Typosquatting Held Illegal

Artagel writes: "The Federal Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (covering appeals from federal courts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands) has whacked a cybersquatter for registering misspellings("typosquatting")of the Joe Cartoon homepage. The Third Circuit is the place the ACLU brings suits when it wants to challenge federal laws regulating speech. It brought ACLU v. Reno case (first big internet free speech case) in the Third Circuit. I don't think that, in general, there is a friendlier forum for a free speech case, certainly not if the ACLU knows what it is doing. One more in the list of ways to get whacked on the internet. It is a precedent a lot of lower courts are likely to follow."

Comments

Tough ground for a libertarian

[KuRL]

I consider myself to be a libertarian, though not an extremely radical one (I think that shutting down the Federal Reserve (STOP THE PRESSES! HE'S US-CENTRIC!) would be absurd), and typosquatting (like abortion) is one of those things that one really hates to condone (or that I really hate to condone, in abortion's case), but do so in defence of free speech.

It's tough territory.

Yay, let's get that Norwegian Salte now!

[georgeha]

Because half of the time I try to get to Slate to read up on the diaries and Prudence, my fat fingers type Salte instead.

Who cares if he's had the family name for centuries, he's trying to squat on MS's product!

Re:Yay, let's get that Norwegian Salte now!

[CaseStudy]

That's not cybersquatting, and not what was going on in the case. As far as I can tell, Mr. Salte is making bona fide use of the domain name and not using it in a way that would infringe on the Slate mark. What Mr. Zuccarini was doing was taking misspellings of Mr. Shields' domain name and trying to sell them to Mr. Shields--classic bad faith cybersquatting in violation of the ACPA.

That's BS

[Tini Kanooo]

If I type in www.microdoft.com and it takes me to a pornographic donkey site than I will be greatly ammused.

The fact that a court has ruled this ILLEGAL is inane. This makes no more sense than the battle Ford is waging against 2600 Magazine over www.fuckgeneralmotors.com.

Grow up, courts. -TK

Re:That's BS

[StenD]

The fact that a court has ruled this ILLEGAL is inane.

The fact is that the court didn't rule this illegal, the Congress made it illegal, and Zuccarini apparently raised no questions as to the validity of the law, but merely attempted to shoehorn himself into the exceptions of the law. Courts don't go out of their way to find reasons to overturn laws, they expect the apellants to present them with arguments to do so.

Re:That's BS

[Tini Kanooo]

2600 registered fuckgeneralmotors.com and redirected it to GM until they were told to stop by GM.

2600 then redirected to Ford as a joke. Ford slapped them with a lawsuit without any warning.

www.2600.com fights injustice in the Electronic Fronteir and routinely seems to challenge rights to privacy.

Go buy a t-shirt...

-TK

Dammit!

[wizzy403]

Now I won't be able to find new and exciting pr0n every time I mispell major company names. I'll be reduced to reading /. and finding the hidden goatse links!

Re:Dammit!

[keesh]

Lol, it's just too obvious that you ain't a regular goatse-er... They never put in the www. part...
--

Joecartoonsucks.com illegal?

[thewiz]

I wonder if all the *sucks.com domains will be determined to be typos (therefore illegal). If a company decideds to go after someone they might be able to use this ruling to shutdown sites that legitimately protect consumer interests.

Re:Joecartoonsucks.com illegal?

[petershank]

I wonder if all the *sucks.com domains will be determined to be typos (therefore illegal)

Very unlikely. Reading through the appeal decision, which quoted from the cyberpiracy act, it was pretty clear to me that the intention is to prevent people from taking advantage of confusion or benign human error. You couldn't reasonably argue that somebody meant to type "joecartoon" but accidentally typed "joecartoonsucks". Also, the Act differentiates sites which have a relationship to the similar (original) site. *sucks certainly has something to with the original, but porn sites or banners that generate revenue per clickthrough obviously don't. A protest site like *sucks will be protected as free speech.

heres a perfect example

[maf212]

check out www.slahdot.org maybe /. should sue them :)

Re:heres a perfect example

[sfraggle]

or sloshdat.org :P

Re:heres a perfect example

[Weh]

the first thing that catches your eye on that page is a huge slashdot image/link. How is that to slashdot's disadvantage ?

Re:heres a perfect example

[adalger]

What slashdot should be upset about is that they're serving that image from slashdot's server instead of their own. This could be a copyright violation, and is generally considered to be poor etiquette.

Re:heres a perfect example

[oman002]

Technical Correction: They are linking to slashdot's server, not "serving that image from slashdot's server". Slashdot's server is serving the image. It could only be a copyright violation if linking could be a copyright violation - they have not reproduced the material in question.

Re:heres a perfect example

[adalger]

Soooo . . . if you maintain a really good website, and I present all of it as my content by putting URLs for your work into a frameset on my site, that's perfectly OK?

Perhaps your technical correction has merit but it's a semantic quibble that doesn't change the ethical or legal situation.

Uhh

[Auckerman]

Forgive me, but I'm not sure what the big deal is here. I type a lot of URL's in and at least once or twice a month I'm redirected to someones pr0n site when I was looking for cooking recipes. Certainly not fair use, certainly intented to direct traffic from one intended destination to another, certainly something that dimishes brands.

Couse though stuff like this just ends up allowing a company to smash down a parody site which is within the relm of fair use.....

Re:Uhh

[Yoko99]

I always get www.restaurant.ca confused with www.restaurants.ca.

It's annoying because the second site (I want the first one) is very slow to load, even with a fast connection, and stopping the download freezes my entire workstation for a few seconds... Grrr.

Yoko 99

www.lsahdot.org seems to be still free

[Linux2Mars]

www.lsahdot.org seems to be still free, go get it!

What about parody

[interstellar_donkey]

Where does the difference lie between a 'typo' and a fair use parody. If I registered a domain called 'lashdot.org' that hosted a site intended to poke fun and 'lashout' at the slashdot community, could Andover claim I was typo squatting?

Who gets to decide what is a legit take-off, and what is an attempt to simply direct traffic to their own site?

Re:What about parody

[Ardvaark]

From the judgement:
On November 29, 1999, the ACPA became law, making it illegal for a person to register or to use with the "bad faith" intent to profit from an Internet domain name that is "identical or confusingly similar" to the distinctive or famous trademark or Internet domain name of another person or company.

I don't think that parody is considered "bad faith" intent to profit.

Re:What about parody

[jyuter]

I'm guessing the way they'd determine it is based on content. If you're a sports site, and you own something like espm.com, which merely redirects traffic to something like sportsline, that would be bad. But if the design and/or content is a clear parody of ESPN, e.g. you have similar design and/or modified content, that would be different.

Re:What about parody

[Pahroza]

You bring up a valid point. This case is a bit different. The squatter registered a handful of misspellings of JoeCartoon.com and set out to make money with banner ads.

From the article:

Visitors were trapped or"mousetrapped" in the
sites, which, in the jargon of the computer world, means
that they were unable to exit without clicking on a
succession of advertisements. Zuccarini received between
ten and twenty-five cents from the advertisers for every
click.

Re:What about parody

[Erasmus Darwin]

Where does the difference lie between a 'typo' and a fair use parody.

That's a distinction made by the courts. In this case, the "Joe Cartoon" typo sites consisted of a bunch of banner ads for various products. It was only a few hours after being served with a "cease-and-desist" that the owner of the typo sites changed them to a poorly written "political protest against Joe Cartoon". The judge saw through such a shallow ploy and issued some judicial smack-down against the defendant.

I really recommend reading the judgement (if you can get through the Slashdotting). It's a bit annoying in that they did a bad job converting it to ASCII (footnotes seem to be where each original page ended), but the language isn't particularly lawyerish and the judge clearly and concisely enumerates the legal standards that needed to be satisfied.

Re:What about parody

[www.sorehands.com]

Take a look at Mattel v. MCA Records -- the Barbie Girl case.

The court went stated that you could not use trademark or copyright to silence critism or satire. It also discussed the Cat In the Hat/OJ parody.

Re:What about parody

[emok]

what's your point?

who decides if it is murder or self-defense?
who decides if it is stealing or borrowing?
who decides whether cigarette ads are deception or just ordinary propaganda?
who decides if microsoft is abusing it's power as a monopoly or just trying to stay competitive in the marketplace?

there are decisions like this being made in the courts all the time. in every one of its cases the supreme court decides if a particular act qualifies as a freedom or if it should be punished as a felony.

Re:What about parody

[displacer]

If you read the judgement, you will see it is only illegal if the person doing the typosquatting is profiting from it. In this case the typosqatter was ONLY profiting from the domains through mouse trapping and ads. When the owner of joecartoon.com told him to stop, thats when the typosquatter changed his web pages to make it look like he was criticizing joecartoon.com for being violent and bad for little kids, in an effort probably to ward off the lawsuit.

Re:What about parody

[interstellar_donkey]

In this case, I think the distinction between fair use and trying to profit off Joe Cartoon in a underhanded way were obvious.

But as cases like this become decided, those who have less then nobel goals will ride that line far closer.

What if, for example, they developed a well constructed critique of Joe Cartoon before going live, which sat along side the banner ads and pop-ups. Our best guess is the intent would still have been to profit off the mispelling.

But the owner of the rogue sites could just as easily say the intent was to provide commentary or satire, and simply added the advertisments just as many other commerical websites use agressive advertising to cover expenses. Using advertisments to suppliment the cost of content in and of itself is not illegal.

I see us reaching a very fine line between nefarious misuse of typo squatting and legitiment free speech. How are we going to end up deciding if a site's advertisments are secondary to it's content, or the otherway around. The law's only recourse is to employ common sense on a case by case basis . . . but how often does that happen?

