect a non-profit organization to be in the .com space. In short parody is cool so long as you do not deprive someone of the legitimate use of their name. In this case, the parody site is depriving PETA of its trademark.
So when some dim-bulbed judge orders the domain to be given up, Who gets it? The party who filed the complaint? Or does it go into the pool to get scarfed up again?
well in the light of these events, I think Proctor & Gamble should sue PETA. Afterall Proctor & Gamble is often called P&G and PETA has a domain called pginfo.com.
All I was trying to say is what a lot of other people have stated quite nicely. Namely that this guy was clearly using the association between PETA and peta.org to generate hits on his site.
That's why the judge ordered him to stop using peta.org. He didn't put a gag order on him, the guy still has his website available. All he needs to do is get a new domain name, like maybe tastyanimals.org or something.
Do I think it's silly? Sure I do. Do I still dislike the extremist views of PETA? Absolutely. Do I think Mike Doughney is a hero and posterboy for repression? Hell no.
--
They registered peta.com 2 years after the domain peta.org was registered...
I mean, don't they have to file copyright/trademark disputes quickly or they lose the laws backing (not defending the mark)..
As for the link, Go to Peta.Org
UPS Sucks
c0rarc
Great idea, but let's see how it will develop. First, you will get your initial .alt sites, parents will be able to turn it off for the kids, and everyone will be happy. Then, one day (very soon, btw.), someone will open an mp3 .alt. Then someone will post DeCCS code on an .alt. Then .alt sites will begin to get sued for something else. Then... Well, you get the idea - it might be fine for a while, but pretty soon .alt sites will have to comply with all the standard crap just like everyone else.
I read in a news article a while back, there was this guy by the name of (something like) Pete Virgin. He had a hardware store called Virgin Hardware. The British company, Virgin decided to go into the hardware business and asked the guy to change the name of his store. He refused and they took him to court. I think eventually Virgin paid the guy a large sum of money to change the name. Sad. So, in other words, they probably can..
Have a read...
Pete's a genius, and his artwork has improved over the years.
Bill, sluggy fan.
It's kind of hypocritic for PETA to whine about parodies. They are organising an "Unhappy Meals" campaign to tell kids about animal cruelty in McDonalds food etc. Part of that campaign is a series of colourful, McHappy Meal style boxes (featuring none other than the Mc characters) which is nothing other than a pardoy to make a point.
email me or not.
It's not reasonable, and that's why that's not how it's done! Ever hear the expression "presumed innocent until proven guilty"? That's how juries are supposed to approach a case. The burden of proof is on the accuser.
This sounds nice and fair, but unfortunately it opens a huge legal loophole. Anyone could just say "oops, didn't know!" and get off scott free, because it would be almost impossible to prove otherwise short of finding someone to testify that the defendant expressed knowledge of the deed's legality ("Yes, your honor, on the night of the 25th I overheard him say 'Boy, laundering money through an offshore bank sure is illegal!'"). And "common sense" is way too nebulous a concept for a court of law...escpecially since it seems increasingly uncommon.
IANAL either, of course./PL
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Unfortunately, they are not a commerical interest (like Mattel) so it is harder to threaten them with anything that they care about (like taking your money elsewhere).
Threaten them with mass advertising of meat products and products that were tested on animals. Tell them you're gonna help one of the posters near the top organize a massive BBQ in protest of it. Give em hell.
This is particularly interesting because Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, loved animals, and couldn't stand to see them hurt. Somehow or other, though, Hitler never makes it onto their list of famous vegetarians that one would wish to emulate. Could this have something to do with it undermining their view that people who treat animals well will necessarily want to treat people well, too?
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
'PETA' stands for 'People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals', and that is exactly what they are about, not treating animals as human equals, and certainly not allowing the rights of animals to override those of humans. Not eating animals because the process of raising them and/ or the very act of eating them are/ is cruel is NOT equivalent to putting animals on a pedestal as high as that on which humans (like to think they) stand.
Furthermore, Hitler was not a vegetarian. It is in fact well known that while his doctor prescribed a vegetarian diet for his health, he 'secretly' had his 'vegetarian' ravioli stuffed with ground beef. And even if he had been a vegetarian, it wouldn't have proven anything. He wouldn't have been a vegetarian for ethical reasons, and 'proof by example' constitutes a serious logical flaw-- even if I found a million errant Christians, it wouldn't mean a thing to what Christianity, as a religion, really preaches.
I fully sympathize with your former countrymen, but I don't think PETA should be devoting resources to their liberation at the expense of their own cause, because I believe their cause ultimately to be a good one. A little bit of compassion here and there would go a long way to improving the human race.
Surely you can't trademark a 4 letter acronym. PETA could stand for too many things.
Anyway, the obvious response is to create pita.org, or petta or pate. It will need a bit of imagination on the part of the creators, but it can be done.
So you say garter snakes taste like chicken? : )
so isn't this sort of thing supposed to go through ICANN now? is anyone else curious about what (if any) ICANN's position on this case is?
there was a discussion about this on k5 a while ago (I don't have time to come up with an actual link right now) the idea was to cut everything related to ICANN out of the loop completely
Just more people who are trying to justify their wealth.
I guess we need to create a .pdy top level domain so that we can tell these folks to just deal with it.
Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.
Wahoo! I think that since plants are alive and can react to adverse environment, therefore implying pain response or 'thinking' of some kind, that vegetarians are immoral too! Dirt and rocks are the only suitable diet. No meat, no plants, no live thing of any kind to provide our sustinence! ...Kevin
Peta uses fear to attain their goals. They attack people who have done them no personal harm with. Thay have rammed fishing ships at sea to try to stop them. They may not kill, but terrorism is still terrorism.
Count me in. I'm all for grilling a little Bambi or Thumper. I'll even bring some potato salad.
If anyone's seriously interested, I'm willing to spend some time and contact people in KC or somewhere similarly central to host this.
Also, I've registered screwpeta.com which I'm willing to contribute for organizing the BBQ, as well as maybe rehosting the original peta.org pages. Someone would have to donate some colocation though.
Opinion: Scientology is a cult you should avoid. Follow the
On a side note, I've been told that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution aren't ordinary 'amendments' - they were already on the Constitution when it was ratified by the states - and therefore if it can be proved that any of those amendments have been removed or repealed (including, obviously, that pesky 'freedom of speech' one), that the union is dissolved. Anybody know if this is true?
The first part of this statement is true, the second isn't.
Any part of the Constitution can be modified. It's in the Constitution. Read it.
There is a website dedicated to online parodies and making fun of large corporate bullies:
(R)(TM)ark.com--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
A trademark is a trademark is a trademark! Domain squatting is never acceptable.
This smells like flamebait, but I'll bite: So what are you supposed to do, fork out the money to buy every domain that resembles your organizational name?
Whose side would you have been on in the Etoys vs Etoy.com battle?--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Quoting from a Ladas & Parry bulletin on the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995:
Definition of Dilutiuon
The new act defines the term "dilution" as "the lessening of the capacity of a famous mark to identify and distinguish goods or services, regardless of the presence or absence of
(1) competition between the owner of the famous mark and other parties,
or
(2) likelihood of confusion, mistake, or deception."
Courts have previously found that dilution can occur as a result of either "blurring" or "tarnishment". "Blurring" typically refers to the "whittling away" of distinctiveness caused by the unauthorized use of a mark on dissimilar products; while "tarnishment" involves an unauthorized use of a mark which links it to products that are of poor quality or which is portrayed in an unwholesome or unsavory context that is likely to reflect adversely upon the owner's product. The legislative history suggests that both of these concepts are encompassed within the new law. In addition, the legislative history cites, as examples of the uses which would fall within the new law, the mark DUPONT for shoes, BUICK for aspirin and KODAK for pianos.
With the number of parody sites PETA runs I can't see how they have any room to complain about the tables being turned. Especially when they operate a site like Voguesucks.com
Fight it Peta.org! Appeal. Most important, try to get Etoy.com to help you out!
Thanks for reading it for us, and posting your version of the facts by the story. God forbid us geeks read a story and form our own opinion that might run contrary to the slashdot mantra of paranoia, propoganda, and sensationalism.
Thank you for posting the email contact. This is what I sent them, for anyone who is interested.
I am writing to protest your organization's action against Michael Doughney's parody website. You may not like what he had to say, but his site was a parody which in any other medium would have been protected. It is unfortunate that the legal system has not seen fit to extend First Amendment rights into cyberspace.
It is a sad statement about your organization that you would help to set a precdent AGAINST free speech simply to protect your own interests. It seems that PETA's concern with the rights of animals is such that the rights of humans must take a subordinate position.
Unfortunately, they are not a commerical interest (like Mattel) so it is harder to threaten them with anything that they care about (like taking your money elsewhere).
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
The proposal was to organize a barbeque as a way of protesting what PETA did, removing the parody site peta.org. I would find it difficult to protest the removal of this parody without there being People Eating Tasty Animals anywhere about.
It does happen to be something that will likely rile PETA officials (especially when we tell the media that PETA's inability to take a little needling without going all corporate was the precipitating factor for this event, and that therefore, in a very real way, it's *their* BBQ), but that isn't the reason - just an "added bonus".
what? All this and you want funny, too?
In a similar vein:
Don't forget about the other Gallo brother. After Ernest & Julio cut him out of the family wine business, he tried to start his own company selling cheese. The courts ultimately ruled that he was not allowed to put his own name on his labels. Granted, wine and cheese sort of go together, so there was some potential for confusion; still, it's something to think about.
Is PETA now going to go after Peta's Advance Dugeons & Dragons site?
I agree, but my local newspaper (which is based in the same city as the real PETA, BTW) reported a few days ago that this decision was made under the Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Can anyone explain how this law can be used in a case like this?
I personally remember saying to myself, "this is a good law! cybersquatting should be stopped!" But like you, I do think the site in question should be forced to shut down (or change URL).
a) Where is the line drawn?
b) If the site was hosted outside of the US, could this law be enforced?
I don't think that your comparison is very accurate. You seem to be saying that you have the same emotional attachment to an animal you have never met as you have to a close family member.
I could understand if the cruel animal scientists (your Nazis) came into your house, took your dog that you cared for over the last 10 years and performed experiments on it before killing it.
There is a big difference between having a direct emotional bond with someone/something and just feeling that animal cruelty is wrong.
-- nolesrule
Hitler was a vegitarian and animal rights activist. Perhaps his ability to equate human life with animal life explains some of the atrocities his regime was responsible for.
This page says that Hitler was not a vegetarian: http://www.veg.org/veg/People/bogus.html
I'm not sure who to believe. But it's easy for me to believe that a politician (Hitler) would lie to get people to follow him.
Sex - Find It
I hope you will forgive me for trying to enlighten you, but the USA does not control the internet, and the ruling will not stop you from being ridicualed. More importantly, you have just made enemies of a new group of people, those who watch out for the rights of Human beings, and we are pissed. Just so you know, free speech will not be trapled for the sake of any group of zelots, be they political, religious, or corporate. We will not take this slight lightly. This is not a threat, simply a request. Speak out all you want, act out when you feel you must, but do not tread on the rights of others simply to advance your cause and gain publicity. We will make sure such action turn a against you. Please note currect efforts to hold a BBQ to help promote the continued freedom of speech online. We will be sure to mention PETA in all publicity.
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
What in the name of Fork does this have to do with peta.org? I'd hardly call PETA a tool of big money and big business :)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
As a non carnivore myself, I can understand PETA's concern however the precedent is something that does worry me. For an example of how the Green Left can *also* suffer from this please see www.sotico.com Sotico is an Australian company that has caused terrible damage to the Jarrah and Karri forrests of western Australia. (For your reference Karri is the third largest tree in the world , it is highly endangered and is being logged like crazy. Check out this site for an example of how the 'name hijack' can be used for noble goals. www.sotico.com
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
McDonalds said that they tried to talk to PETA, but PETA walked away. McDonalds said they use their buying power to influence their producers, and they also inspect all their producers once a year. They also said they hope PETA realizes that their restuarants are private property and that families eating there want to be left alone. To realize just how mentally deranged PETA is, just go look at articles which quote them. They said they realize the butchered animals are graphic, but that children have a positive reaction to them from learning the truth. So there you go, its not ok to eat hamburgers, but its ok to show obscene pictures to children, and harass people at restaurants.
//m
Um ok this is complete BS. I guess Lions and Tigers sat down after Adam and Eve's fall and said "well, the Earth has gone to hell...let's go eat some meat". If we were not meant to eat meat, then A) we wouldn't be able to (ie poisonous), B) we wouldn't require nutrients and vitamins that are normally found in meat and C) that hamburger wouldn't smell and taste so good. The Bible says all food is created by God and is good, just don't eat carrion or meat sacrified to idols.
//m
I'm tired of this veggie movement. Plants cannot move and they cannot defend theirselves. They were here long before animals showed up. Yet all of you cut them down, boil and torture them, and then chew them up in your mouths and send them to your stomoch of hydrochloric acid. When will this plant abuse end??? They just want to peacefully coexist with us...they never did anything to hurt us. And yet we murder millions of plants a year. It's all so sickening.
//m
I think we should eat all the rats we can find. They are responsible for one of the worst disasters in the history of mankind...the black plague. I say we take our revenge...it's time for rodent genocide.
//m
I believe in this case the problem stems in that the peta.org site owner offered to sell the domain name to them. This makes him a cybersquatter. Now, the problem lies in that he probably did it in retaliation to their threats etc (ie email back to them "FINE - I'll give it to you for 42billion dollars"), PETA kept the email and said he was cybersquatting.
Note - the above is conjecture, I have no proof, and worse than that, the quote that he offered to sell comes off of the peta.com website, not the story (which I haven't read yet).
Later on:
Molasses is a by-product of sugar. Sugar comes from sugar-cane. Sugar-cane farmers often set their cane on fire, to get rid of all the unwanted rodents etc living in the field. (Only the leaves burn; the "good stuff" is untouched) So even this is not animal-friendly.Reminds me of FUD we experience from "you know where".
--
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
Off topic but can't the net gods make some new endings to addresses of domain names so that these kind of issues can be avoided.
How about
How about
Wait, how about
etc. etc.
Some of us are committed BOTH to vegetarianism AND to the principles of freedom of intellectual materials. For me, this PETA case is one of those really painful cases where two issues are in conflict, because the parody makes me very angry.
Here's a comparison. Suppose you were a Jew committed to freedom of speech, and a case arose involving speech by modern Nazis claiming that the Holocaust never happened (never mind that you lost half your family in the Holocaust). That's much what this case is like for me; it is REALLY hard to set your emotions aside and stick to your principles.
I think I have to side with most of the Slashdotters who disagree with the finding of law in this case. However, I don't appreciate having my other cherished moral principles heckled by my so-called allies in the free information movement. That's how rifts develop; it's how movements become fragmented by infighting and become ineffective.
Yes. I'm committed to the right to free speech, so I concede that individuals have a right to parody PETA-- even tho the parody in question makes me very angry.
Let me see if I can put this in perspective. Suppose the case in hand didn't involve PETA; suppose it involved a parody of a Jewish organization written by Nazis, and suppose the Jewish organization sues to have to web page taken down. Well, as offensive as I would find such a parody, I'd concede that even Nazis have a right to free speech, including parody. Now suppose that the judge wrongly ruled (in violation of the First Amendment) that the Nazi web site has to be taken down. I'd be with you in disagreeing with that ruling.
However, if you decide to "support free speech" by organizing a session of pork-eating and reading from Mein Kampf (just to thumb your nose at the Jewish organization), you're going to offend and alienate some people who might otherwise agree with you on the free speech question. You are within your rights to make such a response, but I'd argue that it's a tactical mistake.
