Legal Tips For Your 'Sucks' Site

jyuter writes: "Wired has a piece discussing the legal ramifications (parodies, free speech, and trademark infringements) of "Sucks" sites." Considering that ".*sucks" sites are getting nailed left and right for "cybersquatting" in the UDRP arbitration procedure, the most important requirement for a sucks site has to be willingness to go to court over it.

Comments

Just Be Careful

[jyuter]

You don't necessarilly need to be willing to go to court over it, you just have to be careful to avoid copyright infringement, defamation, or anything else that's illegal. That's the point of the article - how not to get sued for a parody or "sucks" site.

Unfortunately I can see an upset company sending its legal goons to intimidate a legitimate parody. The website owner, despite being correct, would have to back down simply becasue he can't afford to fight it in court. The EFF can only do so much.

So I suppose it also depends on the nature of the company which is being parodied and how popular/damaging the parody is. A really evil company - or a company which has been severly damaged by a parody might take the chance and try to shut down anything critical. I'm willing to wager that Slashdot took no legal action against the Hot Grits site.

On a related note, there were some recent cases of "tribute" sites which were shut down. Notable the Iron Chef and assorted Mac sites. I find it interesting that "fair use" of copyrighted materials includes criticism but not praise.



Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another

One word:

[AndrewD]

McLibel

There's a limit to what I can say about this case: the firm I worked for at the time was acting for McDonalds.

It's not quite comparable with a "sucks" site, as the McLibel Two were distributing leaflets rather than publishing on the web.

Basically what happened was that these two soap-dodgers were defaming McDonalds on all fronts and were sued. Some of their comrades signed an admission, under threat, that they were liars (and then cheerfully stood up in the witness box under absolute privilege and retracted those statements, but that's by the by).

Two of them, though, insisted on their day in court. The trial broke current records for length and weight of evidence and MacDonalds lost on the issues of whether they were cruel to animals and whether they exploited children. They got home on most of the other allegations, and the damages (£100,000, about $155K) were, of course, ordered against defendants who had been bankrupt to start with and represented themselves.

Moral of the story: provided you have nothing to lose, you can turn corporate bully techniques against them. For a year or two, anyway - only lawyers remember it now.