Re:What about parody

[Erasmus Darwin]

I see us reaching a very fine line between nefarious misuse of typo squatting and legitiment free speech. How are we going to end up deciding if a site's advertisments are secondary to it's content, or the otherway around.

Well, to a degree, I think this issue has already been played out in non-computer-related court cases. For example, with Luther Campbell's parody of Roy Orbison's classic "Pretty Woman", you had a court ruling that even though the parody was used commercially, that didn't automatically negate the parody/fair-use provisions of the appropriate copyright law [Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)]. Admittedly, that's relating to copyright instead of trademark (which is what typosquatting would most likely be).

However, in the parts of the anti-typosquatting statue mentioned in the judgement, they specificially refer to a "bad faith" intent to profit. Within the criteria for "bad faith", the include (as one of the 9 or so factors of consideration) "(IV) the person's bona fide noncommercial or fair use of the mark in a site accessible under the domain name".

What all this means, I have absolutely no clue. I think the best bet, if you were considering running a parody site, would be to ask a lawyer. But there's at least enough fuzziness there that I wouldn't lose sleep over the issue.

This is...

[Deluge]

...a good thing, but only in theory. Companies, no matter how nasty and evil they may be, do not deserve to have some typosquatter leech off their business through exploiting people's tendency to make typos of the company name. But the companies, seeing that they have another precedent that gives them a chance to take away people's domains, will try to abuse this much the same way that etoys did with etoy.

---

Re:This is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a good thing. Even in theory. A name that is different, even by one character, is a different name. So long as you don't try to pretend to be what the alternate spelling is for or sell products for the same market (thus diluting the brand name), you are not infringing at all. For a typo to be held illegal in general is a very poor precedent. That being said, like probably everyone here, I have not read the article linked to. I am guessing if this is a free-speech favorable court, as the poster opines, that their ruling is a very narrow one based on a company intentionally trying to mislead or dilute the ownership of the mark, and not typo names in general.

Yep, I was right. I went to read the article. Multiple names _sounding_ just like the mark and two with merely an added 's' constitute the squatting. And the squatting was very obvious and poorly done - he mousetrapped visiting users forcing them to click multiple banner ads. In this case it's pretty obvious there was bad faith. The court applied the relevent law in a very specific manner and did not create any significant precedent as the story poster so wanted to get us all worried about.

joescartoon.com, joecarton.com, joescartons.com, joescartoons.com and cartoonjoe.com

Put it this way...

[The Gline]

If someone registered theglein.com or something along those lines and then proceeded to use it to a) defame me or b) mislead people, I would have a hard time thinking of a severe enough punishment.

It's akin to when you would pick up a CD that said in huge letters

HARRY BELAFONTE
CALYPSO SONGS

and on closer inspection you saw it really said

HARRY BELAFONTE
completely ignored these terrible
CALYPSO SONGS

(Kudos to MAD Magazine for that particular example.)

Typosquatting has about as much to do with free speech as the quack "American NutriMedical Association" (which gets a LOT of mileage out of being "mistaken" for the AMA) has to do with "freedom of medical choice."

Re:Put it this way...

[Threed]

More like:

hank williams jr sings the songs of
HANK WILLIAMS

...which actually happened and, legally speaking, flew just fine (probably because Hank Sr was dead at the time). (Incidentally, I just can't call Hank Williams Jr 'Junior' anymore.)

Or maybe:

GET A VISA CARD FROM BIGBANK AT 1%* INTEREST!
(insert a page of advertising drivel)
*onlyforthefirsttwodays

...which I get in my mailbox every week.

Defamation, slander, copyright violation, theft of services, misapropriation of trademark, and the like are already crimes. Taking advantage of people who can't spell (and obviously can't bookmark either) isn't.

Note: I'm not taking a side on whether it's "right".

The real Threed's /. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.

--Threed

Hm..

[PopeAlien]

So what defines a typo? Is this going to cause major problems for Cmdr Taco? What if I go domain shopping drunk? Is a site like monsantos a typo or a parody? Am I going to get busted because PopeAlien.com could be construed to be a typo of Pepsi.com?.. This is just silly.

Re:Hm..

[belroth]

Indeed - waht is a typo? (yes it was deliberate)

How close does it have to be, to be "typosquatting"- would microsloth be considered a typo, in extremis could 'sun' be a mis-spelling of 'microsoft'?
It's another of those slippery slope things - it's not like a speed limit, it's a judgement call like obscenity, which is why there are some many court cases.
And what about a misspelling which forms another comapny name - if I registered wibble.com would that mean I can stop another comapny from using wobble.com? If so why, if not, why not?
In my opinion the fat lady ain't singing yet.
----

Re:Hm..

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Am I going to get busted because PopeAlien.com could be construed to be a typo of Pepsi.com?.. This is just silly.

Exactly....

What if Cardinal Secola moves up in the ranks of the Catholic church and eventually becomes Pope. Would Pepsi sue him for his PopeSecola.com web site?

Domain Name Selling is a for profit business

[bdlinux13]

Internic, Register.com and a few other companies are for profit companies ie selling domain names is their business. These types of rulings hurt these companies are flat out wrong. If microsoft does not want a company to have any domain name with the word windows(just an example) in it, then they need to buy EVERY domain name that has that has Windows in it. Same for google.com... for example if google does not want me to buy googl.com then they need to buy it. Anything less than this is hurting domain companies since goog won't buy it and I am not allowed to. Therfore, misspellings are already sold even though no one "really" owns them. The same holds true for words like "windows, java, gm, aol... ect" If you don't like someone using your domain name or something close to it.. THEN BUY IT!

Re:Domain Name Selling is a for profit business

[Violet Null]

Hrmm. You wouldn't, by any chance, _work_ for a domain name registrar, would you?

Nah. Couldn't be.

Re:Domain Name Selling is a for profit business

[bdlinux13]

good try.. but I work for www.bestdoctors.com.. I have tried to make this point to my boss many times when we have had disputes over domain names.

Typosquatting and New.net

[grovertime]

most of you probably know that new.net is offering all sorts of new top level domains by having their app accepted by most of the major ISPs and browswers. do you think typosquatting would be a factor there? how would that work since ICANN doesn't sanction or regulate the sale of those names; that is, who is to blame? i realize most typosquatting occurs when someone takes, say, slashdoy.com (hoping your finger grazes the "y" key), but it could have plenty of interpretations. just wondering in general if anyone has heard any feedback to new.net's offerings.

1. 
   is this.....is this for REAL?
   

uh oh!

[sup4hleet]

Maybe I shouldn't have registered
homail.com
:)

Re:uh oh!

[davidgunnar]

My fave is http:www.yaho.com - is it an attempt to trap people off of yahoo, or is it a contraction of "you whore"? ;-}

Yummy

[pizen]

Just remember:
PETA.com != PETA.org
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals != People Eating Tasty Animals
---

Re:Yummy

[sultanoslack]

err... actually this changed about 3 years ago. peta.org is now PETA's site. http://www.mtd.com/tasty/ is the one you mentioned.

Re:Yummy

[pizen]

> err... actually this changed about 3 years ago. peta.org is now PETA's site. http://www.mtd.com/tasty/ is the one you mentioned.

Yes, but PETA.com != www.mtd.com/tasty just isn't the same.
---

What About Translation Squatting?

[cybrpnk]

Next there will be a legal squabble if you are the first to register existing URLs in newly open languages like Japanese or Chinese ...

A sound decision

[pgpckt]

While I suspect that several on the slashdot crowd might disagree with this decision on privacy rights or the like, I must say that this decision does make logical sense.

I say this because I believe the laws in the online world should be no different then those in the physical world. This is why I get so upset when courts do not transcribe the same regulations governing laws in place to the domain of the digital community. The rights of someone online are the same IMHO as those in the real world. Historically, the government has been more restrictive with online rights then those in the physical world, which is why I am happily a member of the EFF. But I digress.

When someone has a trademarked name, it is illegal in the real world to use a name that is extremely similar to the trademarked name, just as it is illegal to use the exact same name. The courts get really mad when people pick a similar name with the intent that people will confuse them with the legitimate trademark holder. In this case, the courts said that the person registering a typo name of an entity that has a legitimate claim is unfair, and I agree.

It is important to make sure that this isn't taken to the Nth degree, but I think that, within limits, the decision of the courts is reasonable. I remain hopeful that this means that people squatting on typo names will be forced to vacate. I know that I have mistyped names in the past, and I find it highly irritating to be exposed to content I had no intent to view.

In the conclusion, I think we should respect the courts in this case for protecting the rights of those online in the same way those rights are protected in the real world. If this rule were universally applied, I think we would better off, though I wouldn't mind if the online rules were a touch less restrictive, due to the nature of the public forum that the is the Internet.

Re:A sound decision

[Cunt Turd]

Yes.

--

Re:A sound decision

[Smegma4U]

The thing that seems strange to me is that in the physical world I've seen electronics by a company called JBC or speakers by a comapny called Alfine. Are they prosecuted for producing under these names? Because if they're not, these web sites should surely be allowed to continue on.

Re:A sound decision

[kindbud]

iI believe the laws in the online world should be no different then those in the physical world.

Oh yeah? What law prevents a person from profiting when a potential customer of ACME Widgets on 123 Maple Street mistakenly drives their car to 123 Marple Street?

Re:A sound decision

[petershank]

If you could find a bunch of businesses who did things like locating themselves at 123 Marple Street expressly and solely for the purpose of gaining business from all the people who incorrectly wrote down "123 Maple Street", then maybe you could formulate a valid argument. The goal is a legal system that works in the real world, not a theoretical, contrived, non-existent one.