Since we disagree on the morals of meat-eating, I'd recommend that we stay silent on that issue and focus on what we agree on: namely, the right of individuals to create and share information without being fettered by "intellectual property" laws.
I think they are wrong to do that. That's not the point. I'm not defending PETA's actions in this case, even if I do happen to agree with their views on animals.
The proposal was to organize a barbeque as a way of getting back at PETA members, by doing what PETA finds most offensive (eating animals). However, there are some vegetarians in the free software camp. I don't think it's in the free software movement's interests to anger and alienate your allies who happen to be vegetarian.
You might find it amusing to hold a barbeque as a way of thumbing your nose at PETA, but it will be of no practical use in correcting a bad court ruling; and it will have the negative effects I just desribed. It seems to me that your efforts would better be put into e.g. organizing a fund drive for the EFF, writing letters to your representatives against UCITA, etc.
Actually, this depends on which version of Godwin's Law you're assuming. I've seen other formulations in which you have to actually draw a parallel between Nazi thinking and the thinking of one of the participants in the discussion; mere mention of Nazis doesn't suffice.
There's an important distinction here.
If it were a rally against intellectual property laws where meat coincidentally happened to be served, I wouldn't be opposed to the event.
However, it's clear from the posts that the intent is specifically to eat meat as a way of getting back at PETA, because you know that they oppose it.
You're making a specific, calculated statement that PETA's views on meat-eating are wrong-- even tho the real issue here is one of free speech, not meat-eating.
What I'm trying to point out is this: whether you intend it or not, your plan is a slap in the face to the Slashdotters who happen to abstain from meat-eating for moral reasons.
I can answer the issues you raise, but it's far enough off topic that I think we ought to take it to email. Send me your address if you want to discuss it further.
It was but....After a while it had just devolved in to cracks on vegitarians. and that makes us as guilty as the PETA. Just how I feel
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
Ok I am confused.
the "organization that attempts to force its moral values on others" is that the slashdot BBQ or the PETA.
Cause now the BBQ is starting to sound a lot like that...
Don't get me wrong I like BBQ's, and I have NO respect for animal rights nutbars or plant eaters in general.... but lately these posts have taken a veggie bashing turn.... Making us as bad as the PETA...
DOH
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
http://www.petasucks.cc/ also appears to be a current incarnation...
First of all if this is the case then why did PETA go with .com to start with. The answer unlike those of us who understand what the TLDs are supposed to be most people go to .com first for anything. This is not a real argument IMO. Second is the question of did he really profit from this. Not having seen the site I can't comment, has anybody seen anything besides PETA's press release on this question. Also even if he profited from it many other people (think Wierd Al) have also made money off of making fun of others. Also the name PETA is trademarked did they trademark peta.org. Not the same thing you notice that .org on the end looks not the same as peta right? I don't know if this is right or not but seems commonsense to me. Hope he wins on appeal.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
But the question still remains was he making money? Any first hand accounts please?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
- commerce
, if you're not a commercial entity you ought to be using something other thanHardly a fan of PETA here, but I think there's some validity to this ruling.
Of all the Intellectual Property laws, trademarks are undeniably justified. Heck, a trademark is your identity, and having the law protect it benefits both buyer and seller. It adds certainty to the transaction.
The peta.org site wasn't a parody of a copyrighted work, but rather an attempt to use confusion over identity to present an opposing message. If they had put up a site that was a take-off on PETA's design and a parody of their message, that would be one thing, but that's not what they did.
So, even though PETA is a bunch of loonies, they should be entitled to protect their identity just like everybody else.
Someone already responded, but I will too. Any contant legal concerns would still be present - the only advantage .alt would give you in that regard is that you could point to the "created-explicitly-as-non-mainstream" .alt in your domain and hopefully be able to say that anyone who went there, should understand what that means - just like "alt." is unmoderated, etc. Whether or not this actually helps is another question.
.alt hopefully would get you is, as the agreements say, a TLD explicitly stating that trademarks are not a condition for domain names. Whether by the time this happens, web-trademark laws are passed in the US pass to make this a moot (i.e. useless) provision (since they'd undoubtably just say "any website domain name"), we'll have to wait and see. I think it's definately worth a try.
.com for commercial and general, .net for network providers ONLY, and .org for organizations and whoever else? It springs to mind whenever I see Network Solutions' "register your .net address! Can be used just like .com, and it's not as crowded!" ads. *Sigh*. I must be getting old.
What
Incidentally, remember when TLD's *did* mean something? I.e. Jon Postel's RFC specifying
The dispute was over peta.org, not peta.com.
Didn't read closely enough. Never mind. :P
Well, everybody's favorite ISP without the Service, AOL, has shut down a few sites in its' time, or caused them to be shut down - one recently is CLHQ.com. It used to be an excellent site about some of the problems with AOL's Community Leader programs and then it turned into a redirect to AOL.com. Wonder who did that?
Their reaction to CBS showing people eating rats on the grounds that it will encourage imitation (err ... yeah) I mean, what about Cheers when Norm would head over to the Hungry Heifer? Where was PETA then?
Their objection to people actually eating rats (do you think they *like* this? It's a survival issue, methinks)
The fact that they pursued a *lawsuit* to shut down a parody site
What really fries me is that PETA shut down a parody site when one of their main means of delivering their message is by defacing fast food chains with their slogan-bearing stickers. Apparently, PETA would like "slightly questionable free speech" to work only in their favor.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
This would be no different than me reg Slashdot.COM and calling it geek news for eunuch's. This was not a parody but a deliberate confusion and reactionary site. People were confused by it. Sorry but you guys are a bit off base here.
So, send the link to McDonald's legal, and tell them they have a precedent for shutting down the site. Cite the PETA decision
It's still online dilution of the trademark. So what's the difference?
I urge everyone to report the PETA decision against McDonalds so that the bastards can get hit with their own medicine. And of course, CC PETA on the complaint
I was searching the McDonald's site to find an address to e-mail to and couldn't find anything other than those damn web forms. Anybody dig up some McD addresses?
I did find something interesting though. One of the phrases in the privacy policy that is different from almost every other privacy policy that I've seen:
"From time to time, it may be necessary for McDonald's to change this privacy policy, so we suggest that you check here periodically. Rest assured, however, that any changes will not be retroactively applied and will not alter how we handle previously collected information"
If Peta wins though, would that overturn peta.org's loss or help it on appeal?
The one McDonald's URL I found that would be applicable is here I was looking for an e-mail, because my complaint will be CC'ed to PETA.
PETA is a non-profit organization. They are not a big, multi-national corporation that is normally blamed around here for everything.
Unless someone can prove that PETA is controlled by a big evil, profiteering corporation, the whole existance of SlashDot will cease to exist!
I ask you to think of this: do you consider the KKK (old KKK, not current KKK) to be terrorists? Certainly they advocate violence to further their agenda, but more importantly, they use other non-violent methods to instill terror in their targets. Two examples come to mind.
First, the robes and hoods. They are not meant to merely disguise the KKK members, they are meant to frighten their victims and potential victims.
Second, Cross burnings. Certainly not violent, but it sends a message, just the same way PETA sends a message when one of their members walks up to an innocent bystander wearing a fur coat, calls them a murderer and throws paint or blood on them.
Terror comes in more ways than you can think of. For a black person in the south, a group of people wearing hoods and robes, carrying torches and moving towards them probably provokes terror.
Don't you be stupid.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
PETA advocates that everyone stop eating animals, stop using animals for clothes/shoes, stop using animals for anything.
Their advocacy includes throwing blood on people wearing fur coats. If that is not terrorism, I don't know what is.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I'm surprised that PETA hasn't come out against antibiotics. After all, bacteria are animals, too...
Considering that the current Supreme Court has taken an absolutist position on free speech, especially regarding political speech, I suspect that even the peta.org decision would be overturned on appeal.
- Diluting your brand
- Damaging your brand's reputation
This is kind of sketchy because PETA is a non-profit organization instead of a company, but they could argue that their brand helps them to raise money for their cause. Furthermore, I'm not really sure that peta.org is a parody site -- it seemed more like an opposing viewpoint site with some humor thrown in for good measure. That would definitely be infringement and borderline libelous as well.It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Well there you have it. That leaves no room for non-commercial domains. All sites on them are "infringing" if someone registers the site name as a trademark (even if they do it after the site went up or even just so they can steal the domain name).
There should be a "Non-trade Mark" registration procedure to protect the interest of non-commercial site owners.
BTW: How can Linus Torvalds get a trade mark for Linux, while he doesn't use it in commerce?
Big interests always let their lawyers drag the case on for a long time if they are in a lawsuit against a smaller interest. They know that they can force the smaller interest to settle even if they are in the wrong.
You don't get justice in a court, you BUY it.
The group justified their act in a commique saying that "as long as animals are being threatened human life is worth nothing!".
The American classes for goods and services are listed on the site of the USPTO, there are 42 of them. I am sure it wouldn't be too much a problem implementing that.
So e.g. Ford would be listed under www.ford.vech instead of www.ford.com.
Don Henley's (the singer) lawyer even said that using his name on the internet was infringing.
My last name is Janssen and there is already a company called Janssen Pharmaceutica who owns janssen.com. Does that mean that I can't use my last name on the internet anymore because it might infringe their trademark??????
Well I'd guess you could spend 325 bux to get your domain name registered as a trademark, but if some big company also registers it a trademark (in another class), they could still steal your domain name.
Because the laws favour big company and organisation interests only, as justice is increasingly becoming a commodity that is available at a very high price. And if it doesn't matter if you are good or bad, the wheels of the legal machinery will still crush you, if you do not have the required millions to defend yourself in court. In fact, people with loads of money who are wrong can buy the required results.
So in a few years time all non-big commercial /big-interest sites will disappear.
Picture this, if CmdrTaco hadn't sold out to Andover.net and kept Slashdot.org non-commercial any big company could have registered Slashdot as a trademark and then he would have been forced to hand over his site for free and pay $50K damages.
What is next, suing some Granny Smith's knitting club on the web because Granny Smith is the trademark of some apple growers?
The web will become a top-down medium for large corporations/organisations and all the homegrown / grassroots content will be sued into submission or scared away because of high profile lawsuits.
That is the result of what is happening now!
US Patents and Trademarks Office Trademark Electronic Application System
But trademarks are registered per class, so a big company could register your domainname as an trademark in another class in order to get your domain name and damages. And the biggest pockets win in court (just remember OJ)
And you actually have to use your name in commerce, which could be a bit problematic if you don't use your site as a business.
If you don't like the ruling, protest. Fill up the courts, dammit. If you can do it, register confusing names and parodies the sites. Then at the bottom of the page, link to somewhere where you tell everybody 1) the domain is not for sale and never will be, 2) the page is a parody of the another and link to the original, 3) why you registered it (in protest of BS trademark rulings) and link to the Boston article. Oh, yeah, and make it truly non-profit - no banner ads or order forms or anything. Pay out of pocket for your site. Teach these liberal, God-hating vegans that you won't stand for it!
Hypocritical Oath: I hereby affirm that I will always give advice that I would never myself take. I have better things to do than get sued and frankly the ruling doesn't affect me right now. I think it's because I'm lazy, but that won't stop me from telling everybody else to get off their asses and do something.
---
"Duane Dibbley?" -- Duane Dibbley
"PETA will always fight to show the public that animals on factory farms go through the grist mill before they end up on the grill," says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. PETA won the precedent-setting case on three grounds. First, trademark infringement-the PETA trademark belongs to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Doughney had no right to use it. Second, Doughney diluted the value of the trademark by his use of it. Third, Doughney was found in violation of the "Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act," because he appropriated the distinctive and famous "PETA" mark for his own commercial benefit.
In granting summary judgement in favor of PETA, the judge made the following findings: "...Doughney had the requisite bad faith intent" to profit from PETA's mark. He "clearly intended to confuse, mislead, and divert Internet users into accessing his Web site, which contained information antithetical and therefore harmful to the goodwill represented by the PETA mark."
The Judge noted: "Doughney knew he was causing confusion by use of the mark and admitted that it was 'possible' that some Internet users would be confused when they activated 'PETA.ORG' and found the 'People Eating Tasty Animals' Web site. The judge pointed out that Doughney "...has registered other Internet domain names, which are identical or similar to either marks or names of famous people or organizations he opposes," and "Doughney made reference to seeing what PETA would offer him if PETA did not like his Web site."
The judge ordered Doughney to relinquish registration of the domain name "PETA.ORG" and to transfer his registration of the domain name to PETA. Until then, PETA's Web site can be found at www.peta-online.org.
---------------------
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the guy was as much a jerk as the PETA people can be at times.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Gillette. The best a rat can get! ;)
Uh oh...I think that was a trademark...OH GAWD! PLEASE DON'T SUE ME!!!
I'll be good!
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
whatever..
Actually, yourname.com happens to be the site for an domain-registration company, and the top of their page teasingly asks "Has your trading name, company name or brand name already been registered by someone else?" Mmm ... irony
It's all here baby.
DNS rant at http://www.yelm.freeserve.co.uk/dns/
Contact ICANN. Tell em.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Excellent point...Peta.org is really where they belonged in the first place...I might feel that they had a case if the guy had bought the .com and they were at .org.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Does anyone else remember when once upon a time the citizens of the net controlled the net... I do and I miss it. I really think its about time we get back to that the politics of no nation or organization should have anything to do with the internet. If two people have a disagreement on the NET they should work it out, and it should be none of the Courts or anyone else's business. I happen to agree in some way here. .Orgs are not supposed to collect $$$ for profit in any way. Infact in reality, peta.org should have been peta.org in the first place. Perhaps if anything its time or Internic, etc to start enforcing the meanings of the domains. .com(are you a company, No then you can't register this domain) .net(are you an ISP, or maintain a network service of some sort) .org(are you going to make a profit, by charging Money) In the DNS hosting service I own I will not take a registration if the registering person does not fit these rules.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Interesting question? Is Peta Non-Profit?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Thats Bull#$%^ the only name that will work as a proper parody is the one he had, and he has all the right in the world to it! I maintain that he was absolutely not volitating their trademark, and Infact even if he was too bad! Trademark law doesn't belong in the realm of internet domains anyway....I also maintain that Those Peta A holes prosocuted this case with an agenda, and that was to CENSOR!!!!!! anything that is counter to their anti meat campaign.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
BTW, I had a classmate who was a Peta member. I'll give you that she and her friends were pretty book smart, but no "logical, rational argument" was going to go anywhere with her. The fervor displayed was more like that at a fundamentalist revival, rather than folx who had come to a conclusion and were ready to defend themselves on an intellectual level. Not that I'm saying not to write (I did), or that you should flame and swear, but keep in mind that you're not dealing with a philisophical issue that people can be easily swayed on.
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
Yay!
James
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
The wrong of this is that the PETA.com site has a McDonald's parody on their home page citing "Unhappy Meals". Interesting...
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Sure vivesection is ugly, and the videos from the band "Consolidated"'s stage shows are really gross, (hey, anything involving entrails makes me woozy), but there are some silly side effects caused by PETA.
For example, I live in Califronia and there was a ballot initiative in 1996 which passed: It's illegal to eat horses! Do you believe there was a freakin' BALLOT about that?
Dennis Leary has a monologue about only eating the ugly animals (cows vs. otters). He's so right. I would eagerly try horse, dog or cat. And I love cats! But I'd still like to taste one.
The early 90's light-rap band Basehead said it best on the inside of their album cover "Not in Kansas Anymore" regarding PETA: "[People for the ethical treatment of other people seems like time better spent...]"
Right on.
Can't wait to see what other domain names go down before someone on The Hill takes a stand...
