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

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: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.

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...
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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
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