Misrepresentation

[krugdm]

If I were a major company, I would be concerned not just that a misspelling of my URL could take a potential customer to a pr0n site, but that the customer may not realize that they have mis-typed the URL and now will never see my site at all. Or file some frivilous lawsuit against me because someone's 8-year-old saw something they shouldn't have and think that I'm responsible.

Re:Misrepresentation

[null_session]

Or file some frivilous lawsuit against me because someone's 8-year-old saw something they shouldn't have and think that I'm responsible.

My concern is that now I WILL be responsible. If I don't go to the trouble of chasing off the 'squatters myself, it could be construde as lack of due diligence(?) on my part and then I'm libel. If I didn't have legal recourse, then it wouldn't be my fault. Now that I do it is my responsibility to exercise it.

IANAL but this is what I'm concerned about.

Re:Misrepresentation

[Technodummy]

My concern is that now I WILL be responsible. If I don't go to the trouble of chasing off the 'squatters myself, it could be construde as lack of due diligence(?) on my part and then I'm libel. If I didn't have legal recourse, then it wouldn't be my fault. Now that I do it is my responsibility to exercise it.

If a customer goes through the phonebook and accidentally calls an escort service instead of a clothing company because they have a similar name, I would imagine this can hardly be construed as the fault of the clothing company

logic would suggest it is similar in the digital world

of course if your trademark is being violated and you do nothing to protect it, you can lose it, just ask Lycra

IANAL...

Re:Misrepresentation

[Kid Vid2]

>

Of course, senior citizens usually have some vague clue on how telephones work. And often, these squatted domains tell nothing to an inexperienced person that the company's web page ISN'T just a large number of banner ads, as there's nobody to TELL them that they typed the wrong address (What, this is 777-1534, not 777-1234? Sorry, I'm an assface.), and I doubt they'd think to look at the URL box to see if they typed the correct address.

Note that I assume total human stupidity here, which is pretty much a given.

Couldn't Resist...

[Jason0x21]

When typos are outlawed, only outlaws will make typos!

Re:Couldn't Resist...

[pingflood]

When typos are outlawed, only outlaws will make typos!

They'd throw Taco in jail quicker than you could type 'thier.'

-pf

Typos are bad, but ignorance is okay?

[sniglet999]

So you can't have a mispelling, but you CAN have a whitehouse.com instead of a whitehouse.gov? (why bother hyperlinking the second?) I fail to see the distinction.

Re:Typos are bad, but ignorance is okay?

[CaseStudy]

"White House" isn't a trademark. There's your distinction.

Abortion?

[Galvatron]

Why do you have to condone abortion as a libertarian? If you believe that a fetus is a living human being, then abortion is murder, and libertarian or no, should be illegal. Now then, I don't happen to believe that, but I don't see any inconsistency in being a pro-life libertarian.

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

Re:Abortion?

[Evil Grinn]

I don't see any inconsistency in being a pro-life libertarian

ISTR that there is in fact a pro-life faction within the Libertarian Party, but they have never been numerous enough to get a pro-life plank into the party's official platform.

Re:Abortion?

[rprycem]

Harry Browne ran as pro-life

Re:Abortion?

[SecurityGuy]

Harry Browne's position, as I recall, was that while he, personally, was pro life, he didn't support a federal ban on it because restricting abortion isn't a power granted to the Federal government. Without making a judgement on abortion either way (I *do* have my opinion, though), its nice to see a candidate for Federal office who recognized that election doesn't mean blanket power to do whatever you damn well please. If only Bush, Clinton, McCain, Kennedy, Daschle, and friends would realize the same thing, we'd be much better off.

Re:Abortion?

[Galvatron]

No, he IS pro-life, but towed the party line because otherwise he would not have been nominated, and he's content to let it be a state issue.

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

Typosquatting vs parody

[brown_out]

A lot of talk has been made that this will trash free speech and allow companies to shut down parody sites. I really don't see the connection here. For example, I remember when espm.com was a porn site. That would be an example of typosquatting. The name of the web site has nothing to do with the content and was only picked because it closely resemebles the name of another more famous web site. This person hoped to generate traffic solely through the mistakes of web surfers.
On the other hand, parodies are pretty obvious. The content has everything to do with the name of the web site (i.e. www.f*ckedcompany.com sp?). To say that this case is about shutting doen parody sites is pretty shortsighted. That's just my 2 cents.

Re:Typosquatting vs parody

[Technodummy]

parodies are pretty obvious. The content has everything to do with the name of the web site (i.e. www.f*ckedcompany.com sp?). To say that this case is about shutting doen parody sites is pretty shortsighted. That's just my 2 cents.

f*ckedcompany.com is a pretty obvious parody, but something more likely to be in danger from precedent cases are sites like monsantos.com (a parody of monsato.com)

Near future: US Gov't sues typosquatting porn site

[rvaniwaa]

Will the US Gov't now sue whitehouse.com b/c of whitehouse.gov???

Fat Finger Syndrome

[littleRedFriend]

Zuccarini's sites featured advertisements for other sites and for credit card companies. Visitors were trapped or"mousetrapped" in the sites, which, in the jargon of the computer world, means that they were unable to exit without clicking on a succession of advertisements.

He, People who can not type (fat finger syndrome),
&nbsp&nbsp&nbspdeserve to click banners!

Vague Distinctions in the Ruling

[WhamJack]

I find the ruling to have a lot of ambiguous statements which I believe could have turned the court's decision one way or the other.
[W]e conclude that "Joe Cartoon" is distinctive, and, with 700,000 hits a month, the web site "joecartoon.com" qualifies as being famous. Therefore, the trademark and domain name are protected under the ACPA.
It's distinctive perhaps, but does 700,000 hits/month qualify as being famous? And famous to what people? I view this as a weak link in the case because being famous is very relative and the application of the ACPA relies on this fame. For instance, I think The Onion or Slashdot is "famous", but considering virtually everyone where I work (a software company) has never heard of them, is that to say they aren't famous? I surely can't decide one way or the other.
The domain names --joescartoon.com, joecarton.com, joescartons.com, joescartoons.com and cartoonjoe.com -- closely resemble "joecartoon.com," with a few additional or deleted letters, or, in the last domain name, by rearranging the order of the words. To divert Internet traffic to his sites, Zuccarini admits that he registers domain names, including the five at issue here, because they are likely misspellings of famous marks or personal names. 4 The strong similarity between these domain names and joecartoon.com persuades us that they are "confusingly similar." Shields also produced evidence of Internet users who were actually confused by Zuccarini's sites.
Ok, here the ambiguity is obvious. They conclude that the domain names are "confusingly similar," which I agree with, but where can the line between "confusingly similar" and "not similar enough" be drawn? I have no real opinion on that answer, but the question definitely begs to be asked.
Just my random thoughts on this.
----------
If there were gods, how could I bear to be no god?

Re:Vague Distinctions in the Ruling

[brown_out]

To divert Internet traffic to his sites, Zuccarini admits that he registers domain names ... because they are likely misspellings of famous marks or personal names

here is where the ambiguity disappears. If you say you did it to get diverted traffic, then you have already drawn the line for the court.

Re:Vague Distinctions in the Ruling

[CaseStudy]

These are basic elements of trademark law.

It's distinctive perhaps, but does 700,000 hits/month qualify as being famous? And famous to what people? I view this as a weak link in the case because being famous is very relative and the application of the ACPA relies on this fame. For instance, I think The Onion or Slashdot is "famous", but considering virtually everyone where I work (a software company) has never heard of them, is that to say they aren't famous? I surely can't decide one way or the other.

This is elaborated on in section 43(c)(1) of the Lanham Act:

In determining whether a mark is distinctive and famous, a court may consider factors such as, but not limited to--
(A) the degree of inherent or acquired distinctiveness of the mark;
(B) the duration and extent of use of the mark in connection with the goods or services with which the mark is used;
(C) the duration and extent of advertising and publicity of the mark;
(D) the geographical extent of the trading area in which the mark is used;
(E) the channels of trade for the goods or services with which the mark is used;
(F) the degree of recognition of the mark in the trading areas and channels of trade of the mark's owner and the person against whom the injunction is sought;
(G) the nature and extent of use of the same or similar marks by third parties; and
(H) whether the mark was registered under the Act of March 3, 1881, or the Act of February 20, 1905, or on the principal register.

Ok, here the ambiguity is obvious. They conclude that the domain names are "confusingly similar," which I agree with, but where can the line between "confusingly similar" and "not similar enough" be drawn? I have no real opinion on that answer, but the question definitely begs to be asked.

Likelihood of confusion takes up a good chunk of my trademarks casebook. Most trademark cases use survey evidence to show that consumers are actually confused. In the absence of evidence of actual confusion, the courts draw the line to fit the equities of the case. That, after all, is their job.

Re:Vague Distinctions in the Ruling

[ichimunki]

Of course some of the language in the ruling is not exact. As much as all good citizens would like law to be exact, it ain't. That's why we have a large number of people involved in drafting laws, and another large group of people interpreting them and making rulings on them. In extremely important cases, you have 12 people come in and hear the arguments for and against and make a ruling. This is why there are several layers to the court system, so that poor individual decisions at the beginning levels can be revised or examined by later levels. The final level is a group of nine individuals who make determinations in particularly tough cases.

Pathetic example: we all agree that killing other people is wrong most of the time, but that sometimes it may be okay or even desirable. But you can't simply spell out most of this stuff, so you have to have a way for human judgement to enter. I mean, at what point does self-defense become aggressive retribution. Even if you can define this exactly in English, you still need to have someone come into the case and look at the facts and decide which way this case looks according to the law.