---
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Well put. I agree with you.
-- Gary F.
I'm there! If we do it during deer-hunting season, I'll bring down a pickup truck full of fresh venison and a few two-fours of "Maudite" or "La Fin Du Monde" beer.
(Sidenote: Check out Unibroue's website, in French or English, to find out about *real* Canadian beers, not the Molson and Labatt crap.)
I swear I heard on Howard Stern's show whilst I was driving to work, that they had ?sued? CBS for the fact that someone on Survivor ate a rat.
The soundbite from these idiots was "Rats have rights, too!" being chanted somewhere. God forbid I should happen to deny rats their rights as I send my cat after them. Maybe they'll sue me or my cat for killing a rat?
Good, red-blooded carnivorous computer geeks have to make a stand!
What, in the name of creation, do we have sharp teeth if not to eat anything that moves? Top o' the food chain, bay-bee!
[Mmmmm... BigBlockMopar imagines seeing Peta members roasting on a spit...]
I don't know if the rest of you guys want to do this, but I am *so* seriously there.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I'm in Toronto, Canada, but I'm willing to help out in any way possible.
I'm good at pitching stories to TV news producers, so once it's arranged, I can certainly help out by creating press releases and stuff for the media.
My e-mail address is above; if there's a mailing list, please add me to it.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
That you cannot plead ignorance is not the same thing as being expected to know every law.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
See what a bit of logical reasoning can do? :)
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Don't blame me if I'm wrong, I'm Swedish. :)
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
What is PETA doing in the .COM domain anyway? Aren't they an organization? Isn't it their own fault that they decided not to register in .ORG in the first place? They could easily have had both, if they thought it would be easier to find their site on the .COM domain. This is not a crappy presedent, as you put it, it is a scary presedent.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
This is very depressing. I happen to be an American Liberal Democrat. As a humor-loving ALD, however, I am quite upset that such other ALDs do indeed exist. I had always put faith in the belief that the American Conservative Republicans were primarily responsible for the lack of humor in America, but apparently this is not the case.
The next person to try to force their views of What Should Be on me is going to get hit with a Liberty and Freedom Stick.
This is just sad. Can't the PETA folks take a joke?
Of course, this does go along with the American policy of allowing companies with money and trademarks to do whatever they want whie the little guys (free speech, etc.) get crushed under the proverbial boot heel.
Corporations are already trying to run the legislature and control every aspect of our lives. They didn't care about the Internet until it turned into a money-making scheme.
Give us our 'Net back!
"PETA accused Doughney of trademark infringement and cybersquatting . . . "
Both of these are obviously untrue. As a vegetarian and animal lover, I still think this is a disaster for cyber-law.
"Doughney's attorney, G. Gervaise Davis, said he plans to appeal."
Please God, let the higher court see the light. The one right in their face.
Live to be Moderated
Well I believe (this is the way I took it but there may have been a different intent on the part of the author) that the term "moral vegetarian" was intended to signify that they didn't make a point of trying to push there preferences on others (i.e. not a PETA member or anything along the same lines)
--
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
-John Gilmore
Whoops! you blew it here. go to the 2600.com web site and learn what corporate america thinks of www.verizonsucks.com.
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
Obviously NOT a good point if you missed it.
;-) I do not condone theft, spammers or any illegal activity.
.REG is the TM tag. This TLD would serve as a certificate of authentication - so no fraud. No sex sites, no so-called cybersquatting etc.
My dictionary has following definition. Parody - an adaption of the words of an author, to a different purpose.
Word and group on which parody is based - PETA.
You missed the point by miles. peta.ORG was not their property. In the same way garryanderson.com is not mine (it is still available). Others share these names - what God-given right has anyone got, to say it belongs exclusively to them.
You don't need to steal my clothes, you can borrow them if you like. What was all that other rubbish about
Dot REG for registered names is the only answer.
No conflict for world in the format: name.class.reg.country.
Also they will not feel obligated to protect it and register their name in EVERY TLD that comes out.
Explained more fully on my protest site www.WIPO.org.uk - no connection with WIPO.org. I got this domain to make several logical points - I believe it does that.
The fact that he used peta.ORG allowed you to hear his voice. Or perhaps you believe in free speech with someones hand over your mouth?
The authorities know the answer - to reserve dot reg for registered names. No so-called 'cybersquatting', coming across sex sites or fraud. Can you not see that?
This is the first idea that I had when started 7 months ago. Recently found that a attorney by name of Lawrence Siskind had it September 97. He suggested something on the lines of ford.006 (or whatever class).
.REG acting as the TM tag.
Problem - it does not take into account the country. Each has its different classes. The final solution would have to be name.class.REG.country -
I am not big headed enough to believe I had this idea first. ICANN would have - indeed MUST have known this is the only solution to allow ALL the TM holders to use their name. Recently found proof they had been given similar proposal.
I explain more fully on my protest site www.WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with WIPO.org.
Agree - But free speech is what they do not want, they hate dissension. It is one of the reasons the authorities made the rules to take your domain off you so easy.
I have protest site at www.WIPO.org.uk. Needless to say nothing to do with WIPO.org.
It is a Domain Name System NOT a Trademark System.
I agree 100 percent, PETA as a registered organization should have protected webspace. The example I use is dot reg, reserved only for registered marks.
It is through Internet mismanagement, that the situation is as bad as it is. I have protest site at WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with WIPO.org.
It is a Domain Name System NOT a Trademark System.
It is, as you say, "too loosely regulated" for trademarks. If something like dot reg was reserved only for registered marks, it would solve all problems. Nobody could stop them using their domain name and consumer would know they were the 'real thing'.
It is through Internet mismanagement, that the situation is as bad as it is. I have protest site at WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with WIPO.org.
What about peoples rights to free speech? Seems some of you have no backbone, to agree the Internet to be taken over like this.
Now this is a damn good idea. It would show, among other things, that the "net community" has a sense of humor about things, which the oh-so-sanctimonious PETA clearly lacks.
There could be a veggie BBQ as well. No reason to exclude those, ethical or evil, who for whatever reason prefer to eat mushrooms and zucchini instead of KC (actually I slightly prefer Memphis) BBQ.
Which reminds me, it's late and I haven't eaten yet...
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Now this is a damn good idea. It would show, among other things, that the "net community" has a sense of humor about things, which the oh-so-sanctimonious PETA clearly lacks.
There could be a veggie BBQ as well. No reason to exclude those, ethical or evil, who for whatever reason prefer to eat mushrooms and zucchini instead of KC (actually I slightly prefer Memphis) BBQ.
Which reminds me, it's late and I haven't eaten yet...
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
The the first action of the Society for the Ethical Treatment of Insects (SETI) is the release of a new screen saver (SETI@home) that will inform everyone that calling a software defect a "bug" defames all insects.
Many people agree that animals should not be abused when in human service, but PETA is so extreme in their views it's laughable. Of course they would see the inevitable parody as a threat. PETA needs to stick to the important issues like decrying the death of poor rats as food. I notice they had no problem with the horrible deaths of beetle larva. Bugs are people too!
Sinn Fein is the political (public, nicer, "we don't advocate violence") wing of the Irish Republican Army. The comparison of the relationship as PETA to ALF is not original.
Admittedly, ALF doesn't do things like blow up public spaces; they tend to stick to labs. There have been times, though, when people who do biomedical research have been as worried as a Belfast shopper in the 80's. Terrorism is terrorism, imo.
Is it hypocrisy? Perhaps in a morally ideal sense. But consider, their litigation was still under consideration. If it was determined that there was no protection for trademark holders, i.e. they lost their suit, then there would be nothing wrong with their actions toward Ringling Brothers. I see this as an example of PETA not liking the rules, but playing by them while they attempt to get them changed. The only sane course of action IMO.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
You're taking Kurisuto's analogy too far. He's merely illustrating how two ideological positions can be in conflict with regards to a single issue. If his analogy involves a situation that is a bit more extreme, then it doesn't invalidate the correspondence. The point is that he considers the parody at peta.org to be morally offensive to him. Not every single detail of his analogy needs to match in order for it to be valid. Is it an exaggeration? Yes. Is it invalid because of that? No.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Of what value are the proposed new top level domains when anyone with a trademark already owns them by default?
Is pEata.com taken?
What was the point of the message that you replied to? Think really hard.
True. If peta.org wanted to sell advetisement banner space, they'd pull out their stats on how many hits they've gotten and everything. Now, how many of those hits were legitimate and how many were from people that really wanted to go to peta.com? The fact is he would be gaining financially because of the Peta name.
Why didn't Peta register peta.org? I always thought it was a non-profit organization. It would have suited them better.
S lay
L ive
A nimals,
S uprising
H ow
D e
O h so
T asty
"...your future, make it a reality, all you have to do is fight for me"
Sigh...pity I didn't read about their parody site before I wrote this.
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
I remember listening to it as well. Do you remember the URL for the organization that goes out a make parodies and pranks?
It was artmark.com or something like that?
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
yeah now I wonder.. is this the oportunity microsoft waited for. are we now to see them in court against every domain owner with micro, soft, og dollars in their domain name.
watch out, microbrains/megabucks or should we say randoM$oft loves you..
If the people who own peta.org want to transfer their domain name to me, I will grant them exclusive use of it for a fee of $35.00 per annum. Let's see your shitty American legal system come looking for me in the Paris suburbs. E-nuff is E-nuff.
i never said they didn't think about it, i said the didn't see it coming. there is a difference. Of course they didn't think about it, no one can think about all the possibilities of the future. they didn't foresee what would become of the world makes it a different meaning. Life was profundly diffent in the 18th century. when the said free speech they ment the ability to say what you wanted to any person, in cluding the high and mighty, without fear of consequnce. today we've take it as the right to say whatever we want, no matter what it does to anyone, or anything. Thats why there are the laws for slander and libel. to take your example of a right to bear arms they ment it as a way for people to protect themselves. remember America was still mostly wilderness in that time, and there were a lot of dangers. now a days people look at their second amendment rights and see the abilitie to carry a cool looking gun thats been hyped up by the media and entertainment and look "cool". the people that really know what amendmendts are about don't flaunt them.
Upeo
Thats exactly right! The first admendment is a great idea, but the one problem is that the founding fathers never foresaw this coming. by this i mean the Internet Age, and now that it's here a lot of judges have to make first time descisions. Yet it's not them who are in this new frontier everyday, they don't really know what it's capable of, or what it means to use it. If possible it would be a great idea to educate more people what really is going on out there, what the Ineternet Age really is about, and what it can really do.
Upeo
makes me want to shave a rabbit...
I went to PETA's website and clicked the links. I found a Website called Jesus was a vegetarian. So I surfed the site and read an article that said that the world was meant to vegetarian from Eden to the Apocalypse. Now I'm no expert but it seems to me that the animals God created range from herbivores to carnivores to omnivores. I just don't think the lion ever sustained itself with grass. However if you do look up the passages from the Bible they mention you will find that if you interpret it so narrowly that they have a point. And if you don't have a point goto Bible.com. This link takes you to the new american standard version.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Well, I am a vegan and see nothing funny about eating animals. This fake PETA site is as tasteful as a site making fun of other people's religion, culture or ethnic background?
The judge doesn't have power to do anything save as between the parties to the litigation in front of him: this is basic to litigation in common-law jurisdictions (as Boston is).
What his honour has to do, therefore, is order the party holding the Domain Name Registration to transfer it to the other party to the litigation, if that's the way it comes out at trial or whatever other final order is made.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Since then the US Government has seen fit to try to take control over what is not theirs.
Jake
Don't buy into what Big Brother wants you to believe!
You can read about this "cybersquatting" incident here.
Geeze Louise. Next thing you know, they will take www.whitehouse.com away!
In a sick and twisted irony, My last name Lowney.com is a lawyer company. And we Lowney's are a very small group, all of us can be traced back to massachusetts in the 1900's.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
I agree we need a new top-level domain, but I kind of like .par (for parody). Or have both .par and .alt -- the more top-level domains we have to play with, the less chance that a big company will come along and register them all.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Along with XXX and the other interesting top-level domains suggested, we should have a .par domain for parody sites, registered on a strictly first-come, first served basis. Having a .par domain should be considered evidence that site is not interested in diluting trademark, so etoys.par, microsoft.par, and peta.par would exist so we can make fun of these companies ;-) Anyone attempting to sue a clearly-labeled parody site should be summarily laughed out of court. (Pardon me while I register whitehouse.par)
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Okay so now that there is precedence I suppose that whitehouse.com is making a parody of whitehouse.gov just so it can mislead the public and get a couple thousand extra hits a day.
Interesting and on-topic post. If I may make one little suggestion for your future writings: Paragraphs.
If I may make one little suggestion for your future writings: shut the hell up. If you can't read a collection of sentences without pauses you're obviously not very bright! (For the record, I forgot to include HTML tags. You're still an idiot though.)
When Hitler was killing people left and right, he was doing his part for animal rights. The biggest threat to all other life is cancerous growth such as that of humans, generally at a far greater rate than other life on the planet (including animals and especially plants) and certainly out of proportion to the limited resources remaining (such as oil). From that perspective Hitler didn't do enough killing.
I'm not really one to jump on the Hitler bandwagon, being Jewish after all. But really, the reason animals have to be mistreated in factory farms is because there are so many gol'durned people. The wisest step toward environmental protection is a limit on reproduction. Which is not something you see a lot of people clamoring for, be they vegetarians, PETA-heads, or Nazi skinheads.
Why does it seem that senses of humor are becoming rare these day. The PETA people are also screaming because the people on "Survivor" are eating rats. These people need an enema with some sharp and pointy.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
Sweet, I'm all about this! I have nothing against vegetarians, but I hate PETA because they attempt to cram it down everyones throat. I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian dammit!
Have I been summoned? Please contact me at the Grill of Solitude if my services are required. Note: Something to remember about animals on this planet- All animals are created equal. Some just take longer to cook than others. Captain RibMan: ribman@supercomics.com http://www.supercomics.com
I'll do you one better by eating a turkey sandwich and drinking a glass of milk while brosing Slashdot right now!! I'd cook a rat as well, but they don't seem to think my apartment is messy enough...
Philosophy Existing Through Affluence
--
You forget the most obvious criticism of this idea: Jesus was a Jew, and celibrated Passover like all jews. (Christians belive that until Jesus died the passover was a nessicary celebration, and even today most continue it in some form with Easter) The major feature of passover is you killed a lamb (baby sheep) in your house, cooked it and ate it. OF course there is lots of tardition and such behind it, and the butcher probably did the accualy killing, but it had to be done in your house.
No, more like a rather small, but vocal, portion of slashdot posters.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
They forgot to tell you that after the lion lies down with the lamb, it begins to chew. :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"peta.org" without further knowledge, tells me that the site is owned by a group named "peta" which is a non-profit organization. This is probably the first site that most people go to when they want to visit PETA's website, knowing that it's a npo. They don't need to trademark "peta.org", much like MS does with microsoft.com (though I'd be surprised), as the full domain name itself is not trademarkable, only the part before the .com, .org. or whatever.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The worst thing about PETA is that they divert money away from organizations that actually help animals. They are an Animal Rights group, which means that they spend their money on lawyers and publications to push their radical cause.
They aren't an Animal Welfare group. Their idea of ethical treatment of animals is to ignore them and debate the issue.
Can I kill the veggies? It isn't just the (carni|omni)vores that have a sense of humor! (meat tastes bad! ick! cheese, OTOH... mmmm...) Sounds like a good idea, all told, as long as you feed us veggie-types too! :)
Lea
ah, the old "humans are animals too, so anything that an animal does, we can do" argument.
Boring.
