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"sucks".com Sites Win Legal Victory
amyandjake writes: "Dan Parisi (sucks.com) wins a courtroom battle to keep Michaelbloombergsucks.com instead of giving it to Bloomberg." I'll admit that I used to consider the dot-sucks domains to have few redeeming qualities, but the efforts to take them away have helped change my mind about them. Bloomberg can spare a few dollars to register danparisisucks.com, can't he?
What the world needs is a new
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The difference in this case is that the owner of the "sucks" domain *intended* for the site to be a place where people could complain. On the other hand, the people who lost their "sucks" cases had been found to just be in it for the money; i.e. buying it to get the trademark holder to buy it back from them.
I tend to agree with the distinction.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Does anyone have a link to the text of the ruling that Canadian Tire couldn't claim that the domain "crappytire.com" was an infringement of their trademark?
I've heard a rumor the decision was handed down, but I haven't been able to hunt down exactly what resulted.
The thing about Michael Bloomberg is, he really does suck. He's chairman of the board of trustees at my school (Johns Hopkins University) and he does shit like, make anonymous donations even though everyone knows it's him, on orders that the money be spent for shit we don't need (like brick walkways, instead of, say, student services or online course registration). Plus, the school insists on naming everything after him: so far, we have the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
And now he thinks he can become mayor of NY. ~sigh~
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Why doesn't the guy who owns sucks.com get into this game? (company).sucks.com would be a LOT harder to argue with than (company)sucks.com. It's a lot more readable too. sucks.com could become the suckage clearing house for the entire internet if only the guy had a little vision.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In order to be cybersquatting, you have to register a domain name for which a prior copyright exists, AND be using it in bad faith.
Just registering names for which you hold a copyright or for which no prior copyright exists and then squatting on them is not legally "cyberquatting".
(In fact the bar is slightly higher than this, if you want to read more)
Hold on and read my comment before you flame. I'm behind fair use on this one.
What I think is lacking in current cybersquatting laws is that bad faith squatting is considered only in the case where it has already been shown that the complainant has a prior mark which is infringed upon. link
I think that cybersquatting laws should be extended to any bad faith holding of domain names. Why? Because if you go to register a domain name these days you'll notice that virtually every English word and plenty of common combinations are taken. This wouldn't bother me, except that many of these domains aren't even in use...they've been bought by squatters.
It's simple math...when you can buy in bulk, you can register 428 domains for about $3000. Since the going rate for even crap domains seems to be above this (what is $3k to a company?) even one hit in 400 is a net profit. (example: "dot-diddly-dit-dot.com" is on the block for $99999)
This is terrible, because in its original form the domain name system was available to anyone. With "deregulation" consumers can now purchase domains as cheaply as $10...only problem is, big companies have bought most of the useful ones up, so if you aren't another company with a few Gs in your pocket you can forget about most of the names out there.
Sure, new TLDs addresses the problem. But really, why should one settle for i-friable.com, or friable.info, when the owner (houseofdomains.com) is just sitting on them? Shouldn't they go to someone who can contribute something to the Internet? What is to stop someone with a few million in capital from buying a large swath of useful names in every TLD, and waiting for the cash to roll in? (especially since some registrars are giving businesses the first crack at new names)
Opening the door to any bad-faith challenge certainly opens up a can of worms, but wouldn't it be nice to have a web where sushi.com actually led to a sushi site, and thousands of other dead, unused names were being put to good use and making it easier to find information in the billions of web pages out there?
No, 2600 still owns FuckGeneralMotors.com and FordReallySucks.com. So, this might give them a leg up on the FordReallySucks.com site, but who knows about FuckGeneralMotors.com.
;-) ), that the judge denied Ford an injunction on 2600's use of the domain is a good thing. They apparently don't want to be too heavy-handed.
Ford sued 2600 for redirecting visitors of FuckGeneralMotors.com to Ford.com. Apparently visitors to the site might think that Ford is trying to harm GM. Ford's customers are stupid, I guess. They even have the transcript available on their website. However, the case is still pending.
According to Emanual Goldstein (aka Cereal Killer
Oh, and if you're feeling generous, you can donate from their online store. So far (11:45PM EST 19/06/01), donations have taken care of 23% of the fees.
kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
I chatted with Aurbach on it and he pointed that *sucks.com is not fair use -- Its proper use!
The purpose of a trademark is to identify a company, product, or service. You are identifying it as sucking. That is what prompted me to register mattelabuse.com. It has also been ruled In Mattel v. MCA Records -- the Barbie Girl case that trademark cannot be used to silence critics or satire.
Of couse, some large companies will use the courts to bankrupt a critic. Those the case frivilous, they count on the expense of litigation to scare and crush the little guy.
Fight Spammers!
The decision says:
A majority of the Panel agrees with the holding in Cabela's and concludes that the Respondent's domain name is confusingly similar to the Complainant's marks.
This is bad, even though other issues let Parisi carry the day. If -sucks sites were decisively ruled not to be "confusing similar" to their prefix, then they'd all be in the clear forever. As it is, survival of a particular site depends on the makeup of the arbitration panel.
The rationale for saying that -sucks sites are "confusingly similar" is that the name similarity will confuse a search engine. You type in Bloomberg, and you get directed to Bloombergsucks. Clearly, there has been confusion. But there are overwhelming arguments that this is nonsense:
An earlier ruling addressed the "confusing similarity" of sucks sites much better: "Both common sense and a reading of the plain language of the Policy support the view that a domain name combining a trademark with the word "sucks" or language clearly indicating that the domain name is not affiliated with the trademark owner cannot be considered confusingly similar to the trademark".
Common sense is so refreshing!