I'd say 700,000 hits a month is famous enough. It was certainly famous enough that someone else used typos to redirect poor typists to advertisements wholly unrelated to Cartoon Joe. But I'd never heard of it before today. Fame just ain't what it used to be. :)

Re:Vague Distinctions in the Ruling

[KahunaBurger]

Pathetic example: we all agree that killing other people is wrong most of the time, but that sometimes it may be okay or even desirable. But you can't simply spell out most of this stuff, so you have to have a way for human judgement to enter. I mean, at what point does self-defense become aggressive retribution. Even if you can define this exactly in English, you still need to have someone come into the case and look at the facts and decide which way this case looks according to the law.

Actually, I think its an excellent example. I have noticed in other threads a trend on /. to say that if any law is written so that at some point there will come a gray area where a judgment call will have to be made, the law is declared arbitrary and evil and obviously this bit of discretion will be used to take the enforcement to the most outlandish totalitarian reach of the slippery slope that the poster can come up with. Its good to remind people that every law we have will have an element of discretion in it.

Whenever I hear people use the argument "you say X is one thing and Y is another, but I can come up with some thouroughly improbably and bizzare case where its hard to say with precision whether its X or Y so there is actually no difference at all." I think of gender. Yes there are a very small number of true intersexuals (hermaphrodites) and a few transexuals and the odd deactivated Y genetic male/biological female out there. But only a very few politically motivated radicals will deny that the catogories of male and female are real and accurate for most of the population. Grey areas do not remove the significance of drawing distinctions, unless you are so afraid of ambiguity that you can't take knowing someday it may be a tossup.

Kahuna Burger

Re:Vague Distinctions in the Ruling

[Jaysyn]

Not too hard TWIST (The way I see things).

joescartoons.com = similar

fuckgeneralmotors.com != similar

Of course if you are a guy named Joe that does semi-crude Flash humor on a website, then you might be out of luck..

Jaysyn

What is a typo for what?

[MadCow42]

So you have two domains: www.slashdo.com and www.slashdot.com (for example): which one is the type for which?

Just because slashdot.com was registered first, maybe there's been a company called slashdo for years, and just now created a website.

Hey, if you want to protect your brand name, register all the typos you can think of yourself, and stop bitching. If someone beat you to it, good for them.

MadCow.

Don't underestimate the AOLer...

[Monthenor]

I'm sure there'll be plenty of comments here about people not realizing they've mistyped the URL...but what about people who don't even visit the site? For example, my Post Cereal Online article at gogeek.org didn't raise the furor that Surviving the Boy Band did (and does), but one person emailed me to complain about some Raisin Bran. Now, does http://www.gogeek.org look anything like the actual Post site? No. I finally determined that this person had typed something akin to "Post Cereal Online" in a search engine (we're #5 for that search on Google :) and simply taken my email addy from the abstract. We can pass all the laws and make all the precedent we want, but we can't possibly make the Net safe for people as ignorant as that.

Even scarier, said person appeared to be using a military (Air Force) account...
------------------------

This is insane.

[VValdo]

So will the next suit be BMI suing IBM for typosquatting? They can call the ACLU, who won't be able to take the case because they're suing UCLA.

If someone mistypes an URL, that's their problem. As long as the page itself doesn't misrepresent itself, then all URLs are fair game. When I register a domain name, I'm not registering all the domain names with slightly different spellings.. am I? If I own "domain.net" can I sue "domain.com" for typosquatting?

W
-------------------

Re:This is insane.

[hrieke]

Go read the review, it was a case of misreprensetation.

Re:This is insane.

[VValdo]

Yeah, but what's the precedent and how will it be interpreted by lower courts?

W
-------------------

Re:This is insane.

[CaseStudy]

The precedent that's set? If you register a domain name in bad faith, you can't weasel out of a lawsuit by throwing up a faux "political protest" on the page and claiming First Amendment protection thereby.

Re:This is insane.

[Frizzle Fry]

What matters is the intent. If you register a domain name because it will get hits as a result of typos, that's illegal. If your comany's name happens to be similar to another's, that's fine. The ruling is against typosquatting, not against similar names.

Re:This is insane.

[adalger]

Nope. Not the very next thing. There's a couple of intermediate steps -- like the suspension of the electoral process.

Re:This is insane.

[sgups]

already happened.. ala FLA

Not all Words are Speech

[stuccoguy]

You will be hard pressed to find a more ardent supporter of free speech or opponent of copyright and patent abuses than I.

Nevertheless, I must object to anyone who frames this case a free speech issue. Just because an action requires the use of words does not make it speech.

I would fervently defend anyone who used the domain name microsoftsucks.com because they are using the domain name to make a point. That is speech and should be free.

On the other hand, I would not defend a person who registered microsotf.com and used it to pitch ads. Such a person is not using the domain name to express themselves but rather to make a quick buck from the misfortunes of bad typists. That does not constitute speech and should not be framed as a free speech issue.

That said, I do not have an opinion as to whether such actions should be legal, but they certainly should not be protected by the First Amendment.

On the other hand, the guy in this article did something else that I consider a mortal sin: mouse trapping.

I swear they don't come any more liberal than I, but if I had my way there would be a law requiring any business or individual, who uses mouse trapping and pop-up windows, to be banned from the internet forever.

Can you imagine walking into a brick and mortar store and deciding that you did not like the products. You turn to walk out the door and are physically restrained and required to browse the store once more just in case there actually was something you liked. Then when you finally make it out the front door you realize that it is just a worm hole to the back door and you just can't seem to get out!

Re:Not all Words are Speech

[kindbud]

Can you imagine walking into a brick and mortar store and deciding that you did not like the products. You turn to walk out the door and are physically restrained and required to browse the store once more just in case there actually was something you liked. Then when you finally make it out the front door you realize that it is just a worm hole to the back door and you just can't seem to get out!

But you can always shoot yourself in the head (turn off the computer), so nobody has any cause for complaint if this happened in meatspace.

What happens to slsahdot.org?

[Klaruz]

slsahdot.org just keeps a counter of who commited a typo error. It's owned by "Patrick Michael Kane (SLSAHDOT-DOM)" I'm not sure if that's the same 'Micheal' from slashdot. Does anybody know anything else about this, or if slashdot (or the OSDN/VA people) want to go after them?

Personally, I kinda like the site... It's funny to see how many other people typed slashdot.org wrong that day.

Where's Thomas Jefferson when you need him?

[Sogol]

Any time the government moderates, its generally a bad idea. Besides, if the typo sites aren't causing monetary or physical damage, then they should be protected by the 1st amendmant.

Re:Where's Thomas Jefferson when you need him?

[CaseStudy]

But they do. It's just that the anarcho-libertarian crowd has a short-sighted view of "monetary or physical damage" (at least when it's someone else's).

Typo sites cause monetary damage to the trademark holders because they take away hits. They cause monetary damage to the consumers whose time and resources are wasted. They cause monetary damage to society because they increase the transaction costs required to create informed consumers.

Typo Squatting Has Gotten Out of Hand

[CodingFiend]

1bookstreet.com, nice bookstore. bookstreet.com... don't go there from work, or be prepared to kill off all browser tasks very quickly. It's just ridiculous. Looking for a book on herb gardens, but wait! what's this?! I think I'll just buy some porn instead. Right.

Re:Premier post

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Are they saying that I have to give up ownership of BritainnySpeersHavingOralSexxWithChristinaAgalara. com to the rightful legitimate owner of BritneySpearsHavingOralSexWithChristinaAguilara.co m?

What about goddamn no-exit credit card sleazeballs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you registered one domain name "lashdot.org", and if you had significant parody elements on it, that would be one thing.

But if you registered 3000 domain names, including 5 variations on "slashdot", 10 variations on "freshmeat", 3 variations on "userfriendly", et cetera, and all of your domains had lots of credit card ads with 10 pop-windows on exit, and basically all you did with all your domain names is run sites like that ... you aren't commenting on slashdot, you aren't providing any value to anybody.

Read the decision and see what the guy was actually doing.

Not just limited to the online world

[jrp2]

This is not just an issue for the online world. Another example that is quite similar is all the companies that register toll-free numbers based on typos. For example, 1-800-OPERATOR is run by (I believe) MCI. Some of their competitors (AT&T I believe) then went out and grabbed several 800 numbers that were common mis-spellings/typos such as 1-800-OPRATOR, etc. There are several other examples that evade me right now. I guess that must be OK because it is big "legit" companies and not pr0n sites ;)

Re:Not just limited to the online world

[CaseStudy]

Not sued yet != "OK".

Re:Not just limited to the online world

[CaseStudy]

Not sued yet == "OK"
Innocent until proven guily, remember?

You're wrong. Here's why:

• The fact that someone hasn't sued you yet doesn't mean that they can't at any time in the future (barring laches, statutes of limitations, etc.).
• The fact that party A didn't sue party B for an action may not mean that party A can't successfully sue you for a similar action. (There are very few exceptions to this, genericization of trademarks being the best known.)
• The fact that party A didn't sue party B for an action certainly has no bearing on whether party C can successfully sue you for a similar action. (This was the point I was responding to--the "I saw someone else do it, so it must be legal" defense.)
• "Innocent until proven guilty" applies to criminal cases, not civil. The standard in a civil case (such as a trademark dispute) is a simple preponderance of evidence.

Re:Not just limited to the online world

[dnewlander]

Another, probably more hurtful example, is 1-800-SOUTHWEST. When I was living in the US (two years ago, so it may have changed), this number rang the Shuttle by United reservation center. Not, as you might expect, Southwest Airlines.

Southwest had to set up their reservation center at 1-800-IFLYSWA, which doesn't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, if you ask me.