But nonetheless true when it comes to dietary practices.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
When checking out the PETA Parody Site I tried following numerous links, particularly in the Miscellaneous section. Most don't work at all, including some interesting titles such as The Implications of Nazi Animal Protection, Militant Vegetariansim, and Animal Rights and the New Man Haters.
No, none of these were hosted on peta.org, they were hosted elsewhere. Obviously, the long arm of PETA and its supporters appears to have reached well beyond peta.org in silencing their critics.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Without passing judgment on the merits of this particular case, I would point out that a .org top-level domain implies non-profit organizationhood, which PEthicalTA has, and which PEatingTA does not. A .com domain is pretty much meaningless these days, though, so that would make more sense for a parody site. Having said that, I think it's pretty clear that PEatingTA is not confusable with PEthicalTA, and I don't see that they should have been required to do anything beyond prominently announcing that they are a parody and linking to the real site.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
PETA refused even to talk to the owner of PETA.org. Going to NSI for domain dispute is supposed to be your last resort, it was PETA's first. Well first legal resort, this mickey mouse group's first attempt was by cross posting an message on news groups encouraging people to email bomb and threaten and harass the owner of PETA.org.
Finkployd
I think its fucking funny. FUCK MCMURDER!!!
I agree, I think people eating tasty animals is funny as well. Since both are satire, I think both should be allowed. However, you don't see Mcdonalds trying to stop peta. You DO see peta trying to stop anyone from satiring them.
Finkployd
PyRoNeRd wrote:
>>Case law is showing that having a domain name registered and pointing to a website
>>is, for all intents and purposes, "commercial use".
>Well there you have it. That leaves no room for non-commercial domains. All sites on them
>are "infringing" if someone registers the site name as a trademark (even if they do it after
>the site went up or even just so they can steal the domain name).
That's a bit harsh. There's still plenty of room for sites based on names, e.g. John Smith has an assumed interest in johnsmith.com, or variations; prior art, e.g. the etoy defense; and so on. Probably the key issue is that only "famous marks" enjoy this level of protection. Clue Computing (clue.com) succeeded because the "Clue" board game was ruled not "famous" under the statute.
It is true that this dispute is a problem. An important case in the 1960s established eight points for a judge to determine whether trademark infringement had occurred. The problem is, when domain names on the internet are involved, two of those points are automatically in favor of the trademark owner: that the spheres of commerce may one day merge (too late), and that they are one and the same (worldwide). In essence, trademark law means that a domain name dispute is automatically 1/4 lost -- or won -- before it begins.
>There should be a "Non-trade Mark" registration procedure to protect the interest of non-commercial site owners.
That's a neat idea, but it would be difficult to police against intentional infringement. What I'd like to see is a "safe harbor" for personal sites such that if they follow a simple checklist under the law they can know they're safe, instead of waiting for a cease and desist letter some day.
>BTW: How can Linus Torvalds get a trade mark for Linux, while he doesn't use it in commerce?
The definition of "use in commerce" is broad, and doesn't require selling anything. Good for Linus/Linux, but bad for personal domain owners.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I do want to see this appealed however, up to the Supreme Court, such that some national precident is set; hopefully not in the judges words, but to the point that the cybersquatting/trademark laws are more strongly set. Why this case? Neither side is a large company with lots of money to blow, so this won't be a battle of resources, but of true intent.
:-S). Essentially, Congress has made its intent clear: famous marks have greater protection under the law, and even non-famous marks get full trademark protection from infringement or dilution. (And parody is NOT an affirmative defense against infringement or dilution, although it can be an effective one.)
Well, I bet PETA has bigger lawyers than Donoghue does, even if he's rich.
This won't get appealed, at least not that far, though. The law has already changed, and the Supreme Court is generally only interested in taking cases where there's a question about interpretation or an inconsistency. Here, the law in effect in 1995 (basic trademark law, for all intents and purposes) has been underlined and strengthened by the 1999 AntiCybersquatting law (S.1948 over at thomas.loc.gov, I've linked to it too many times to do it again
In this case, nobody was arguing about the content of the site, except insofar as it pertained to the domain name. The domain name was clearly a trademark, even a famous one, and under S.1948 there's clearly no other way the decision could have gone.
Essentially, an appeal would be arguing obsolete law, which is generally a waste of time. When somebody's on death row, it's worth pursuing. When the appellant has no real economic harm to show, let alone personal harm, nobody's going to care. His site's still up; it's survived four years without the domain name so far.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Domain names aren't a public domain thing, or property of the government. They are the property of the maintainer of the database
Not exactly. There is a public interest in internet addressing that is legally recognized.
(and there is more than one, just thing of alternic). What is to prevent me from creating my own database of, and having people register to me? Will the government ultimately rule over my business if I do?
What makes you think that just by setting up a database, you operate outside of applicable law?
This is a persistent meme among netizens. I recognize its origins, but it's really just a fantasy. The fact is that the internet never was a separate place from the real world and never has been. Just because it's on the internet doesn't automagically erase the book of laws that people operate under. The internet, after all, is just a big wire. It's the actions of the people on either end of the wire that are regulated.
Essentially, you're saying that you would set up a parallel name registry. Such a registry may well be ignored as a toy (e.g. alternic, surprise surprise). But if that name registry came to mean anything at all, which I suppose would mean significant commercial interests, all it would take is one judicial ruling to assure that your registry was under the same legal authority. Say one of your registry's users decided to use existing trademarks as names, e.g. cocacola.alt. Don't you think that Coke would STILL sue them? Do you think that because they're on a separate registry, they are somehow immune from trademark law? Unh-unh. They're still on the same planet as the rest of the world, and the same trademark laws still apply.
As I said, I see the appeal, but I don't see how it would work in the real world. Because, you see, there's only one real world, and we're all in it.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
As far as I understand, parodies are protected under copyright law.
Easy. This case is not about copyright law, but trademark law. There are significant differences, and I'm getting tired of teaching Slashdot what they could learn by glancing at a dictionary.
But, as a far as I can remember, it's ok to parody something as long as your parodoy is clearly a an imitaion that acknowledges the fact that it is immitating. ie. You can take a copyrighted material and make fun of it, provided it is apparent you can make fun of it. This one should be overturned in a second. I have no idea how the judge justified his descision.
Copyright law does make exceptions for parodies. Trademark law does not make explicit exceptions for parodies, although they're not impossible to find.
You'll notice the actual content of the parody is still online. This is simply about the use of the trademark as expressed in the domain name.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
>But I still don't think trademark law applies to DNS.
Well, that's a nice sentiment, but at this point we're looking at close to a decade of case law that says otherwise.
The most applicable decision was probably Panavision vs. Toeppen. Toeppen was a domain-name reseller who registered panavision.com. The court said:
"We reject Toeppen's premise that a domain name is nothing more than an address. A significant purpose of a domain name is to identify the entity that owns the web site.... The domain name serves a dual purpose. It marks the location of the site within cyberspace, much like a postal address in the real world, but it may also indicate to users some information as to the content of the site, and, in instances of well-known trade names or trademarks, may provide information as to the origin of the contents of the site.... Using a company's name or trademark as a domain name is also the easiest way to locate that company's web site.... Moreover, potential customers of Panavision will be discouraged if they cannot find its web page by typing in "Panavision.com," but instead are forced to wade through hundreds of web sites. This dilutes the value of Panavision's trademark.... Toeppen's use of Panavision.com also puts Panavision's name and reputation at his mercy."
[The MTV case is cited. It was really the first example of someone -- former VeeJay Adam Curry, in this case -- trying to assert simple first-come-first-served rights. He lost.]
>Assuming that I gave them the incorrect address out of malice or as a prank, would I have violated PETA's trademark?
Not as an individual. But if you ran, say, an 800-number directory service, you certainly would have. DNS isn't a peer-to-peer system, it's a central registry.
>Let's say that CmdrTaco gave me that slip of paper because he owns the meat packing plant
Oh my yes. Most certainly a trademark dilution case. Anything done to confuse or deceive consumers strikes to the heart of the origins of trademark law.
>Can Coke stop me from giving people directions to the Pepsi store whenever people ask for directions to Coke? Or even worse, can they stop me from giving people directions to the coal mine?
Heh. Famous issue, here. It's trademark dilution for a restaurant to give you a Pepsi when you order a Coke. They have to say, for example, "We serve Coke, is that all right?" Coke and Pepsi (like the recording industry) send agents out to catch violators, or at least, used to. In essence, both your examples are very much trademark dilution.
The key is *commercial use*. The DNS is considered to be a directory that consumers rely on to give them correct information, not throw them in the wrong direction. Personally, you can do WTF you like. See, DNS doesn't exist on its own. That's the problem. It's run by people.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
JohnJake sputters:
Judges must learn that cyberspace is not just a "virtual world." Cyberspace is an alternative world! It is a complete reality with its own atmosphere, culter, people, and real-estate.
Uh, hello, JJ. Ever looked inside your computer? It's a bunch of electronic parts. It's connected to a big wire that goes everywhere. These are all just physical parts in the real world. You, yourself, are still sitting in a chair, real as could be, and you are still subject to all the laws of the real world.
Especialy since the US government has no jurisdiction over international property like the internet! They have no right to restrict use of a domain name simply because some big dollar is upset!
Again, the internet isn't a place, somewhere outside the real world. The people who connect to the internet and use it are still here, still subject to the same laws as before. One of those laws concerns trademarks.
I'm as concerned as you for individual rights vs. corporations, but this isn't the fight. Look instead to mattl.com (Mattel wants him to shut down), or Naked Juice journal (no domain at all), or Digital Divas (for once, a little guy with trademark law fully on their side).
This is a horibble step for the internet. I fear we will have to start copyrighting our domain names just to protect them!
Uh, that would be trademarking domain names. Yes, that would be wise, if you have a good one. Still, this is no precedent; the precedents were set years ago already, and encoded into US trademark law several years ago. The fact is that the existing domain name system, as designed, forces individuals into direct conflict with corporate interests. This is a double-edged sword; witness Slashdot itself, which could not exist without the internet. Yet at the same time individuals who only want to use the net to reach a wide audience must now step carefully amid trademark issues. With power comes responsibility. It's a little like people moving to the suburbs, then trying to stop anyone else from moving in next door and "ruining" it. The wonderful benefits of the net come from this power, but they also expose people to conflicts they aren't necessarily prepared for.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
US courts do not have power over DNS. They have power over the individuals and businesses USING the DNS. Crucial difference.
/per se/), they are engaged in a contract with you. Normally a contract is spelled out, and also contract relief provisions. In the case of NSI, the Fairfax County, VA courts (where NSI is physically located) are the first place to go.
Just because I register a domain name doesn't mean I'm suddenly outside the reach of US (or any other country's) trademark law.
>Excuse me, but ICANN sits at the top of the current DNS system most of us use. Shouldn't *they* have the final say on taking someone's domain name away? Why are these 3rd party courts involved and who gave them power to control who registers what?
Actually, NSI and ICANN have limited powers. Most of these domain-name cases have taken place merely as straightforward trademark cases without reference to the DNS at all. If I'm enjoined by a judge from using a name, it doesn't matter what NSI does.
But more specifically, the domain name registrars are conducting a business. As such, when they sell you the service of a domain name (whether or not the domain name is viewed as property
These "3rd party courts", as you say, are the same courts that were created in the United States over 200 years ago to manage the affairs of US citizens. They didn't spring up overnight, nor did they suddenly take over the internet. They always had jurisdiction.
[FooDNS example] (4) At some point US courts will suddenly decide that they have the absolute power to decide what domains I can and cannot allow? And who may register what?
Assuming you're based in Australia, then you would be open to a lawsuit under Australian law for similar injunctive relief. I assume, for example, that although Coca-Cola is a US company, they have made certain that Coca-Cola, Coke, etc. are all registered trademarks in your legal system.
It may be slightly more difficult for someone in a different jurisdiction to bring such a lawsuit, but don't think they couldn't do it at all.
Let's make it more complicated still. US company, fooDNS in Australia, and infringer based in Singapore. They could bring suit in Singapore and force the "owner" of the name to turn it over under Singaporean law.
For purposes of international trade, countries that don't recognize other countries' intellectual property will soon find themselves having economic or political problems (e.g. trade embargo). Thus there will be very few countries that would bar such lawsuits.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
john said:
[in reply to dhartung, myself]:
>>The internet isn't exempt from real-world laws.
>And real world laws, and many prior court ruleings, allow for the use of other's material for a variety of uses, including parody, commentary, critisism, etc...
>"Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: [remainder of copyright law snipped]
Wonderful. You understand copyright law. Too bad this is a trademark case.
>PeatingTA, is clearly a commentary, and/or criticism of PethicalTA. Wether or not PeatingTA makes money or not is irrelevant.
>Weird AL certianly makes money off HIS parodies, yet they are still protected as fair use.
And indeed, the Tasty Animals site remains online. The parody content was unaffected by this ruling. There is no argument that the parody content is protected (although there are other ways it could infringe PETA trademarks, e.g. a parody logo, or copyrights, e.g. excessive quoting).
>The mass judge is clearly an idiot who ignored YEARS of precidents protecting fair use rights.
Actually, the judge in question is in Virginia (the quoted article is from the Boston Globe, but datelined Norfolk, VA). The NSI contract states that the jurisdiction of choice is the local courts in Fairfax County, Virginia, and secondarily the Eastern District Federal District Court encompassing it, so most domain name rulings come through courts in this area. (Unfortunately, and rather ironically, they're not online.)
Fair use is a concept deriving from copyright law. Fair use under trademark law is a little more difficult to prove, which is the defendant's responsibility (and under civil litigation, you may recall, the standard isn't innocent until proven guilty; it's preponderance of the evidence). Fair use does not supersede confusion. If there's a chance the consumer may be confused by, say, a "Coke adds life" pro-drug parody bumper sticker, well, the parody producer is in a difficult legal position.
The 1995 Trademark Dilution act clarified case law somewhat, but while it explicitly protects parody and fair use, there is a direct contradiction once a domain name is involved. Case law is showing that having a domain name registered and pointing to a website is, for all intents and purposes, "commercial use". This is where Doughney ran into trouble, even though his parody was arguably "non-commercial" in that it was not intended to be profitable. By having a live domain name, he was invading the sphere of commerce in question, the internet namespace, and therefore open to trademark dilution questions.
In short, "fair use" does not normally extend to domain names. petasucks.org WOULD be a clear parody in terms of the name, but peta.org itself is a collision.
Keep in mind that this is FAR from being a precedent-setting decision. The real precedent was years ago, when Planned Parenthood won back the plannedparenthood.org name from a group that used it to distribute anti-abortion literature.
Or perhaps he's a militant PETA zealot. Or perhaps he's one of those RIAA/MPAA/metallica/DMCA types who beleives that fair use should be abolished.
Or perhaps he's actually a jurist who applies the law regardless of whether he approves of the plaintiff, the defendant, either, or neither. Why make assumptions you can't support? Why not simply argue the law?
Which are you?
Which do you think I am? I don't have to explain myself.
In any event, you, and that judge, are wrong.
I would suggest you do more reading on trademark law before you say that again. In any case, the 1995 Trademark Dilution law is quite clear, and the 1999 Anticybersquatting law is even clearer. (I suggest you read them.)