On the other hand, we have the deliberate misuse of a trademark name for the purposes of degradation and or maliciousness intent (Forwarding fordsucks.com to chevrolet.com or whatever that past issue was).
A lot of points of view will depend on the general outlook of the trademark process to begin with...Is a name really worth that much? If the product isn't good enough without the name attached to it, why is it being purchased?
But, we have the slippery slope with suing out of existence the *sucks.com domains...Who's next? The deliberate misspellings, the last names that are too close to corporate trademarks, the .org's vs the .com's. There really isn't any one solution...my best guess for this is to have a domain set aside specifically for JUST trademarked corporate names (.tm) If you access a .tm domain, you know it's a valid trademark for a valid product...play first come, first serve with the rest of the domains, you lose it, you sucks.com
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
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Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
This guy owns over 700 domains with the suffix sucks. That means he pays $28,000 just for the domains, plus whatever he pays for hosting. Every year. Mind you, thats more than I and quite literally, tens of millions of americans made last year.
If we want to factor in hosting, this guy is probably looking at a $100,000 bill each year.
Added to that - he's probably not making a profit
Even if he is buying names in bulk - for $10 a piece, that's still 7 large plus hosting - Lets not mention the fact that the legal fees associated with this must of have been quite a nice sum.
There is no victory here for the "little guy", the "little guy" doesn't have the backing to blow money defending him/herself against a corporation that literally has billions to defend itself.
The basic issue is that even frivilous lawsuits, legal challenges, etc.. are enough to either make the little guy capitulate or run out of $$.
Eventually the *sucks sites are going to be controlled by big business, or by "business interests" (i.e. the competition) - not by independent people who are the majority of the american public.
This victory is a hollow and false one - fuck you sheep who are parading this like it's the best thing since the toilet.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off coffee drinking
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As much as I dislike this, I can see it as a business plan, to drive traffic to his "sucks" themed websites.
This must annoy the big players no end, so he gets bonus brownie points just for that.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Saying "McDonalds sucks" or "GM sucks" is free speech. That's all there is to it. And all this talk about extortion and why or why not someone owns a domain is nonsense. If these corporate retards had understood the internet instead of just spending the late 80s/early 90s getting drunk at the golf course, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place.
GM/Disney/AOLTW/Fox aka Murdock now control the media. The last vestige of free speech is the net, which is exactly the reason it is under attack. Its kind of shocking to read wishy-washy posts on this issue on slashdot. Imagine if this site were moderated by AOL or MSN.
ps, *nix rules, microsoftsucks.com
The article isn't very telling with regard to the factors contributing to the inconsistant decision with regard to the domain ownership. This is a cop out really:
I think it's sufficient. Actually, though, if you go read the entire decision you'll find that they did dither a whole bunch before deciding that this was pretty much all it took.
What I really liked, though, was the other opinion. There were three judges on the panel, and two of them wrote this long, tortuous analysis of the application of the domain name registration policies, complete with cites of relevant cases and analyses of how they applied. The third judge agreed with their conclusion, but his analysis was much simpler.
He just pointed out that the first requirement of the policy that allows a domain name to be cancelled or transferred was that the name must be confusingly similar to the complainants domain (meaning someone might think that michaelbloombergsucks.com is an official Bloomberg site), and then noted that:
It's so nice when you see legal minds following rational paths...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Here's the publsihed dcision from the Domain Name Dispute Committee, for the MichaelBloomburgSucks.com domain:
The Dispute Resolution Comittee Decicion
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
that you've got to think ahead when you create a website for your company. You need to register:
.net
1) 'Your company's name'.com
2) 'Your company's name'.org and
3) 'Your company's name misspelled'.com/org/net
4) 'Your company's name'sucks.com/org/net
5) 'Your company's name permuted'.com/org/net
6) 'Your company's name backwards'.com/org/net
7) 'Your company CEO's name'.com/org/net
8) 'Your company CEO's name'sucks.com/org/net
And so on and so on...
It's a wonder anyone wants to get online these days.
Dancin Santa
Eventually I go look at their website for the positive stuff, then I tag on the word "sucks" to their URL to see if there's an opposing viewoint. But a funny thing has happened in the year that I've been doing this... when I first started, I treated finding a "vendorsucks" website as a deficit. But lately, if I don't find a "vendorsucks" site for a bidder, I wonder if they're a serious contendor in the marketplace.
In other words, if they're not big enough to have pissed somebody off, somewhere, do I want to deal with them?
The old adage about bad publicity being better than no publicity seems to make sense.
By Dan Parisi... :p
Guess he got Bloomberg there.
Then again, danparisisucks.org, or even danparisiisthegoatseman.com are both available, ready for Bloomberg to register.
Alas, this is just a small victory for free speech in America... one which I think we will eventually win.
The new legal approach for pursuing the *sucks* domain names are to (1) pretend that such *sucks* domains could have a positive business value for the trademark holder, and (2) Those who originally own and register the *sucks* sites are merely squatting on a piece of realestate.
Of course, we all know it's far from that simple - "Oh, explorers-suck.com helps us relate to our customers". Yeah, right.
In our capitalist economy, every domain name is for sale for some price. And if Ford wants and can buy "explorer-sucks.com", that's well and good. But to proclaim that such domain ownership is squatting unless proven otherwise is the current trend of the lower courts.
Happily, the supreme court may thing otherwise. In Amptron vs. Amptronics, the court determined that there is the reasonable concept of so-called "Dualistic Trade Rights", where the trademark holder was found not to have automatic rights over a similar name. Proof that not guilty unless proven innocent still exists.
If and when one of these cases makes it to that court, it'll be interesting to see if they equate the outcome of this kind of case with the Amptron case.
I'd bet that they will, and all these "*sucks*" cases will be history. Only after it gets that high up in the courts will we have a final answer