This was made worse by the fact that at the time it was nearly impossible to book a Southwest flight via a travel agent, thanks to SABRE.

Nowadays, both http://www.southwest.com and http://www.iflyswa.com will get you to Southwest Airlines' homepage, but I remember it was pretty confusing trying to book a flight for awhile.

I can breathe a sigh of relief

[-=OmegaMan=-]

At long last, I now know that no one will profit from my typing of "gogole.com" several times a day. ;)

How can you defend this and then back 2600?

[RiotXIX]

I'm sorry, but I should be allowed to own whatever domain I want. How can you claim it's fair to have a domain entitled fuckmsn.com, yet not fcuckmsn.com?

Re:How can you defend this and then back 2600?

[CaseStudy]

Nobody made that claim. But fuckmsn.com better be used to say something about MSN, and not just cash in on consumer opinion.

Re:How can you defend this and then back 2600?

[Trekologer]

Let's say that I have a web site that is mrgardensucks.com, criticizing the poor quality of the Mr. Garden lawn rake I purchased from mrgarden.com*. This should be OK since mrgardensucks.com is obviously meant to criticize the company. No one should be confused between mrgarden.com and mrgardensucks.com.

Now, let's say that I create a web site that is mgrarden.com to sell gardening supplies. This site's address is a typo of mrgarden.com and intends to deceive consumers that have typed the address incorrectly.

* This is intended to be a fictional company and product. If there is a real Mr. Garden company, its purely coincidental.

Re:How can you defend this and then back 2600?

[WhiteWolf666]

Why? Fuck that

I should be able to cash in on cosumer opinion if I want.

Cyberspace is like real-estate.

No, well, it's not exactly the same :), but, I think it has the same sort of commodity-esque properties that allow it to be traded as such.

Hell yes, you should be able to use fuckmsn.com to cash in on consumer opinion.

Re:How can you defend this and then back 2600?

[CaseStudy]

Hells no, you shouldn't be able to get a free ride on the reputation of another company. If you want to use fuckmsn.com to speak out against MSN, that's protected speech. If you want to use fuckmsn.com to put up a bunch of banner ads that have nothing to do with MSN, that could easily be a trademark violation (especially if any of the banners are from competitors with Microsoft).

the devil's in the details

[Illserve]

Every time rights get trampled, it starts with a fairly reasonable restriction that is approved without thought of the consequence.

So the big deal is not this case, typo squatting for porn is something we'd all be better off without. Rather it's the consequences that you alude to regarding parody, and a dozen other cases that could be dreamt of once the precedent was set.

Re:the devil's in the details

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Every time rights get trampled, it starts with a fairly reasonable restriction that is approved without thought of the consequence.

So the big deal is not this case, typo squatting for porn is something we'd all be better off without. Rather it's the consequences that you alude to regarding parody, and a dozen other cases that could be dreamt of once the precedent was set.

While your hesitation is understandable, both the judge and the Act explicitly allow "fair use" defenses, and the judge specifically investigated whether the defendant's claim of "protest site" was valid. This implies that, had it been a legitimate protest site (and not a hurriedly retconned one), that would have sufficed.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but we don't have to mistrust everything.

Good example

[Kibo]

And yet in your example one group of people have a risk of personal injury, and another wastes 5 seconds of their time. To somehow imply that each of these assualts is equal is itself dishonest. No? Oh, as for typos, coming for one of the worst spellers our species has ever produced, I've never accidently stumbled on over to Swedish Erotic Goat Massage during the course of looking for anything. But to those unable or unwilling to use a bookmark, well thems the breaks. Why typosquatting is just negative reinforcement with the laudible aim to improve everyones spelling.

What is "Joe Cartoon"?

[Hard_Code]

um, what is "Joe Cartoon" anyway? What's the typo?

Re:What you get if you abuse your rights.

[UnknownSoldier]

> Most of the things which Americans and others accept as rights are actually priviliges - free speech. They have been granted by the state; they do not exist by default.

Bullshit. I'm free to say whatever I want. I don't need your permission ("privilige" aka "license") to talk.

Does the government create people, or do people create the government?

If people create the government, then the sovereign people ALREADY HAVE those right(s) (to free speech, to travel, etc.)

i.e.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Second Thought

[Mr. Buckaroo]

At first I thought this was a great thing, the more I think about it the more I realize that this is a bad idea.

What constitutes a typo ( 1,2,3,4 letters?, arranged together?, etc)?

What about freedom of speach or parody?

I think this is a idea that in its basic sense is appealing, but in its thought out implications is damning.

Hmmm what about alphine?

[Anon-Admin]

Will this extend beyond internet? Will we see alpine car stereo suing alphine car audio for ripping off there name? it
is well known that alphine produced car audio amps using the name to confuse people looking for alpine equipment.
This kind of stuff has been going on for as long as there have been companies. It has been fine and legal until now!
how does the internet change it? The whole point of this is to attempt to procure some one else's customers.

alpine --> alphine (Car Audio)
camel --> Kamel (Smokes)
Kool --> Cool (Smokes)

Then Again I am left wondering who has the right to www.oreilly.com.... Oreilly auto parts or oreilly publishing. The
same with www.apple.com.. Apple computers or apple records..

The government and in some cases the people have overstepped there bounds. Everyone is looking for laws to fix the
problem and the solution is not more laws. It is simply applying the existing laws to the new medium.

Re:Hmmm what about alphine?

[CaseStudy]

Camel and Kamel are owned by the same company. Don't know about the others, but if they're not and they haven't let too much time go by then they could have sued even before this decision. (Maybe they've decided it's not worth the time or money.)

anagrams?

[moksliukas]

So does his mean that if a company that registers a domain name (let's say "bigcorp.com") can deny other poeple from having a domain name that is made up of the letters of the "bigcorp.com" domain so that ibgcorp.com, bgicorp.com, and all the other anagrams would be illegal to use for a company selling similar services or products to bigcorp?

Re:anagrams?

[CaseStudy]

So does his mean that if a company that registers a domain name (let's say "bigcorp.com") can deny other poeple from having a domain name that is made up of the letters of the "bigcorp.com" domain so that ibgcorp.com, bgicorp.com, and all the other anagrams would be illegal to use for a company selling similar services or products to bigcorp?

No (at least, not under the law). Anagrams aren't all confusingly similar: cgiprob.com isn't going to be mistaken for bigcorp.com. If there's no association with the mark, there's no infringement.

Re:anagrams?

[Pembers]

Anagrams aren't all confusingly similar: cgiprob.com isn't going to be mistaken for bigcorp.com.

Except that many typos have two letters swapped around. You'd have to be rather careless to type cgiprob.com when you meant bigcorp.com, but it's quite easy to mistype it as bgicorp.com or ibgcorp.com. I don't suppose that would make any difference to a court's opinion on whether or not you were typosquatting, though.

salshdot.org

[orasio]

I remember typing salshdot.org (almost certain taht was the exact spelling), and entering slashdot, plus a framed banner at the bottom. Cant find it now. What ever happened to it??

What constitutes typos?

[Lew Pitcher]

Imagine that I own the cola.com domain (currently owned but not in use, btw), and I name two of my hosts in cola.com Pepsi and Coca. This would give me two hosts, one called pepsi.cola.com, and the other called coca.cola.com. Could this be taken as cybersquating/typosquating, even if cola.com and my two hosts were legitimately serving webpages for the "Canadian OnLine Alliance" (COLA)?

Re:What constitutes typos?

[KahunaBurger]

Imagine that I own the cola.com domain (currently owned but not in use, btw), and I name two of my hosts in cola.com Pepsi and Coca. This would give me two hosts, one called pepsi.cola.com, and the other called coca.cola.com. Could this be taken as cybersquating/typosquating, even if cola.com and my two hosts were legitimately serving webpages for the "Canadian OnLine Alliance" (COLA)?

I think you are probably brighter than that. There is no reason to use those names except to make an semi inside joke, so why would someone running a legitamate site risk getting everyone who types "pepsi cola" into Google showing up on his site and getting confused. There is no reason for it to be "protected" except to give you one chance to shange the names and say "sorry".

Have we reached the point where silly jokes having nothing to do with your site, their site or anything else HAVE to be protected? I know satire is protected, but I have my doubts on throwaway puns.

Kahuna Burger

Other ripoffs?

[Alien54]

I really dislike it if someone comes along and tries to piggy-pack on my work, good bad, or otherwise. If I donate my work to Open source, that is one thing. But straight ripoffs - ugh.

An example in point is the Darwin Awards. There is the Original Darwin Awards, done by a college student. This is the one that got the original fame. Then there is the copy cat Darwin Awards site who was better financed, and grabbed the URL first. So the college student sort of got plowed under.

Guess where my sympathy lies.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Re:Other ripoffs?

[dtobias]

Well, if either "Darwin Awards" is noncommercial in nature, a .org domain would make more sense than either of these .com domains...
--Dan

Not obvious at all

[Vicegrip]

I'm starting to think there is a need for the community to get toghether and attempt to formalize what is an abuse and what isn't and take the ball out of the courts where the letter of the law is often much to restrictive to properly address grey areas.

If www.micrsoft.com is illegal, then what about www.moneysoft.com or www.borgcentral.com www.ms.com etc...- whereas one might be blatant moneying of a company's brand equity, another might truly be free speech regarding the nature of that company. What constitutes a typo anyways? Many companies dont have english names: what about www.4com.com(as opposed to www.3com.com)? or www.it-aint-cool.com (as opposed to www.aint-it-cool.com)?

I truly wish our legislative body would be more cautious in setting precendents with so many possible negative repercusions down the road.