If you want change, write your congressman.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
OH GOD, I FEEL THEIR PAIN!!! i mentioned i was a McClure, no? For about three years, "mcclure" or "mcclure111" (depending on letter limit) was my handle on various chat and message board forums. -- EVERY -- --SINGLE-- --F******-- [does anyone mind if i curse here? better safe than sorry, i guess] --TIME-- i would go into a room.. SOMEBODY would make a joke that went like "Hi, i'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such channels as #macintosh, #macdev, #bjork..." Yeh, sure, it's just a joke. That's how i looked at it first. You start looking at things like that differently once you've heard them more than fifty times. guess why i use the nick "mcc" now. -_-
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Now, waitaminute. Whatever happened to all the fair use clauses of copyright laws, where you could use the likness of a corporate logo, etc. etc. in a parody? These fair use precedents were set in early political satire cartoons. Are they not being argued in internet cases (like the starbucks case) for a reason? or are the lawyers just, well, blind to this precedent?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I suggest the parody site should register "PETAphiles.org" or maybe .com or whatever.
I make a habit of referring to PETA nutcases, err, members by the term "PETAphiles".
Given that PETA has a history of abuse of domain names (ringlingbros.com), it isn't fair for them to be critical of the same behavior from others. PETA has also been known to engage or condone other illegal activities (trespassing, vandalism, etc) in order to further their political goals. For that reason alone, I don't agree that PETA is in the right on this. They are merely acting out of revenge over hurt feelings.
1> Ever notice how these damn bleeding heart tree hugging dope smoking hippy liberals are just as quick to trample over the rights of those they don't agree with as thosedamn fascist xtians?!
The only difference between Stalinists (extreme leftists for lack of a better term) and Fascists is the order in which they will remove all individual rights and the rhetoric that they will use to justify it. The end result is the same. It seems that when you move too far to either pole of the political extremes you wrap back around.
Pre-emptive registration of possible negative or parody site domains like this seems like evidence that PETAphiles have an active policy of discouraging free speech and open political discourse.
Perhaps if someone owned "petasucks.com" they could sue PETA over "petasucks.org" on the same grounds PETA sued under in this case. It certainly seems intentionally misleading for PETA to register a "sucks." domain to misdirect people who might be looking for anti-PETA materials.
To: info@peta-online.org
To: webmaster@peta-online.org
Kudos to you, peta.com - for winning this "landmark case".
Kudos to you, for restricting free speech.
I am very disapointed in your organisation - fighting for animal liberation.
Freedom is also a liberation - which you now has restricted. Trademarks are a
limitation to freedom. And - not only that - limiting humor is a limitation to
freedom. You fight for freedom for animals, but forget the animal you yourself
are - namely human beeings.
I felt discusted when I heard about you winning the case. Discusted, that
people actually WANT to limit freedom of speech. Discusted, that people
actually WANT to limit humor.
I have a lot of sympathy for your norwegian counterpart - that is "NOAH". I
now know that I do NOT have ANY sympathy WHATSOEVER for NOAH's american
counterpart - namely YOU - peta.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Peta.org is down, seemingly. The DNS points nowhere anymore. Looks like they (or their hosters) are complying with the order, although the WHOIS information is still available.
Sad.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
From the press release:
Tim Enstice
757-622-7382
FYI, it's extension 610.
_______
2B1ASK1
Respect, easy to lose, hard to regain.
After PETA's pronouncement that drinking milk was bad, cruel, or whatever, and that the only viable alternative was beer, I couldn't stop laughing about it for a week. I called up my couple PETA friends, and informed them that they no longer could argue for PETA as providing a healthy alternative. Fine, don't drink milk, there are other ways to get the protien/calcium the body needs, but BEER?!? Gimme a break. Whether or not one enjoys downing alcohol as a means of entertainment, and whether or not alcohol in small doses can be healthy, beer in large quantities is not a healthy alternative to milk. Fruit drinks apparently didn't come to their drunken minds.
On the matter of interfering with a meat sale, I'd like to say they did wonders for business. A large number of students didn't hear abut the first one in time, but thanks to the well-announced SETA protests, everyone came to the second meat sale. Kind of like suing some niche group pirate software, and thus calling EVERYONE's attention to it. That, and listening to them read anti-meat poems while the folks selling the kabobs and burgers drew up and displayed large "EAT MOR MEET" signs was absolutely hilarious.
Some SETA/PETA enthusiasts may have a cause, the rest just feel some need to protest, rebel, and generally stir up trouble and make themselves look bad.
-Tannin Kal
And why can't a person make a profit from a parody? In that case you had better call the PETA Police and turn in Conan, Dave, and Jay.
The judge's decision was wrong. Dead wrong.
The street name analogy does *not* hold. If I decide to set up shop at 7th st and 9th ave, it does *not* give the business owner at 9th st and 7th ave the right to sue me. Especially if I have a business that is of a comic nature. This precedent worries me greatly. Just think openssh.com vs openssh.org for a domain name dispute that matters to a large number of /.ers.
On a slightly unrelated note, my friend just bought some bumper stickers yesterday. The thing that makes parody so damn funny is when the similarities make you do a double take. 'Thank you for not smoking - Canadian Cancer Society' becomes 'Thank you for pot smoking - Canadian Cannabis Society.'
Hrmph. When will I no longer be allowed to have fun on the grounds that it might piss off some interest group/corporation with lots of lawyers.
From what I've read, Weird Al asks the original artist for permission to parody the song. Not because he has a legal obligation to obtain permission, but because he is a nice guy. This was the problem with Coolio and Amish Paradise. There was a breakdown in communication between Weird Al and Coolio. The original artist gets royalties from the sales of the parody, not big bags of cash for giving permission to Weird Al.
Umm hate to inform you but the rules of .org being nonprofit and .com being commercial and .net being network services went out the window a few years ago. While its convention there is no rules you have to follow for that.
it should be a .com
/. become slashdot.com instead of slashdot.org because somebody is making money off of the ads?
.org, .com, etc. will lead to whole heap of trouble in the future. this judge's decision is clearly a precident that is NOT good for the net.
so should
setting up rules about what sites can own
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
I would like to pay you a high compliment. Please send me your SSN, credit card numbers, color copies of various photo IDs, a recording of your voice and the home phone numbers of your boss/thesis adviser and significant other.
...or whatever it was called?
http://compupix.com/ballysucks
I tried to get to the above link, but my corporate internet connection won't let me for some reason. Is this still alive? I know that this site is a parody/criticism of Bally Total Fitness (the bastards stole over $1000 from me).
I think that this peta thing is remarkably similar to the ballyssucks page. I remember that the ballyssucks page used to be the first link that would come up on a yahoo search of ballys.
Court rulings similar to the peta ruling are a dangerous precedent for the net and all of you should do whatever you can to stop this abuse of the law.
I'll bet you could get Ted Nugent to play at this. He's an avid bow-hunter and all-around badass, from what I've seen on VH1 (that's a pop-music oriented cable TV station for those out of range...)
Another similar story to this is the case of a small IT business in the UK being forced to give up their domain chase.co.uk to Chase Manhatten, merely because they don't have the 5/6 figure sums to contest the case. There is more about it on their site, also the register had an article about it, one of the best bits is that chase manhatten's lawyers actually suggested that they register cbs.com instead :)
FWIW you have copyright the moment you create something, you don't have to register, problem is that names are covered by trademark law not copyright...
~ppppppppö
It is one thing to state reasons why you don't feel there was a likelihood of confusion, but a lot of effort was spent by an impartial judge and staff to make a legal determination whether it was so. Because of the peculiar (i.e. unique) properties of a domain name, the first place I would look to find peta would be peta.org, which creates a particular presumption.
Now, I don't know the facts of this case, but the mere unsubstantiated statement that a judicial determination is a "crappy precedent" because there was no "likelihood of confusion," just doesn't make it so. Clearly, at least one jurist felt there was a credible case for the other side.
The vast majority of trademark parody cases where a defendant upheld were cases where the parody was biting, directly targeted to the subject matter, and didn't use the exact trademark name, to wit: the Lardache parody of Jordache; the Off-the-Wall-Street Journal and the like. Further, not a one of the parody uses actually deprived the owner of the ability to use that name.
Now, I disagree strongly with the rights-in-gross proposition that the International Trademark Association and its membership have taken, and the regrettable position Congress took under the Cybersquatter's act. But to say this isn't presently the law, and that a judge did wrong by enforcing it is to miss the point.
We might reasonably argue (and I might join, depending upon the particular facts) that the law should not create a cause of action in this case. But where it does, leave the judge alone -- its not for him to make the law -- its for him to apply the law to the facts.
what's to prevent someone from registering massive numbers of likely domain names, and rendering the whole TLD useless?
The original post didn't say a parody site couldn't make money; it said that a non-profit organization (PETA) should get a .org TLD. If the parody site is making money (which I think it is), it should be a .com That is what he is saying.
IANAL, but I play one on
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=peta
Second link: "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)". There's your site. No parodies or differing political opinions to get in your way.
What a concept. Perhapse more people could use sites like Yahoo to find the information they need without blindly pounding out key combinations as URLs. Oh wait. They do.
I can't even find an easy way to contact them on their web site to extend my displeasure in their actions.
I suppose I could always email the adminstrative contact for peta.com.
In fact, I would urge everyone who feels they should reconsider their action to write a NICE email to them. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. By nice I mean not insulting. These are intelligent people who feel they are doing something good. A logical, rational argument will go a LOT further with them than an "Eat flaming metal, PETA weirdos" email.
-Adam
Sensationalizing the plight of animals? Sensationalism has NO place in rational discussion.
I love to smoke. I love to smoke and I love to eat red meat. I love to eat raw fucking red meat. Nothing I like better than sucking down a hot steaming cheese burger and a butt at the same time. I love to smoke. I love to eat red meat. I'll only eat red meat that comes from cows who smoke, ok!? Special cows they grow in Virginia with voice boxes in their necks.
I tried eating vegetarian. I feel like a wimp going into a restaurant. "What do you want to eat sir? Brocolli?" Brocolli's a side dish, folks. Always was, always will be, ok? When they ask me what I want, I say, "What do you think I want!? This is America. I want a bowl of raw red meat right now. Forget about that. Bring me a live cow over to the table. I'll carve off what I want and ride the rest home!
I gonna open up my own place. Open my own restaurant and get away from you people. I gonna open up a restaurant with two smoking sections; Ultra and Regular, ok? And we're not gonna have any tables or any chairs or any napkins. None of that pussy shit. Just a big wide open black space. And all we're gonna serve is raw meat, right on the bone! And only men are going to eat there, naked men, sitting around a big giant camp fire, and no men's room either. You have to piss, you mark your territory like a wolf! And if some guy has a heart attack from eating too much meat, fuck him, we throw him in the fire! More meat for the other meat-eaters! Yeah!
Because you gotta have goals. Because everybody in this room knows everybody who's quitting. You all have that friend who's quitting it. You know what I mean? The guys quitting it, "I quit smoking. I quit drugs. I quit drinking. I quit meat, and I feel great. I get up in the morning and have a nice big bowl of oat bran. I go to the bathroom for three and a half hours. I have another bowl of oat bran. I go back in the bathroom for six more hours. All I do is eat and shit, I'm gonna live forever! My colon is the strongest muscle in my body right now. I could pass Elvis through my colon right now."
And all these cereals they have, Cracklin' Oat Bran, and Horkin' Fiber Chunks, you know? Cereal used to come with a free prize. Now it comes with a free roll of toilet paper in every box. Guys get up on Sunday morning, "Forget about the New York Times, I'm gonna need the Bible. I got a big one brewing here." "Dad, there's a phone call!" "I'm on Genesis, God dammit! You tell 'em to call back after the creation!" People checking their own feces for fiber. You have too much free fucking time on your hands, ok.
Red meat, white meat, blue meat, meat-o-fucking-rama. You will eat it. Because not eating meat is a decision. Eating meat is an instinct! Yeah! And I know what it's about. "I don't want to eat the meat because I love the animals. I love the animals." Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He's so cute. My fluffy little dog.. He's so cute- There's the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don't we? Yeah. Why don't we just have animal auditions. Line 'em up one by one and interview them individually. "What are you?" "I'm an otter." "And what do you do?" "I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands." "You're free to go." "And what are you?" "I'm a cow." "Get in the fucking truck, ok pal!" "But I'm an animal." "You're a baseball glove! Get on that truck!" "I'm an animal, I have rights!" "Yeah, here's yer fucking cousin, get on the fucking truck, pal!" We kill the cows to make jackets out of them and then we kill each other for the jackets we made out of the cows.
You will eat the meat folks, because this country was founded on two things. Meat, and war. You eat enough fucking meat, you wanna kill somebody. That's the way it works. That was the ultimate American dream. During that Persian Gulf War, I was sitting in my living room, naked, with a can of Budweiser and a three inch stake watching the war, live, on TV. I had a six foot erection with a giant cheese burger on the end of it. I ate so much meat during the war that by the time the war was over three weeks later, I was like, "No no no. We need to keep fighting. Make a couple of stops on our way home from the Persian Gulf. First stop! Vietnam! Surprise the fuck out of those people, huh?" "You make a movie?" "Not this time, pal!"
Personally, I think Mama Cass said it best when she said, "[Choking noises]" "All the leaves are [Choking noises]" "Monday [Choking noises]"
All this stuff Copyright Dennis Leary.
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
The site doesn;t seen to have been updated since 1996, but it is still a good laugh at the hypocracy or organizations like PETA and their supporters. The mail section is especially good, very similar anti-abortion (pro-life) supporters shooting doctors.
I am not a vegitarian, but I understand and can respect those that are. PETA and it's senstationalism only hurt my respect for people who do not eat meat, regardless or the reason.
The vary point of what I said was the hypocricy of it. I did not mean to imply that pro-abortion is wrong, and my moral stance is that it is abortion is wrong. I do not however see any legal reasons for it to be banned, but living in Canada I do not like the idea of government sponsored abortions
2) Trademarks Vs. Free Speech? With 63 characters for a domain name now, you can fit an opinion in. 2600 is getting sued by Version because they registered versionsucks.com and Version thinks that infringes on the Version trademark. What about wethinkverisonsucks.com?
Amazingly enough, 2600 is getting sued for registering verizonreallysucks.com; in a sign of confidence in their new conglomerate, Verizon had already registered plain old verizonsucks.com! The funniest part about the suit is that the cybersquatting laws require that the challenged domain "dilute" the intent of the real trademark holder by being "confusingly similar" to their own legitimate uses of their trademark.
In other words, Verizon is suing on the grounds that "Verizon Really Sucks" is something they would likely be saying about themselves!
I do want to see this appealed however, up to the Supreme Court, such that some national precident is set; hopefully not in the judges words, but to the point that the cybersquatting/trademark laws are more strongly set. Why this case? Neither side is a large company with lots of money to blow, so this won't be a battle of resources, but of true intent.
I dunno which PEthicalTreatmentA you've been looking at, but the one we have here in the USA can afford high powered lawyers, TV commercials, and many many other things, in fact, the only thing that distinguishes them from a large company is that they don't have er... umm.... Hmmm, oh wait, I guess they are just a large company with a political goal that is, instead of profiting wildly, feeding all of the money back into protests and sabotageing farms and testing labs. They would grind this poor guy into the ground in seconds if it came to a legal battle. He'd never be able to crawl out from under the paperwork they'd flood him with.
If they wanted PETA.ORG they should have registered it years ago, but they DIDN'T and it belongs to this guy and should stay that way. His website relates to PETA quite clearly, just because it is in a derogatory term doesn't mean that PETA can walk in and demand he turn it over to them. That is WRONG. VERY wrong. It shouldn't happen. But the world sucks, so it does happen.
Anyone want to pull an Etoy sit-in on PETA?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Am I the only one that noticed that there is no way to contact PETA through their website?