In fact, on another topic, it is a good subject of debate as to whether law as we know it is a flexible enough platform to carry society stabily over the next few hundred years. I begin with the assertion that since laws generally only grow in complexity and restritiveness, that there is a point in the future where it will be impossible for anyone to comply with the letter of any law and be effective. Feel free to comment.

Hold on just a minute...

[Shoten]

Wait, let's see if I get this right. Cybersquatter dude registers a misspelled domain name, so that he can sell it to the owner of the correctly spelled domain, right? And THAT is considered free speech?

Ohhh, I don't think so. I think the person with a real site who wants to catch the people who accidentally get the spelling wrong (but who intend to go to his/her site anyways) is the one who has something to say. The guy who is just sitting on a domain with a single static "Under Construction...buy our domain!" site does not, however, and could even be considered the real source of the problem. I love the ACLU, even though they can be annoying, but I wish they would realize once in a while that it's not necessarily the heavyweights in life who interfere with the rights of others.

Re:Hold on just a minute...

[Legion303]

Wait, let's see if I get this right. Cybersquatter dude registers a misspelled domain name, so that he can sell it to the owner of the correctly spelled domain, right?

Wrong. Read the link before posting.

-Legion

Lots of law on the subject . . .

[werdna]

Well before the coinage of "typosquatting," companies have been "registering" misdialings of 800 numbers to obtain business, particularly messing with the zero-oh and 1-i typos. Under traditional rules, much depends upon how the typo is used, whether or not the conduct is actionable. To use the number to get initial customers without misleading them has been treated as OK, but to get the customer who thinks he is reserving a Holiday Inn resort, but is actually getting some free dive room in the same viscinity would be nasty.

There was a sixth circuit case involving the use of 1-800-H-zero-LIDAY and 1-800-HOL-one-DAY for hotel reservations, when the customer was immediately notified that this was a budget, low-end reservation facility unrelated to HOLIDAY INNS. The sixth circuit held in that case that Holiday Inn lost.

I haven't read the Third Circuit opinion, but it will be interesting to contrast the two results.

Re:Lots of law on the subject . . .

[BreadMan]

Some bright person made MCI a bundle of money by getting the number 1 800 OPERATER when ATT introduced 1 800 OPERATOR collect call number.

The "wrong" number brought in 6 figures and forced ATT to re-brand it's service 1 800 CALL ATT.

The $$ effects of this "typosquatting" case on the holder of the "correct" number pale in comparison to getting divered to a p0rn or parody site when you mis-type a URL -- yet I don't recall any action in court against MCI. Someone was asleep at the wheel at ATT, as this problem should have appeared when the service was tested, if it was tested.

Check out this for more detail.

Re:Lots of law on the subject . . .

[werdna]

yet I don't recall any action in court against MCI

Perhaps because "OPERATOR" for operators is generic?

Slashdot squatters...

[dacetone]

/me wonders about having to give up www.s14shd0t.org. Rut-roa!

hmm, sounds like IKEA

[_avs_007]

At least at the IKEA in Torrance, once you get in, you have to walk through the entire store to get out. The entrance is a pair of escalators that only goes up. Once you get ot the top, you have to walk through the entire top floor, go down a set of escalators, then walk through the entire bottom floor to get out. It wouldn't be so bad if you could walk straight from the escalator to the other, but you have to walk in the aisles, which curve round and round, going through every department...

Re:hmm, sounds like IKEA

[Serveert]

all ikea's are like that throughout the world. Damn swedes.

What about 1-800-OPERATER?

[alispguru]

I didn't see mentioned anywhere in the decision that similar stuff has been done with phone numbers, and has had no legal trouble there. The specific case (see here was MCI grabbing 1-800-OPERATER and using it to grab business away from AT&T's 1-800-OPERATOR. Rather than suing MCI, AT&T dumped 1-800-OPERATOR and moved to 1-800-CALL-ATT.

Re:What about 1-800-OPERATER?

[Wargames]

In a similar vein: How about when Ma Bell asks you what long distance company you want? "I don't care" - yep used to be a valid choice, "I don't know" - that too. "It doesn't matter." - "Uh huh you're signed up, anything else I can do for you today!" Real phone companies I've been told from a reliable source.

Re:What about 1-800-OPERATER?

[Wargames]

"I don't care." heres one link... http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22I+don%27t+car e%22+ld&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=2&ic=1&selm=31EB167D.E D1%40postoffice.worldnet.att.net

Re:What you get if you abuse your rights.

[kcurtis]

But we do have restrictions on freedom of speech. In exchange for safety, it is illegal to yell "Fire" in a theater that is not actually on fire. You can't mention guns and bombs at the airport security checkpoint. Heck, the airport checkpoint itself is a limitation on interstate commerce.

We exchange some rights all the time for others, or because we choose to. You do sometimes need permission to voice your opinion. The Supreme Court has often upheld the rights of municipalities to restrict political protests via a reasonable permit process. In this case we again trade free speech with public safety.

Congress has tinkered with the consitution itself before. We passed an amendment that outlawed alcohol, then repealed it later on. We are not a libertarian state. Heck, we aren't even a democracry. We are a republic, with all the good and bad that comes with it.

If congress and the courts restrict speech, it is with the tacit support of the voters who elected their representatives and senators, and the president. They are held accountable every 2 to 6 years.

You may not like all the restrictions that have occured vis-a-vis speech, but life in a republic is not always fair.

Your opinions are best heard in the voting booth, and in letters to the President, your senators, and your rep. The sovereign people have spoken, and restricted your rights. Welcome to America.

This is the same dork who...

[Phillip Birmingham]

...registered the "sourcefourge.net" that I stumbled on to a couple of months back. Check it out sometime; about ten ad windows pop up when you hit it.

Zuccarini's no parodist -- as noted earlier, and in the decision, he only removed the popups when Joe Shields filed suit.

This is a good judgement

[MushMouth]

We want the court to be smart about these things, or else we will get stuck with legislation that WILL infringe on free speach rights. Thus far we have joescartoon.com et al, which was a site that simply tried to make money off joecartoon.com in an annoying manner (whack a mole type advertising), after the law suit was filed they attempted to change their site to a "Protest page". This lost, but on the other hand we had a true parody site, which was ALWAYS so, gwbush.com, which was sued by the Bush campaign for president, guess what, gwbush.com is still up, and proclaiming "Dubya not a Crackhead". These are both absolutely correct judgements, and shows the slippery slope is not very deep, as the line between these two cases is very clear.

geee

[-=Izzy=-]

maybe i shouldnt have registered smutdot.org afterall .. but then .. any one who mistypes smutdot instead of slashdot .. should read up on a theory by our friend Sigmund Freud

Slashdot owns another typo site.

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

www.salsadot.org because it's spicier.

The perfect example

[_marshall]

www.whitehouse.com

-------------------

There are som v.badd spollers out their!

[philkerr]

Ages ago I worked for a large college in the UK, catering for mainly 16-25 year olds, and set-up a filter to the main search engines so we could capture the search terms and then provide a local copy of the most searched for subjects (and catch the 16 year olds searching for pr0n in the library).

Boy, the amount of misspelt search terms! About 40% were mispolt.

If you take this and apply the same logic to URL's you can see the potential gold mine in hit's you can generate.

The sad thing is that 99% of the typo squatters are scum.

I actually had a sort-of typo squatter myself. My mp3-howto.com, the LDP correct way of refering to a HOWTO, had a typo site mp3howto.com. I can't complain he actually registered it 2 weeks before me, and he did have some nice MP3 stuff on it :)

Once again - they know solution to trademarks

[Garry Anderson]

Comments on WIPO.org Interim Report - by WIPO.org.uk

I set up WIPO.org.uk after I heard about domains being unjustly taken. In one case, a little girl's dad got Veronica.org for her, Archie Comics decided they wanted to grab it. Veronica is a character in that comic, so they did not want the little girl to use her own name.

World Intellectual Piracy Organization - Comments on WIPO Interim Report (12 April 2001)

The reader will judge for themselves, decide if the beliefs enclosed in this response and on WIPO.org.uk are truth or hot air. You are welcome to try disproving these logical findings. The USPTO and DoC could not.

Please concentrate on the points raised - not the poor writing style. Do not be diverted from these points.

This addresses that which the authorities hide - the solution to trademark and domain name problems.

The authorities and legal profession do not to want it solved, for reasons of money and power - which is why I email interested parties.

The Internet is so important for many things - including people getting their voice heard. This Interim Report is for another small-minded, control-freakery, anti-libertarian policy, designed (amongst other reasons below) to stop free speech.

Trademarks have ® symbol placed after them for a reason. Why then, do they not use new TLD of .REG for this?

® symbol is warning, to advise the public that the mark is federally registered and their use provides legal benefits - http://www.inta.org/basics/tmfaq.shtml#faq6

What about trademarks 'raison d'être'? - Do you know what it is?

They are to identify source - NOT to claim world rights to a word or words.

To use Attorneys words, "The basic tenet of trademark law is to protect consumers and trademark owners from confusion in the marketplace".

Most of the current problems are due to the authorities perverted and twisted sense of protectionism towards big business trademarks.

Most trademarks share its name or initials with many others. When authorities could put trademark identity beyond shadow of doubt, they are either devoid of intelligence or corrupt.

What other reason is there?

Brief comment on some of WIPO replies received:

Some give sycophantic congratulations on your success - do they mean success of:

a) Usurping domain from the original legal owner?
b) Giving one trademark holder dominance, over others with the same name?

Proprietary - Belonging to a proprietor. Proprietor - An owner; one who has legal right to anything. So, how can you legally stop anybody using these [Non proprietary] words?