I was going to send them an e-mail protesting their conduct and letting them know how I felt about it. But there doesn't seem to be any way to express my outrage at their conduct, short of making a website... about... hrmmm... Somehow I think I've found a problem. If I make a website about PETA, name it anything that relates to its content, and say bad things about PETA in it, I'm going to get ordered to relinquish it? Oh well, I guess the constitution is just something we can point at while we stick our tongues out at England and pretend we're better than they are.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Good point. Since the only three sites on the internet are peta.org, peta.com, and slashdot.org, taking peta.org from this guy was a crushing blow to his constitutional rights. I should have seen it all along.
.reg or something like that would be beneficial, though I'm not positive that that exact implementation is a good idea- there are a whole lot of registered trademarks in the world. I imagine that they're sometimes going to conflict.
The fact that those guys hacked slashdot long ago is what allowed you to hear their voices. The fact that spammers have your e-mail address is what allows you to hear their voices. If it were the 80's and I were use my cordless phone outside your window, your long-distance would be what allowed my friend in Japan to hear my voice. None of those things have more than a tangential relationship to free speech, though. Since there are legal ways for the PEatingTA guy to publish his parody, the argument that he had to have peta.org to be able to express his free speech is just silly. Sure, he had a prominent place for his parody, just as I would if I made parody CD's of Microsoft Windows and swapped out the real CD for my fake one in every Windows box (perhaps leaving a card so people could mail me and get the real one, to make the analogy a little more apt). Or, as I said before, if I were to steal your clothes to make my funny impression of you even funnier.
I certainly agree that some sort of
--
-jacob
-jacob
Well, as a matter of fact, PETA does have a right to trademark "PETA," and they do not have the right to stifle every organization that has uses "P," "E," "T," and "A," just the ones that try to use those letters to mislead people into thinking that they're going to PETA's web site. Just like you have the right to start a company called "Ich Bin Monkey!", but if you start selling products with the IBM logo, you may be in legal high water (the question would be whether or not your product is easily identifiable as a parody or not). And you can't sue someone else for having your name, but you can sue them for misleading people into thinking that they are you.
This can get tricky, particularly on the Internet- domain names are a rather low-bandwidth form of communication- but it would be silly to say that they don't have some sort of store-front quality to them. How should the law resolve that store-front nature, the legitimate confusion that will arise if an organization has a domain name that you would normally associate with another organization, and the heretofore separate namespaces of various organizations that now have to collide? That's the legal curiosity that this case highlights, though not particularly well. In this case, it was just some guy who was trying to piss off PETA and neglected to consider that PETA has a lot of money and not much sense of humor.
--
-jacob
-jacob
This case is not about the first amendment. If PETA had been suing peta.org to get them to stop parodying them, that would be a first amendment issue. However, PETA simply sued them to relinquish their name- they DID NOT say "you can't parody us."
This is the same as the old Toys 'R Us case where some guy registered toysrus.com. In the lawsuit that followed, it was established that since Toys 'R Us had established its name IRL, it deserved first crack at toysrus.com even if it wasn't fast enough to beat out the first person who thought of it. Same thing with PETA- PETA was an established organization, and it claims that it deserved first crack at PETA.org even though it wasn't fast enough to beat out the tasty animal eaters.
You may agree or disagree with that viewpoint, for for christ's sake, do NOT try to claim that somehow peta.org's first amendment rights are being violated. People who care about free speech do not like it when its meaning is diluted by every wanker who decides that any ruling that has anything vaguely to do with anybody saying anything constitutes a violation of freedom of speech.
(Disclaimer: I am an ethical vegan. On the other hand, I think that the PETA people are pretty much morons, though the "Got Beer?" thing was pretty damn funny. So there you go.)
--
-jacob
-jacob
Ah. Then you've never subscribed to the PETA magazine, then. Having been tangentially involved with PETA for a number of years, I can tell you that saying that PETA has some sort of hidden nefarious plot is sort of like saying that Sassy magazine is secretly trying to take over the world. They would never have the creativity or the balls to be what you're suggesting they are. They're utter airheads. Their idea of powerful activism is a mildly funny slogan next to a picture of a dead animal on a bumper-sticker. And besides, 95% of PETA members (my made-up figure) would be utterly aghast to even imagine that they could possibly be doing anything to support the ALF. And as I said elsewhere, "the ALF" is not really an anything, but rather a more-or-less make-believe organization that serves as an umbrella for people who are pissed off about animal rights and are willing to break the law- basically, that sort of people has got a pre-made name and logo all ready for them. Not that there does not exist any organization, but it's really not comparable to the IRA. (For example, on the ALF FAQ, they advise activists never to communicate any of their upcoming activities, only to communicate descriptions of what they've already done, anonymously, to a central repository. That is, nobody in "the ALF" has any idea what anybody else is going to do, or even who anybody else is.) And besides, none of PETA's money goes to anything remotely related to any known ALF activities. And, the PETA people publicly denounce violence in the name of animal rights all the time, both to the external world and internally. They sell books that denounce violence in the name of animal rights, too (of course, in the context of arguing for greater animal rights- I'm thinking of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation specifically, but there are others).
In short, the only thing that relates PETA to the ALF is that they both have the word "animal" in their names. (That, and I don't like either of them. But that's beside the point.)
--
-jacob
-jacob
There's one hole left to be plugged. What about people who haven't registered a domain, but have registered a trademark? A better approach would be to put the
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
...as this is a precedent upon which he can shut down those awful parodists at gwbush.com. After all, there should be limits to freedom, one of them being that one should not ever make fun of a presidential candidate. We all know that the Founding Fathers composed the First Amendment in order to protect the artistic freedom of topless dancers, not to promote political speech which might discommode a think-skinned trust-fund kiddy running for national office, right?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Subject: Possible McDonalds trademark infringement by http://www.peta-online.org/
While surfing on the Web, I came accross http://www.peta-online.org which prominently shows a small banner bearing the face of Ronald McDonald, and the writing "Unhappy Meals", which looks uncomfortably close to your "Happy Meals" trademark. You might want to draw your legal team's attention to this dilution of your trademark.
Your faithfully,
xxx
Say no to software patents.
I always thought .org was reserved for legitimate organizations! Or if it wasn't, it should be. Why would a parody group even be able to get ahold of this domain? The Internet is all about obtaining information. If someone wants to find out whether Gillette or Schick is testing on lab rats, they shouldn't have to muddle through parody sites to get their information.
---
"I got three words for you: Learn to fucking type"
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
2) Trademarks Vs. Free Speech? With 63 characters for a domain name now, you can fit an opinion in. 2600 is getting sued by Version because they registered versionsucks.com and Version thinks that infringes on the Version trademark. What about wethinkverisonsucks.com?
3) Companies versus Individuals? If you're some guy whose last name is Ford, I think you've got a compelling reason to be allowed to own ford.com.
4) Who's making the money? The registrars and the Lawyers. Especially the Lawyers. Seems like anywhere there's a thorn in our sides, the Lawyers aren't too far behind.
5) What if I create a completely new naming system (Say, LDAP based) and hack gethostbyname and company to use it. At what point will these battles start taking place over my name space?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And Mr. Ford could just as easily register ford.com to advertise his freelance consulting business, and may or may not have pictures of his dog or family.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They are not saying anything about disallowing them from making a parody using the trademark or even allowing them to profit from it. It's just that to me it seems that if I was looking for PETA's website, peta.org would be the first place to look.
Imagine if Microsoft bought linux.com/linux.org and pointed visitors to those sites to a page which criticized Linux. Would you feel differently then?
Mmmm.. Donuts
I get the impression from the litany of bone-head judicial rulings that there is a fundamental disconnect at work. Parody is a perfectly legal basis of fair use. I think the judges are stuck on mistaken notion of a fundamental difference between traditional media and the web WRT IP. Indeed the "web as real estate" analogy would suggest that this is a competely discrete location, in fact it is. Are the courts going to rule that I must give up my street address because Gonzo Corp. has the same address with a slightly different zip code? Is it really the business of the federal courts to mediate the net equivalent of the occasional errant pizza delivery?!
illegitimii non ingravare
We'd better be sure FADB is not a trademark before we register fadb.org ;-)
BTW, animals are tasty and PETA folks are extremist wackos! They were arguing on a Seattle talk radio show that the Survivor show was irresponsible in showing the participants eating rats they had killed on the island and that kids can't tell the difference between killing rats and their family pet. Idiots.
-core
.. I can't believe there are people out there who are a member of the "real" PETA; "Unhappy Meals"? Don't eat meat? Animals are treated cruelly?
.. let's focus our attention on something more important then whether or not a chicken lives a fulfilling life. Geese ..
Who gives a rat's ass; there's people being killed, kids doing drugs, gangs on the streets
I have been wondering this for a while. You know how people say "If you want to host mp3's just get a server in Zembobway where they don't have copyright laws"
The Theory:
Get an off US shore country without a lot of (sometimes stupid) laws on telecommunications and the Internet, like for example any thrid world country where the United States doesn't have any jugisdicition or power. Setup a Network Solutions-like hosting company and sell domains names to US citizens.
For example, if peta.org wasn't registor with an United States company, what could they do? Put it under your cousins name that lives in Canada.
What really could they do, it is not hosted in the United States or by a US company, it isn't owned by a US citizen or even a person that lives in the states, so where could they get the "right" (legally) to do this?
Just wondering, I though this was a really good idea, kinda like a loop hole, anyone see any problems or advantages to this?
Also if anyone wants to try this business plan out, please contact me.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
isn't their something in the DCMA that outlawed these kinds of domains as well?
..." etc.
so you can't have a www.peta-sux.org site?
i think it's a severe resriction on our freedom to communicate, for example, i've gone through hell with my gm car (the GM dealerships, imho, qualify for a phat RICO lawsuit) regarding warranty work, but the only recourse we have is to post on usenet or on car webpages.
can't make a sit devoted to warning people about GM products.
i wonder is you can have a more generic site like "warranty_ripoff.org" and load the page description with keywords like "Ford Sucks, Chevy Sucks, Buick Sucks, Honda Sucks,
www.eatmytastymeat.org?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
All you have to do is look at Doughney's current site (http://mtd.com/tasty) to realize that everything you've said is incorrect.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Everybody in power considers the net to be the exception to the rule as far as having any rights is concerned. They side with whatever they feel will set a precident/piss off the people with less lawyers/big companies. Go figure. Unfortunate, but such is human nature.
Eh...
Domain names aren't a public domain thing, or property of the government. They are the property of the maintainer of the database (and there is more than one, just thing of alternic). What is to prevent me from creating my own database of, and having people register to me? Will the government ultimately rule over my business if I do? Perhaps we should start our own DNS registry. We could even enable mozilla to pick which registry it wants to look at. Kinda a neat idea. If it caught on, it would certainly put a new spin on things and a new perspective on what exactly we are dealing with all around.
Eh...
This is not about domain rights. This is about PETA felt insulted, wanted a way to strike back, and saw that the domain name was an easy target.
Eh...
And why can't you register pita.cx or pita.to ... would you have to take it to international courts?
and I like eating burgers :-)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Parody is protected speech - time to appeal
good/bad taste is irrelevant, ie the earlier reference to holocost denial.
Poking fun at a political group is a centuries old practice - look in history books for old political funnies poking fun at early presidents.
nuf said
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Waiter: Okay, who ordered the broiled fish with honeycomb?"
No, the honeycomb was a John the Baptist trademark along with locust (Thank you for your order at John the McBaptist's. Would you like locusts with that?)
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I seem to remember that among other things (like categorization), one of the reasons for so many top level domains was so that different people that wanted to name their domain PETA could. If you have an organization named PETA and I have an organization named PETA, you can have PETA.com, I'll take PETA.org, and the next guy can have PETA.net or PETA.us
.com domain? *smirk* Maybe PETA.com and PETA.org should just swap.
Also, is PETA a commercial enterprise? Should they be allowed to have a
"Perl 6 will give you the big knob." -Larry Wall
PITA did not get the site before it was used. Presuming that PETA.ORG was not engaged in commerce, then the Lanaham act would not apply.
If I started a site called slashdot.com to satire slashdot, it would not apply. Now, if I started to sell advertising on the site, then there might be an issue.
Fight Spammers!
Give them a piece of mind. Also, ask them how many trees died for their foolish lawsuit. Trees have feeling too. Maybe we should send PETT (people for the ethical treatment of trees) after them.
Fight Spammers!
It seems that PETA wants to appeal to the religious sector of Americans and thinks that if they can convince them that Jesus was a vegetarian, they'll convert. (Sorry, no pun intended.)
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Impersonation is the (some say) greatest form of flattery, and PETA should just appreciate their name in the press. What ethics, and what crap... I for one won't visit their site 'cause I might make fun of it in my mind, and they might come after me.
----
Registering a domain name does not "direct" anybody anywhere. A DN is just a place-holder that is easier to remember than xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Everybody knows that typing in the name of a company or group with ".com" or ".org" on the end is a handy shortcut that sometimes gets you where you want to go, but is often wrong, sometimes way wrong, and nobody every promised anybody it would be right. Anybody computer literate enough to know that they can type URLs in instead of clicking on Yahoo directory links will know that.
peta.org was a joke site, and a funny one at that, and anybody who stumbled on it while looking for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals probably got their feathers ruffled, but there was no way they could have mistaken "People Eating Tasty Animals" for the group they were looking for.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Don't mistake the comments of a few trolls and wise-asses for the argument that is being made.
Too many on-line debates melt down into flame-fests that way.
(OTOH, the AC's "vegitables ain't food, vegitables is what food eats" comment was kind of funny. I'm not sure, but I think he/she was quoting from The Simpsons - the one where Lisa gets mad about Homer's BBQ, and learns to cope with it after talking to Apu and Paul & Linda McCartney.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sorry, but no.
It is a slap in the face of PETA. This is not about you, nor any other vegitarians at /.
As the notoriously outspoken vegitarian Bill Maher would say, "get over yourself".
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Also, I've registered screwpeta.com which I'm willing to contribute for organizing the BBQ
Sounds like this can get off the ground after all!
Mazel: Put some contact information on that URL, so we can get a hold of you, and we can get rolling. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm certainly willing to help out with this. If it starts looking like there could be a lot of interest, I suppose I could try to set up a mail list or something.
Do we have any /.ers living in KC that would be willing to coordinate the logistics of the event?
Maybe Hole and/or other "screw the man" type bands would want to perform music during the demonstration/cookout. Perhaps the pork farmers would want to divert some of the money from their "other white meat" ads to help pay for some of the costs. The more I think about it, the more fun I think it could be.
(A celebration of Animal Flesh and Freedom of Expression... my heart is bursting with patriotism at the thought of it; not to mention, with cholesterol.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm with you on [free speech], but as an ethical vegetarian, I'd find it hard to continue to stand with you...
To which I reply:
You can be a vegitarian and still support the right of others to eat meat and/or poke fun at People for the Ethical Treatement of Animals, which is the intent.
We want to poke fun because we oppose the recent actions of PETA, who used the courts to shut down a parody site, even as they run one of their own.
We want to eat meat because we like eating meat. It tastes good.
If you can handle other people having different moral values (in the tradition of Voltaire), then you are welcome at any barbeque of mine! (... even if you only want to eat the potato salad.)
If, on the other hand, you are truely upset at the idea of a bunch of people gathering to eat meat together, then perhaps you would want to sit this event out, and support free speech in your own way.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I respect the brave individualism of vegitarians like you who chose to live as they see fit, and think that your suggestions are good ones for anybody. Feel free to ignore our little gathering plans and kick off your own efforts.
For my own part, I really like the idea of a First Amendment rally that serves ribs and steaks. PETA went after PETA.ORG for making lighthearted jokes about meat eating while thumbing its nose at their organization. We think that's wrong, and want to give them more of the same.