Geographical - "Barcelona.com" etc. The DNS is like a giant library index system. Do they claim I.P. rights and royalties from books written about these places? They will be claiming I.P. rights on maps next.

IGOs - Protection will only censor public criticism and allow them to abuse power.

Personal Names - It is not justice that any one person has sole right to use of a name. Out of principle, the reason I did not take GarryAnderson.com. My name is as important to me, as yours is to you. I RECOGNISE that others may have the same name as me - and that others may wish to make critical comment. There is solution to the famous having own domain name.

Trade Names - More of the same. Abuse of power - when you know the answer.
Main arguments are best summarized in my response to Nominet UK. They are Registry for .uk Internet Domain Names. The Dispute Resolution Service went under review.

Sent 30 March 2001 to Nominet UK:

Garry Anderson
World Intellectual Piracy Organization (WIPO.org.uk)

Response to Review of Dispute Resolution Service

The WIPO represents just plain common sense and logical intelligence on topic of Internet management. Ability further demonstrated on other subjects at skilful.com (though you may not like what I say there) [skilful is proper English spelling ;-) mentioned so that critics could not pass me off as somebody of low intelligence (tried before)]. The following is considered and informed opinion - after looking at all the facts. See if you agree with me.

WIPO is defending the rights of domain owners worldwide. So obviously - not the same WIPO that is part of UN just looking after big business (coincidentally paid by them). Though they are certainly biased, I would not accuse them of being corrupt (with only circumstantial evidence).

This solution has been put to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and Department of Commerce - during discussions neither could deny my assertions. It was common sense that the authorities already must have known the simple logical answer.

First, I wish to make comment on the response from IP Litigation Group - Field Fisher Waterhouse, supporting ICANN's UDRP. There is so much I wish to say, but will cut it very short.

To quote them, "As to the inconsistency of decisions being handed down under the UDRP, it is still early days and, as more decisions are made and precedents are adopted, the decision-making will become more uniform."

Saying [and read in context], "...we believe that trade mark protection is of paramount importance", they unashamedly admit their decisions are biased. This is nothing more than a confession they are becoming more uniformly prejudiced.

A fact for you: domain names are not trademarks - ask Paul Mockapetris, creator of Domain Name System.

However, as authorities know, domain names could be made compatible with trademarks.

ICANN's UDRP has shown this Dispute Resolution process is totally unworkable and unjust.

Though the authorities SAY they have good ideals - to protect trademarks on the Internet - this is a barefaced LIE. Only those unable to progress ideas through to conclusion would believe them.

They only give certain trademarks an illegal dominant position and create a 'cash cow' for their friends in the legal profession. This is demonstrably true and was the obvious intention. Those in pocket of big business would say otherwise.

Most businesses fail to realise, their domain could be victim of reverse hijacking by bigger business, at any time in the future. They will never be safe, even after investing ALL into their business - the most important part of their business, their identity, could be stolen from them.

The only solution is to have restricted TLDs. For example, Nissan cars tried to take nissan.com from Mr Nissan - it makes sense to reserve .car TLD for carmakers - they can then use nissan.car. It has to be on a 'first come - first served' basis.

There is one main cause for all these problems. The authorities are deliberately managing the system so that domain names are not compatible to trademarks. They do so for reasons based on money and power, without any sense of Justice. To explain:

Nearly ALL trademarks share a common word(s) with many others - even in same country. For example, in the dispute case of etoy and eToys (e prefix for Internet) - 1,685 trademarks share common word "toy" in USA alone [879 live]. There are tens of thousands of them in 200 other countries. Logical, therefore, that ALL cannot use slight variations on this common word (as domain name) - else it would "infringe" upon others and cause "consumer confusion".

Those with a brain can see, nearly all domain names "infringe" upon others and cause "consumer confusion" - it is just bull* excuse.

Making it worse still - they let only one of these businesses use this common word - so ALL the others cannot. This is against "unfair competition" laws. BUT, what makes it really bad - the authorities know the answer to avoid this and are allowing businesses to break this law.

It gets even worse (is this possible?). Though the naming system is not just for trademarks, authorities are taking these common words from the legal owners. These people had the intelligence to buy these common words first. The authorities and big business are stealing the "Intellectual Property" of these individuals.

As shown, most trademarks cannot have their name - so nearly ALL visitors are going to arrive at the wrong location and ALL get "confused" anyway. So "consumer confusion" and "infringement" are just excuse, obvious lies, used to take away the domain from legal owner. These are problems inherent in the system - entirely the fault of authorities.

All these cases, in the courts and before WIPO, are based on lies and propaganda. I am amazed so many intelligent people have been taken in. [Obviously, some hide the lie - for self interest].

Something to note. They all do not want it solved; you will only see objections from them. Even the 'good guys' (defending the little guy) are making a lot of money from these disputes. Their arrogant refusal to publicly recognize mandatory requirements is contemptible.

Mandatory Requirements:

1 Trademark Name
2 Classification
3 Country
4 Identifier - suggest Top Level Domain of .REG

The format for customer to identify source (the reason for trademarks): name.class.country.reg

This acts as certificate of authentication and directory - if you can use the telephone, then you can use dot REG. Small businesses need not go broke buying hundreds of domains, trying to protect every slight variation of trademark in every TLD [trademark tax].

If business wants to use Name.com for advertising and marketing purposes on the Internet - this is legal usage. To use it as currently used (to dominate over other trademarks), is illegal usage. It requires class, country and identifier - i.e. Apple Computers could use apple.tech.us.reg for trademark identity - using apple.com for marketing.

It is logical, that they all are issued with a domain name with each trademark - in format name.class.country.reg - the same as trademark rights issued.

There need be no restrictions put on a company whatsoever - they can use any number of .com/.biz etc. domains - for advertising and marketing purposes.
There are laws in place should Mr Nissan try to pass himself off as Nissan Cars on his nissan.com. Big business is using Dispute Resolution to dominate this word space. Anyway, the consumer knows it is not the car people - if they are not redirected to nissan.car.uk.reg.

There are laws in place for libel should anyone make such unlawful remarks on any of these sites. They object to any criticism and are using Dispute Resolution to abridge the freedom of speech.

It is nothing complicated. Guardians of the Internet with all your so-called experts, if you still do not understand, contact garry@wipo.org.uk - I will draw you a picture. However, you knew all this already - or are you admitting to gross incompetence?

The main reasons they want Dispute Resolution to go on:

1 Big business gets more power abusing their trademark.
2 Guardians of the Internet get more importance.
3 Lawyers and trademark protection companies get rich.
4 Domain registration companies get rich from trademarks protecting mark.
5 Small businesses go broke with big business taking identity - less competition for them.
6 They muffle criticism of them - abridging the freedom of speech.
7 Kids (and grown-ups) are stopped from making fan sites.

In conclusion, to reiterate - domain names are not trademarks. Millions of TLD are possible. I call for Nominet UK to put pressure on ICANN, first for the introduction of .REG to stop most of these problems. From there, new restricted TLDs to stop other disputes, examples .CAR and .ACTOR - it is just plain common sense.

typosquatting needs to be targeted

[lgordon]

Typosquatting is a great way to generate leads if it is targeted. Typo squatting one of your closest competitors is a great way to generate traffic. If the traffic is not targeted, then it's more trouble than it's worth. Besides, if they weren't smart enough to register the misspelled name, then it's their loss. This ruling will surely be overturned.

Larry
www.rankaperson.com

Re:typosquatting needs to be targeted

[BluSkreen]

I doubt the Supreme Court will even here this. There in no compelling free speech issue at stake. The defendent did not take the issue seriously, did not prepare for it, and didn't argue First Amendment, just that the law did not apply to his circumstance.

This isn't a free speech case, it's a case about a guy that tried to make a buck off of someone else. For example....

He didn't respond to the initial requests and cease and desists. That doesn't look to good in court. Only after being served, did he claim to be a "polictical protest" site. Had he been protesting that in the first place, instead of being a banner sandbox (for that alone he should be flogged) he may have a free speech case.

This is nothing like Universal et al v Corley, or Ford v Corley. Comparing this case to those two cases is an insult to a real free speech case. Anyway, this ruling only applies to this particular case, and not to typosquatted domains in general.

It's the intent that counts, kids. And this guy intended to make some cash from someone elses idea.

Dave

Holiday Inn is a unique situation

[underwhelm]

There's a "Holiday Inn" in Niagara Falls that's not a Holiday Inn franchise. There is a long, bizarre history that basically forces Bass Hotels (The Holiday Inn you're familiar with) not to sue the HI Niagara Falls, probably because HI Niagara Falls existed first and they settled the trademark issue. As a result, they have similar phone numbers and similar domain names, too. I suspect that if either took serious court action against the other, the judge would have to refer to their original settlement to share the trademark.

I worked for Bass Hotels HI guest relations, and this was a training issue: "I booked a reservation at your Niagara Location..."

Re:http://www.therage.com vs http://www.the-rage.c

[jallen02]

None they are legitimate businesses each with seperate domains :)

the easiest solution...

[canning]

is to use your spell checker when you register your domain names. I did on this poem and everything turned out o.k.

"Ode to the Spell Checker!

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.


Murphy's Law of Copiers

Re:What you get if you abuse your rights.

[UnknownSoldier]

> In exchange for safety, it is illegal to yell "Fire" in a theater that is not actually on fire. You can't mention guns and bombs at the airport security checkpoint.

Those examples you listed are NOT examples of free speech.