Just because the idea came about in a Slashdot forum among geeks who like free software does not mean that it somehow represents all GNU-folks and FSF advocates, many of whom are vegans and vegitarians, and would want nothing to do with my idea. Some of us are omnivores; try not to hold it against us.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Probably not, but he wouldn't assume that it was all about him either.
The "People Eating Tasty Animals" site was one of the funniest moments in the young history of the web. They were one of the first ones out of the gate with a name-spoofing parody site, and it was done well.
A lot of us meat-eaters find PETA's action against the site to be offensive, and wish to protest it by flaunting our carnivorous nature in a fun-filled gathering.
Not every free speech rally has to appeal to everybody. If it did, we wouldn't really have free speech, would we?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Not at all. THe BBQ is an attempt to demonstrate against the crackdown of the peta.org parody site. We are talking about protesting by doing excactly what that site advanced, eating tasty animals. I think that vegitarians that are not completely mortified by the knowledge that some people eat meat should probably come along as well, if nothing else to show that vegitarians have a sense of humor, too, and don't neccessarilly support groups like PETA.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You sound like excactly the sort of person I would want ot share a BBQ with!
Of course the ultimate Irony (with a capital 'I'), is if they had the cookout BBQ and included a vegetarian alternative.
I think we should, especially if there are a lot of vegitarians who wish to show solidatity with their meat-eating brothers. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
And yeah, it is a crappy precedent - I'm starting to believe we need judges who specialize as much as the various law firms do. No way they can all be up on every little kind of law - why not set up individual judges in the different Circuits who handle different "kinds" of cases?
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
As far as I understand, parodies are protected under copyright law. I have a book at home, but being at work, that is not too useful. But, as a far as I can remember, it's ok to parody something as long as your parodoy is clearly a an imitaion that acknowledges the fact that it is immitating. ie. You can take a copyrighted material and make fun of it, provided it is apparent you can make fun of it. This one should be overturned in a second. I have no idea how the judge justified his descision.
Not the same thing...not at all...They are very obviously angry at the content of the site and attmepting to shut it down, and using the alleged infringement as a justification for their actions. They really are just a bunch of cry babies. I have no personal issues with people who do or do not eat meat, or use animals for food or testing or whatever. These people do and are known to be militant about it, this guy came up with a clever way to stick his middle finger up at their arrogance and I applaud him for it. My only real issue is what they did, they had absolutely no right to press that lawsuit, and it sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Please come one people...get a clue...live and let live on the net its the only way to behave responsibly... Now I really have to get back to this Cow I am carving up, I want steak for dinner, and I will never finsh this expirement on his liver before he dies if I don't hurry up... BTW anyone got any A1 sauce?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I was at a loss to contact them as well, *BUT* then I found this link: Send mail to PETA which was originally listed at the very bottom in tiny letters as "Questions/Comments". I sent my well-reasoned and logical email right away. I encourage others to contact PETA as well, but please don't just flame away....if you present arguments rather than attacks, they might be more inclined to listen.
4-star general in a one-man army.
How many of us have tried to visit whitehouse.gov and accidentally went to whitehouse.com? If you don't know by now, it's a porn site. I've always thought it was pretty ingenious of them to take that domain name.
Gee, think they get audited by the IRS much?
- The first amendment always allows parody, even if someone has a trademark.
- Diluted the value of the trademark?!? He just gave a ton of press to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He should be charging them for advertising.
- Commercial benefit?!? How was this commercial at all? He put up a parody site.
As a vegetarian, I must say that I view PETA in an extremely bad light. All you have to do is take a look at some of the hate mail this guy has received from PETA advocates to realize what scumbags they really are.Besides that, I really think this sets a dangerous precedent. Trademarks are limited to specific things whereas domain names inevitably cross all boundaries. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office PETA's trademark is for "educational services; namely, providing programs and seminars on the subject of animal rights and welfare" and "educational services; namely, providing programs and seminars on the subject of animal rights and welfare." (See also here and here or here for all trademarks with PETA in them.) This trademark classification has nothing to do with computers, so what right do they have to the domain name. If this is allowed to stand it will make taking away someone's domain name much easier.
... http://www.eatdifferent.com/
:)
Of course Apple isn't exactly in opposition to PETA's ideals...
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Parody is considered one of the fair use exemption to copyright law and I see no reason why trademark parodies should not be subject to the same protection.
Perhaps on principle, but in the real world, no. Trademark damages generally fall under the categories of infringement and dilution, and parody is NOT an affirmative defense for either. For example, the fellow up in Seattle who produced t-shirts that parodied the Starbucks logo as a "Corporate Whore" or something like that. Essentially, he was creating a whole new business based on public recognition of the other company's marks. Even though it was a funny parody, the fact that it was pursued in the realm of commerce of the original owner (who also sells T-shirts and coffee mugs with its mark) made it infringement and dilution.
Trademark laws are a LOT murkier than copyright laws. And unlike copyright laws, the owner is required to vigorously defend its mark, lest it go the way of "escalator" or "aspirin".
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
kinnunen wrote:
So being a vegetarian is Ok, but if a person is a vegan it makes makes him an asshole who should kill himself. I see. I am not a vegan, nor am I a vegetarian - I enjoy a good burger every now and then (in McDonalds). I may not agree with the PETA ideals (or methods), but I sure as hell don't condem a group of people for having a very high respect for life.
What was the point of the message that you replied to? Think really hard.
I think you missed a certain level of sarcasm in my post, along with a heathy dose of reductio ad absurdam argument. My point being, that if you think that your life is worth the same as any other living being on the planet, the only logical conclusion is to kill yourself. Why? Because it is simply not possible for a human to live their life without destroying millions if not billions of "innocent" lifeforms in the process. Is my life worth the same as another humans? Sure. Is my life worth the same as a cat or dog? Debatable. Is my life worth the same as a worm? No. Anybody who really believes so really has no logical option but to kill themselves.
This does not mean that I think that vegan's are necessarily assholes? (your word, not mine.) Nor does it mean that I condemn people for having a high respect for life. I condemn them for having a set of beliefs which is directly at odds with their own voluntary choice to continue their life at all. People whose beliefs don't take into account that their own life by necessity continues only at the cost of other beings lives are hypocrites whose beliefs are just so much touchy feely nonsense.
Take notice, none of the following is terribly ontopic, but it's interesting.
h _24sep96.html o ct96.html
And before i start, i would like to note that the name "MRJ" is already registered and MRJ-1s is going to have to surrender their mrjones.com domain.
I saw this thing on 60 minutes once.
Some tiny restaurant had opened up in the middle of scotland. LIke, one single building in the middle of a town that didn't look exactly overly urban.
They named themselves "McMunchies".
McDonalds sued the shit out of them. You can guess what for. This despite the fact that only an idiot would mistake the one for the other or think that the McMunchies resteraunt was in any way connected to McDonalds.
And that the prefix "Mc" or "Mac" is a very common traditional prefix to scottish surnames meaning "the son of" [i think].
[this post is, btw, being made by a McClure, so i have some amount of personal interest in this, seeing as it may end with my surname being owned by a corporation..]
Lord MacDonald of MacDonald, who if ANYONE can "own" the name MacDonald, "owns" it in the sense that he is the clan leader, it is his title and his family has owned it for, what, a thousand years? was rather upset by this [understandably.. McDonalds didn't feel like they had to ask _his_ permission to name their resteraunt, but then feel like the name..] and set up some sort of legal defense fund.
And then he decided to open a restaurant. He called it "MacDonalds."
So if you feel like it, you can go to Scotland and go to a McDonalds where they serve rather nice steak, pheasant, etc., in a rather old building surrounded by rolling green hills..
If anyone would like to fill in details, or if you'd like to look for yourself or something.
Or rather look at
http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/telegrap
http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/herald_7
"Mr Ronald McDonald, retired teacher, said the use of the name Ronald McDonald for the clown used by the company to entertain children was an insult to the Scottish clan system. "
Now if that isn't a good quote i don't know what is.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
jesusveg.com (Jesus was a vegetarian, and we're just like Jesus apparently)
Damn, those PETAphiles are really full of crap. Not only is there no biblical evidence to suggest that (assuming you believe that Jesus was a real person) Jesus was a vegetarian, if you read the bible, one of the miracles he is credited with is feeding fish to the multitudes. Sounds like something the PETAphiles would advocate, not.
Why are you making up stuff?
What am I supposedly making up? In case you didn't know, PETA really has registered "petasucks.org".
The argument was simply because Peta.org is where someone would go to look for PETAs website.
Either someone else got PETA.org first, or PETA incorrectly registered PETA.com instead of PETA.org. Either way, other posters have already commented that the page itself clearly stated it was a parody site, and had a prominantly displayed link to the actual PETA site. Hardly sounds like someone who was just trying to get accidental people visiting.
Some clown hijacked that to put up a parody there. That's all this issue is about.
Clown? I'd have considered it hijacking if the domain was grabbed by someone who just wanted to try to hold PETA up for money. I don't consider a legitimate parody site to be a hijacking. If that was the case, what was PETA doing when they registered "ringlingbros.com"?
Don't bring whatever prejudices you might have about PETA to pretend they are working against all prejudices or discouraging discourse or whatever you pretend they are doing.
Look carefully at my wording. I said it appears that they are actively working against freedom of speech and the open discourse of ideas. Tell me how their pre-emptive registration of "petasucks.com" is not consistant with that appearance?
My 'predjudices', about PETA being what they are don't change things. Everyone brings their own predjudices to things. What are your predjudices about PETA? That they would never do anything illegal or unethical in furtherance of their political goals?
I'm willing to at least put my handle and email on my postings. You, sir, (assuming, if not then substitute ma'am there), are an 'anonymous coward'. What does that mean? You can look at the posting history to determine what my biases might be and use that to do your own judgement of value of what I say. I'm not against anonymous posting, but forgive me if I am more skeptical about anonymous posts than normal.
A pox on both their houses. The PETA.ORG people for registering a domain to trick people looking for the real PETA into viewing a parody -- it is deliberate misdirection, not a simple name space collision. The PETA people for establishing a lousy legal precedent. The damage to the system is the same: people need a simple, stable way of finding resources on the Internet and the behavior of both parties undermines this.
What people want: a simple, mnemonic way to identify organizations and resources they offer on the Internet (e-mail service, public information kiosks).
What people have: The domain name system.
DNS filled the bill way back when, but doesn't cut it today. It's a typical technological victim of success -- it became so popular it has outstripped its design. The name space is both too small and too loosely regulated (the registrars have no interest in limiting the number of domains registered, although this would be good for the system as a whole). That people can make money by having possession of a valuable domain, in the absence of the usual kinds of goodwill associated with a trademark, is evidence that the system is broken. Money is being diverted to people who are in no way producing wealth, just exploiting scarcity of a resource that should, in a system adequate to the task, be abundant.
Does anyone think that the current system of two and three letter TLDs is going to be workable ten years hence? Where are the proposals for the next generation solution that will technically, from a user standpoint and from and administrative one?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Does mcdonalds legal have it's own url/email?
The McLibel case certianly shows that the golden arches will (try to) sue nonprofits into the ground when they talk smack about ronald.
Sick huh, that we're talking about doing part of a mulitbillion dollar corp's legal dept's work for them. Normally I'd despise mcdonalds as much as anyone...
But PethicalTS's rampage against the internet and the fair use principle is a real pisser.
I's *LOVE* to see both of those bastards grind it out to the tune of millions in legal fees in court.
And no matter *who* wins, we all win, because one bunch of assholes or another will lose!
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
And real world laws, and many prior court ruleings, allow for the use of other's material for a variety of uses, including parody, commentary, critisism, etc...
"Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair
use Notwithstanding the provisions of sections
106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work,
including such use by reproduction in copies or
phonorecords or by any other means specified by
that section, for purposes such as criticism,
comment, news reporting, teaching(including
multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship,
or research, is not an infringement of copy-
right."
PeatingTA, is clearly a commentary, and/or criticism of PethicalTA. Wether or not PeatingTA makes money or not is irrelevant. Weird AL certianly makes money off HIS parodies, yet they are still protected as fair use.
The mass judge is clearly an idiot who ignored YEARS of precidents protecting fair use rights. Or perhaps he's a militant PETA zealot. Or perhaps he's one of those RIAA/MPAA/metallica/DMCA types who beleives that fair use should be abolished.
Which are you?
In any event, you, and that judge, are wrong.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
I am getting extremely sick of this, but since ignorance persists unchecked, I must push ever onward. I will say this slowly and clearly.
PETA did not sue peta.org over being an unflattering parody. They did not try to take away the peta.org maintainer's right to post to the Internet a parody of them. The idea that the maintainer of the peta.org web site has a Constitutional right to parody PETA was never questioned by anyone. He still has that right. He has not lost it. It is completely intact. If there's one thing that the peta.org maintainer has, it's the right to parody PETA.
Got it?
Now here's the tricky part: the domain name "peta.org" is not a parody of PETA, the organization. The information that your browser displays when it accesses that site may be, but the domain name is not. If the domain name itself were a parody of PETA in some way- say, perhaps, he registered "PETAphile.org" or "PETArd.org" or something- that would be a parody, and ought to be protected speech. But the name "peta.org" is not a parody, any more than "ibm.com" is a parody of IBM the computer company. ("Ha ha ha! Ed, look at this! 'peta.org'! That's hilarious! Man, they got PETA good by saying 'peta.org!'")
So---
those of you who are all smugly saying that PETA is a bunch of hypocrites for making use of parody themselves, maybe you should consider that perhaps a legal scholar such as a judge might possibly have understood the law better than you. Consider further what you would be posting now had Microsoft registered linux.org in 1995 and put anti-linux materials on it, and the judge had now ruled that Microsoft had to turn it over to Linus. (Saw that analogy elsewhere on this message board- good job, whoever came up with it.) Consider that perhaps you just think that the site was funny (which it was, of course) and that you dislike PETA because you disagree with their political views.
But even if you refuse to consider that, as I'm sure most of you will (this is Slashdot, after all) please please please for the love of God please stop confusing this case with a case that set some kind of precedent about whether you're allowed to parody something or not.
Note that this post in no way says that PETA ought to or ought not to be able to appropriate the 'peta.org' domain name from its prior owner. I'm just trying to establish where the legal argument actually is.
(By the way, to the author of the post I'm replying to- don't consider this a directed attack against you, but rather the result of me passing a critical threshold in reading what I saw as the same incorrect argument repeated one too many times just as I read your post. Nothing personal against you.)
--
-jacob
-jacob
I suggest .parody. No serious/legitimate organization can use it.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Let's not forget their attempts to promote beer comsumption by youth. I'm wondering when MADD or someone else is going to toss lawyers at PETA over that on. But then, MADD seems to be a bit more rational than the PETA promoters that have come pounding at my door.
I've been fairly vegetarian in the last few years, but PETA is being to change how I think. ...
1. Defending the First Amendment
2. Attacking vegetarians in general by doing things to deliberately offend them
You can do #1 without doing #2.
I'm with you on #1, but as an ethical vegetarian, I'd find it hard to continue to stand with you if you're doing #2, since it's a deliberate attack on moral values which I cherish. #2 would be a good thing to do if your intent is to attack your own allies and to create fragmentation and infighting among the defenders of the First Amendment.
Didn't the Matell suits already establish a precendent in this sort of thing? It really sucks, though. When domain names become subject to trademark laws, then we know that the Internet is becoming owned by companies. (What, you say you want yourname.com? Sorry, yourname is also the name of our company. We're suing.) I think that this illustrates the need for domain name decetralization. Maybe the .com TLD should be subject to trademark infringment, whereas .org and whatever other TLD's get created should be given to whomever wants them.