The difference in these cases is that you are on someone else's *property*. They are free to make whatever rules they want.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.fatalblin dness.com/FREEDOM990628.htm+fire+theater+yell&hl=e n

Bringing this back on topic: No one *owns* the internet, so the court ruling that typosquatting is illegal, is like saying that the government has the exclusive rights and jurisdiction to domain names (e.g. you are on their property.) which they allow others to use. That's complete nonsense.

> Heck, the airport checkpoint itself is a limitation on interstate commerce.

Now, that is certainly interesting. Have any links where I can read up more on that?

Cheers

This is about trademark law,

[mindstrm]

If it's publicly used (new.net is) then it's subject to trademark law.

New.net is a stupid idea anyway. It circumvents the whole way DNS works, and the only time I almost installed it was when some gay app tried to install it without telling me.

Can you beat 13 windows?

[Saranac]

Well, a redirect to a search page ... I can live with, but having to close 13+ windows because I typed marshalfields.com instead of marshallfields.com is another.

$1 Million per year ??!

[JPMH]

The typosquatter testified that he made between $800,000 and ONE MILLION dollars per year from the ads on his 3,000 sites.

Does anybody else read this and feel like they've been hit about the head with a large gold brick ? (and not even a slice of lemon...)

I particularly like www.freshmeat.org

[OpenSourced]

www.freshmeat.org

I'm looking forward to the tenth anniversary!

--

interesting!

[jungleb0y]

Being an advocate of free speach, i agree with many points of view brought up by this piece, however, i'd like to point out one important aspect that we all so easily seem to forget. Values! We need to keep laws like this from hindering our rights, yet most people continue to have this capitalist approach to what they consider, "legal business tactics". It's time people grow up, and we weed out the scum-bags in the industry. If we're to stop constraints on free-speach, we need to prove that we're worthy of it first. People like this are a sad excuse for free-speach, get an original idea if you want to make some money, or get a job sweeping floors, we don't need you on the web!

new ACPA (whatever) law

[Libertarian001]

Does that mean that www.whitehouse.com (it's a porn site) is going to have to change its name?

Re:The Adolescent Politics of Libertarianism.

[Libertarian001]

I find your post offensive. My being a Libertarian has nothing to do with some desire to be a non-conformist, a strong group identity, feeling smug about who I am and others aren't, or any of the other drivel you offer.

You don't put inane labels like that on others. Why do you do it to me?

I don't feel superior to you or others in the Dem or GOP. I think you may be misguided on certain issues, the same as you feel about me.

Before you espouse that the "attraction" of being a Libertarian is its "extraordinarily simplistic and rigid ideology" perhaps you should research the subject a little. I recommend reading "What it Means to be a Libertarian" by Charles Murray for the basics. If you want something more indepth, try "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

this is bad news for Microsoft..

[DragonPup]

Does this mean MS(or whoever actually owns it...) will need to give up www.sonypsx2.com, which just redirects to a X-Box site?

-Henry

traffic redirection?

[Technodummy]

Certainly not fair use, certainly intented to direct traffic from one intended destination to another, certainly something that dimishes brands.

I do not support typosquatting (as opposed to parody or protest) at all, but one thing doesn't actually make sense there...

if the traffic is not arriving at the original site because the address is a typo, that traffic would not have arrived there in the first place

if a company is being blocked from owning a typo address of their own website because someone else has registered it to capture typo traffic, I guess it gets messy, but it's not actually stealing traffic in a literal sense, as the traffic never arrived in the first place

removing typo squatters won't make people type any better than they do now

diminishes brands is also a bit of a stretch, unless they imply that they are the company in question, or have an affiliation

if (of course) you are Nike and have a typo squatter who has a protest site, this could well affect your brand, but is hardly in the same field as the porn squatters

monsantos is neither...

[Technodummy]

it's a protest site

any international trademark lawyers about?

[Technodummy]

Next there will be a legal squabble if you are the first to register existing URLs in newly open languages like Japanese or Chinese ...

this is an interesting point... is this a violation of trademark law?

Most fun part of the report

[stud9920]

In December 1999, Shields sent "cease and desist" letters to Zuccarini regarding the infringing domain names.

Zuccarini did not respond to the letters. Immediately after Shields filed this suit, Zuccarini changed thefive sites to "political protest" pages and posted the following message on them:

This is a page of POLITICAL PROTEST

- Against the web site joecartoon.com - joecartoon.com is a web site that depicts the mutilation and killing of animals in a shockwave based cartoon format -- many children are inticed [sic] to the web site, not knowing what is really there and then encouraged to join in the mutilation and killing through use of the shockwave cartoon pr esented to them.

- Against the domain name policys [sic] of ICANN -

- Against the Cyberpiracy Consumer Protection Act -

As the owner of this domain name, I am being sued by joecartoon.com for $100,000 so he can use this domain to direct more kids to a web site that not only desensitizes children to killing animals, but makes it seem like great fun and games.

I will under no circumstances hand this domain name over to him so he can do that.

I hope that ICANN and Network Solutions will not assist him to attaining this goal.

-Thank You-

Goddamn right ! Protect our children ! Once, a teenage gerbil boy will enter a gerbil high school with a bag full of microwave ovens, and start microwaving gerbils randomly. close joecartoon.com !

TJ? possibly in another country...

[Technodummy]

Typo sites cause monetary damage to the trademark holders because they take away hits. They cause monetary damage to the consumers whose time and resources are wasted. They cause monetary damage to society because they increase the transaction costs required to create informed consumers.

they take hits away?

if you typed the address wrong and didn't arrive at any site, it doesn't get a hit

if you then give up because you don't notice your typo, they still don't get a hit

if you arrive at the wrong site and retype the address correctly, they still get a hit, so does the typo-site

if you arrive at the wrong site and give up because you don't notice your typo, they don't get a hit

I'm not defending typo-squatters here, but that claim is just silly. If your visitors don't type your address correctly, you don't get hits.

Of course, just because you don't get hits doesn't mean it's the fault of a typo squatter, your site could just be unpopular...

well said

[Technodummy]

Hells no, you shouldn't be able to get a free ride on the reputation of another company. If you want to use fuckmsn.com to speak out against MSN, that's protected speech. If you want to use fuckmsn.com to put up a bunch of banner ads that have nothing to do with MSN, that could easily be a trademark violation (especially if any of the banners are from competitors with Microsoft).

trademarks have rules

[Technodummy]

I am left wondering who has the right to www.oreilly.com.... Oreilly auto parts or oreilly publishing. The same with www.apple.com.. Apple computers or apple records..

Under Trademark law, Apple Records would get in trouble if it started making computers under it's Apple name, and Apple Computers would get in trouble if it started making records under it's Apple name.

Domain names are not directly linked to trademarks though... so depending on who registers it first, I'm guessing apple.com could have just as easily been grabbed by Apple Records.

But as the etoy case shows, you can't just have whatever name you want just by demanding it, if the previous owner has a right to it.

intellectually bankrupt

[bobalu]

You can replace "libertarian" with any other group and say the same useless thing. No wonder you post as an Anonymous Coward. It's so typical... attack the person or generalize about a group and not address the issue at all. This is what they call "intellectually bankrupt".

And I get modded as flamebait. Sheesh.

Please mod this up - it's hilarious

[pyramid termite]

It would be a shame if people missed something this funny.

What's Next?

[ckrause]

In the news today...

JoesChickenShack.org was shut down today as the result of yet another unbelievably ignorant court ruling. Due to complete techno illiteracy amongst the entire judicial ranks Judge I.P. Luddite said that Joes Chicken Shack was stealing customers from AOLTimeWarnerWallMartAmazonWebVanNike.com by taking advantage of the TCP/IP address space. Judge Luddite ruling stated, "It is obvious what Joe is up to. 192.168.123.50 is just typosquatting. I'm sure it is no coincidence that AOLTimeWarnerWallMartAmazonWebVanNike.com's IP address is 192.168.123.05"

After this commercial break we Ask Slashdot: Should all Judges be MSCE certified?

microsfot.com still alive and kicking

[nalfeshnee]

That is of course, the Micro web Site For Other Technologies. Interestingly, micorsoft.com redirects to Microsoft themselves. Maybe they haven't themselves made the 'sfot' typo yet, and don't realise that the website exists? Btw, I tried myself - YMMV - with a sample of 5,000,000 times typing microsoft and microsfot IS EASIER TO TYPO than micorsoft... and my fingers are sore. i'm gonna learn scripting next...

Re:What you get if you abuse your rights.

[kcurtis]

Fine, a theater is a private location (arguments can of course be made about whether it consitututes a public place, but that digresses)...

A better point may in fact be the airport issue...

>> Heck, the airport checkpoint itself is a limitation on interstate commerce.

>Now, that is certainly interesting. Have any links where I can read up more on that?

Just looking at it on the surface, where

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Most people would rightly argue that searching the bags of someone who is engaged in a legal activity would be on the surface against the constitution. But the public safety is traded for this.

I found this thesis that touches on the issue (search for the word airport), but am too busy to search for more. I'm certain there must be a case history on this topic, as someone has surely taken it to the Supreme Court by now.

I also think my better example is the fact that cities/towns can require permits for political rallies. This has certainly been held up as constitutional by the courts, and is a limit we exchange for safety. No one "owns" the internet, but the goverment has decided to extend the regulation of trademarks to it.

I'm not sure that you are right or wrong, but it is not as clear cut as you make it out to be.

-K

and that is when it happens...

[Technodummy]

by not stating they are not associated, there's an implication of fraud there...

would parody sites be equally exposed to this?

Addresses are not trademarks

[kindbud]

If ACME Widgets sets up shop at 123 Maple Street, what wrong have I done if I accept business from customers who mistakenly drive to my ACE Widget store on 123 Marple Street?

I don't see what the difference is between this scenario, and typographical-error domain names.