Parody is considered one of the fair use exemption to copyright law and I see no reason why trademark parodies should not be subject to the same protection. Trademark protections exist for a couple of reasons: to prevent consumer confusion, and to protect the value of the company's trademark. In the case of this parody, there is no confusion, and the PETA trademark is not diminished. I think there is a decent chance that peta.org would win on appeal.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Dude! Here's a few URLs that look very similar but have different content:
www.whitehouse.gov
www.whitehouse.net
www.whitehouse.com
www.whitehouse.org
Wonder what that judge would have to say about these.
As for your Nazi argument (must... resist... temptation... to recite... Godwin's Law...), I would not attend such a rally, because their ideology is evil. If you think eating meat is evil, you should not attend our rally either.
I don't think a barbeque is evil. I think it is fun. Obviously, judging by all these responses, I am not alone.
I applaud your desire to promote free speech, and support your right to oppose a rally where meat is served... but I want to do it anyway.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It is interesting that a groups can claim they have won a "landmark case" against a site that parodies them and then on the same page go and parody another company (McDonalds) to further their political views.
PS: Being originally from a third world country, it is very distressing to see organizations like PETA squander time, energy and money to save rats, cats and monkeys when hundreds of millions of people on this planet are being ravaged by war, hunger, famine, drought, poverty and repressive government.
Even my vegitarian friends (if I have any left after this comment) would agree with you there.
The simple truth is that the notion that being wantonly cruel to animals is wrong, which most of us can agree with, has been perverted into the absurd notion that the life of a chicken holds the same value as the life of a human being. PETA propoganda literature goes so far as to equate the consumption of poultry in this country with the Nazi holocaus ("six million Jews were killed in Germany but a hundred million chickens will parish in the US this year!" or some such) I won't get started on the quality of people I have seen speeking out on behalf of PETA, except to say my opinion of them, and their movement, has gone from an initially high level to very, very low indeed. As you correctly point out, if people are so desperate for a cause to give their empty lives meanings, there are far more urgent problems deserving of attention than the living conditions of pork prior to its harvest.
Hitler was a vegitarian and animal rights activist. Perhaps his ability to equate human life with animal life explains some of the atrocities his regime was responsible for.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
As an ethical vegetarian, how do you feel about PETA's attempt to steal ringlingbrothers.com and put up an anti circus site. Or their "unhappy meal" thing that looks just like a McDonalds meal including the Ronald mascot holding a bloddy knife?
PETA is a joke, they are a bunch of irresponsible, childish hate-mongers who tolerate no other view than their own. They deserve to be attacked and ridiculed at every opportunity by those who support free speach. Not due to their beliefs, but due to their actions.
Hey, I'm a strong support of the 2nd amendment and the right to bear arms, but I don't like the NRA. Just because you share their beliefs doesn't mean you have to like them. Look into some of the crazy things PETA has done, like initiating terror campaigns against their enemies. The recently cross-posted a message on newsgroups encouraging people to mail bomb and threaten this guy for his peta.org site.
Finkployd
That's nothing. PETA has also registered:
EatDifferent.com (Apple-like look)
MeatStinks.com (only if you leave it out too long)
cowsarecool.com
helppuppies.com
milksucks.com
dolphinfreedom.com
furisdead.com
circuses.com
collegeactivist.com (if they start demonstrating on MY campus, I can't be held responsible for my actions)
nofishing.net
furshame.com (fur shame, get it?)
jesusveg.com (Jesus was a vegetarian, and we're just like Jesus apparently)
helpinganimals.com
menopauseonline.com (I'm surprised they haven't been sued to give up this one yet)
lettuceladies.com
islamveg.com (Wow, Jesus _and_ Islam vegetarians?)
taxmeat.com
pginfo.net (anti-Procter-and-Gamble)
voguesucks.com
If you go to their "Other PETA sites" link way in the bottom-right corner of their home page, you'll be treated to a grand total of 17 animated buttons, suitable for use on YOUR activism home page! Visit today!
For more information, click here.
A simple search for "People Eating Tasty Animals" turns up several useful and still functional sites, including petasucks.cc. There's even a rather old version of the here-disputed site, with various updates on the status of them geting peta.org in the first place.
For more information, click here.
To the first point: it's called parody. A protected activity. People Eating Tasty Animals was clearly the name of the site. No attempt was made to convince others that the site was Peope for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sponsored.
Second, profit is good, OK (said in a South Park guidance counselor voice). Profitting from someone else's work is perfectly legal, in conjunction with works of parody. Take for example Weird Al, Political Satirists, Segfault.org, etc, etc, etc.
This precident will haunt the Internet for years, and quite honestly I've begun to question the wisdom of continuing to support the Net in it's current form. There has to be a better way that doesn't create evil empires like AOL/Time/Warner and Network Solutions/Verisign. There must be a way to give total control to those who make up the Net. When I figure it out, I will work toward it because the current situation is insane.
To whom it may concern,
I am a vegetarian, and I am disturbed and offended by your organization's legal activities concerning PETA.ORG.
When your protest activities go awry, you quickly shield yourself with the First Amendment. Your organization produces parody sites using trademarked properties, but when you yourself are the target, you hide behind claims of fraudulent representation, trademark dilution and commerical exploitation.
Even though I share some of your beliefs, I am sickened by your hypocritical behavior and will neither donate to your organization nor will I encourage others to do, ever. There are far more reasonable and honorable vegetarian/animal rights organizations with whom I would rather be associated.
Sincerely,
Tim Elkins
--
Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
Who says that web addresses are a protected form of speech? Is the address of your house a protected form of speech? If you make a parody using the exact same name as an organization, that breeds incredible confusion because people will just go there thinking it is the organization's site. Of course, when they get there, they will know that they've been misdirected, but the point is that there's no way of telling from just the url that it will not be the organization you are looking for.
There is no real clear definition of what is and what isn't a form of expression in this country. I would argue that almost everything we do is basically some form of communicating, and thus even the places we choose to live in should be protected. Some people would argue that protecting all speech would be complete anarchy, but I think it would force us to develop more sophistaicated (and necessary) methods of filtering information.
<rant/>
lf.o
Dougheny's statements imply no intention to sell or profit from the site.
What's wrong with parodies? If they're bad, then why does PETA have this link on their homepage?
See: http://www.animalrights.net/16 In 1998, while it was whining about how wrong it was for someone else to register peta.org, PETA went out and registered ringlingbrothers.com and put up a site ripping on the circus. Ringling Brothers filed suit against PETA and PETA reached an agreement to give back the domain name. Complete hypocrisy on PETA's part.
just for that i'm going to eat twice as many Perfectly Edible Tasty Animals in the following year. I hope you PETA people are happy, their blood is on your hands!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
http://www.petaonline.org/news/60 0/600dotorg.html
Therapy is expensive. Bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
Hypocritical...
Deriding the parody
When they do the same
A novice told the master: "I have great news! Today we have obtained an injunction against a parody website. Now they can no longer mock us."
The master replied: "You do not understand Tao. Free speech is for all or for none."
The novice went away to contemplate the words of the master.
The next day, the novice came to the master in great distress and said: "I have terrible news! The fashion show organizers have obtained an injunction against our demonstration next week. Now we cannot shame them with fake blood and pictures of dead animals."
Upon hearing this, the master fell silent.
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You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
After doing a lot of research (just for curiosity) on Lexis-Nexis and so forth, I've come to the conclusion that any parody-related court decisions, are, in effect, arbitrary. It comes down to the mood of the judge and how they appreciate the humor involved. There are standards, but they're not clear-cut. I think there is a lot of room for comparison to the following court case synopsis I came across. It's also funny (although it helps if you can read Legalese). Affirming a judgment in favor of a small company that manufactured blue jeans especially designed for large women, and against a corporation that alleged infringement of its "Jordache" trademark, the court, in Jordache Enterprises, Inc. v Hogg Wyld, Ltd. (1987, CA10 NM) 828 F2d 1482, 4 USPQ2d 1216, 92 ALR Fed 1, held that there was no likelihood of confusion of the trademark with the small company's "Lardashe" jeans, where that company intended only to parody the corporation's mark. The corporation, the fourth largest blue jeans manufacturer in the United States, had as its principal product designer blue jeans bearing the trademark "Jordache" superimposed over a drawing of a horse's head. It licensed another company to manufacture and market "Jordache" jeans for larger women. The defendant, a small company formed for the purpose of marketing designer blue jeans for larger women, limited its sales to specialty shops in several southwestern states and to acquaintances of the owners or others who had heard of its product. The two women who had formed the company conducted the business out of their homes in New Mexico. The "Lardashe" trademark on their jeans was accompanied by a drawing of a pig's head. Finding that the two women did not intend to "palm off" their jeans as "Jordache" jeans or confuse members of the public to believe that they were buying "Jordache" products, the court observed that where a party chooses a mark as a parody of an existing mark, the intent is not necessarily to confuse the public, but rather to amuse. The purpose of a parody, noted the court, is to create a comic or satiric contrast to a serious work. While observing that, in one sense, a parody is an attempt to derive benefit from the reputation of the owner of a trademark (if only because no parody could be made without the initial mark), the court pointed out that the benefit to one making the parody, however, arises from the humorous association, not from public confusion as to the source of the marks. A parody, said the court, relies on the difference from the original mark, presumably a humorous difference, in order to produce the desired effect. The court remarked that the requirement of trademark law is that a likelihood of source, sponsorship, or affiliation must be proved and that this did not involve any "right" not to be made fun of. While it observed that a parody of an existing trademark can cause a likelihood of confusion under certain circumstances, the court stated that an intent to parody is not an intent to confuse the public. The court also held that because of the parody aspect of "Lardashe," it was not likely that public identification of the "Jordache" trademark with the corporation would be eroded. Parody, noted the court, tends to increase public identification of a plaintiff's mark with the plaintiff. While recognizing that "Lardashe" might be considered by some consumers to be in poor taste, the court reasoned that the mark was not likely to create in the minds of consumers a particularly unwholesome, unsavory, or degrading association with the corporation's name and trademark. The court found it unlikely that the public would assume that the same manufacturer would use quite different marks on substantially the same product.
I find it funny that PETA can shut down a parody site at the same tim ethat is is running it's own parody of another well known company. Peta is launching an "Unhappy Meal" campaign... hmm, and the mascot sure looks a lot like Ole' Ronny.
But in this case, the owner of peta.org was doing two things wrong:
- Using a trademark in a derrogatory manner
- Profiting on that.
Combined, these both give the impression that peta.org was being used maliciously againsts the lawful trademark owners, PETA, and PETA had every right to sue and reclaim their name.If instead they had used petasucks.org, I doubt that the case would have turned out the same way. Parody would be protected, and it's hard to claim trademark disputes since the whole domain name is not trademarked. However, the fact that peta.org is probably the first place that people will look when finding info on PETA, and such parody would hurt PETA's image.
Trademark disputes are not all cut and dried. Etoys vs Etoy, Mattle's and Archie Comic's attempts to swap trademarks have failed or are still in the works, but in those cases, the conflicting site is legit and does not dilute or harm the image of the company that questions the trademark. But here is a different case, and I believe I agree with the decision.
I do want to see this appealed however, up to the Supreme Court, such that some national precident is set; hopefully not in the judges words, but to the point that the cybersquatting/trademark laws are more strongly set. Why this case? Neither side is a large company with lots of money to blow, so this won't be a battle of resources, but of true intent.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I submitted this story yesterday, but with an added bit.
I read about the court decision in yesterday's USA Today. There was another story about PETA in the paper. It seems they introduced their "UnHappy Meals" McDonalds parody, complete with a stuffed Ronald McDonald doll holding a bloody butcher knife.
The UnHappy Meal comes in the same kind of box as a Happy Meal and is aimed at children. Intentionally trying to confuse and frighten children using McDonalds trade dress.
Why is it that 'real world' parody is ok but web parody is not? Why does PETA think that they have the right to use anothers name and look and feel but is exempt from the same treatment?
And more importantly, how do we get the judicial system to have a clue?
Steve M
The PETA parody is currently at http://mtd.com/tasty
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
NTAGARA
Of course it's always followed by the goose-stepping 'greenshirts' of the vegan-reich ....
"In a court ruling yesterday, Mr. Jones was ordered to give up control the domain mrjones.com to online strawberry-polisher, MRJ-ones. Though Mr. Jones has has operated this website since 1997, and despite the fact that name "Jones" has been in Mr. Jones' family for centuries, the court ruled that the domain name was a violation of the trademark held by MRJ-ones. When asked why the company did't simply register the domain "mrj-ones.com," the spokesman for MRJ-ones replied "We should not have to settle for a lesser domain simply because someone wanted to violate our trademark."
MRJ-Ones has held the trademark for 3 months as of next friday.
All operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others. (and some are virtual black holes)
At the very least, offer PETA's press release. They claim that Michael Doughney (peta.org) fraudulently claimed that People Eating Tasty Animals was a non-profit organization, was clearly diluting the PETA trademark and was gaining commercial benefit from such dilution. Not only that, but he also holds many other "parody" websites.
It's one thing to make light of these guys, but it's another thing to profit from their names - that is very clearly infringement.
--
Parody? Entertainment's Too Amusing
Prefer Elephants To Anarchists
Please Establish Trademark, Assholes
Perhaps Everyone's Too Anal
PETA Excised Their Assailant
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
DNS needs an ".alt" top level domain.
When the Big 7 newsgroups were being drafted on USENET just prior to the great flag day, this simple need was recognized practically from day one and .alt was born (and is today bigger than all the Big 7 groups combined).
Flame all you want, but without a dumping ground where anything goes without restrictions, the trash will not go away. It will seep into all areas of the "approved TLDs".
If an .alt TLD is set up, it will make rule violations in the remaining TLDs much easier to enforce because there will always be an alternative. "You didn't have to create [domain] here".
Trap the rats with no way to register their profane, controversial, questionable, or whatever-offends-whoever domains and they'll start clawing at the walls of whatever other heirarchy they can get at.
Remember, in the Big 7 newsgroups, there was no room for sex or drugs, so these because the very first two alt groups.
Even the cleanest, most orderly city still has a garbage dump.
And how will the "lawsuits prohibited against anyone in the .alt TLD" be agreed to and given teeth? Simple. Make that an agreed to condition for everyone registering OR RENEWING a domain AND for registrars renewing their registrar status, just like ICANN did with its current domain name dispute policy. After 2 years or so, the policy will trickle down to all registrants and be in full force. Anyone who disagreed will be gone from DNS. Then open up .alt to accept anything-goes registrations.
.
The real issue at stake here is whether you can use (as a domain name, primarily, but who knows how this will translate-- perhaps as the title of a site, or just ON your site) a trademark that doesn't belong to you. So many common names and acronyms and phrases are trademarked that this could have tremendous implications.
I don't know why they were accused of cybersquatting, unless someone doesn't understand what cybersquatting is. "It's not a cybersquatting case at all," Davis said. "It simply presents a question: Can you use a trademark as a domain name for the purpose of creating a parody?" The "for the purpose of creating a parody" part is kind of irrelevant, unless we're talking slander-- and that's an entirely separate issue, especially since parody is a fair use exemption to copyright law, as has been pointed out here already.
And another issue-- what happens when more than one organization has a similar or identical name (NASA and NASA, or the space people and the Native American Student Association, for instance) and one wants a domain that the other has (the space people now decide that they want all domains incorporating NASA into them, but find that the students already use one or two of them, for instance). They're equally entitled, despite the fact that one owns the trademark and the other doesn't. Does that mean that the students aren't entitled to a domain with their name in it? That they should change the name of their organization? I know that there was a case recently where a kid nicknamed Pokey was being sued for his domain by the Gumby people... this is the same bad idea.
This trademark/domain name stuff was discussed in part earlier in an article on Slashdot.
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