Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ford vs. 2600 Judge Upholds Right To Link

Posted by timothy on from the sky-falling-film-at-11 dept.

AnimeFreak writes: "According to this 2600 article, 2600 has won the right to link to Ford's website after Ford sued them for doing so. Ford had asserted that hyperlinking to their website or referring to it in DNS records constituted a variety of trademark violations. Judge Cleland rejected Ford's twisted interpretation of the trademark act, which claimed that by disparaging Ford's mark and preventing it from 'fully exploiting the value of its mark,'" 2600 was in violation of trademark law by redirecting a possibly offensive domain to Ford's site. We've mentioned this before, and it's nice to see a ruling in favor of linking. Thanks to Phalse Phace, here's a link to the 11-page decision.

8 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. odd... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This completely contradicts the judgement in the DeCSS case. 2600 only linked to the site to get the code..

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:odd... by Bocaj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not really. The DeCSS linking thing was about copyright law, the DMCA (hissss....). Ford was sighting Trademark law. The DMCA was never in play.

  2. Imagine how you'd feel.... by gillbates · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If someone registered ScientologySucks.com and pointed it at your website, and you had a bunch of freaks harassing you day and night for something you never did...

    Seriously, to register a derogatory domain name and point it to someone else's webpage is effectively slander. Ford did not want its image associated with a profane domain name because that would hurt sales, and they were right to do so. When the average person typed fuckgeneralmotors.com and Ford's website popped up, they would have assumed that the domain name was registered by Ford, and hence, that Ford supported the use of profanity. Thus, doing so effectively disparaged the Ford name by association with what some would consider objectionable language.

    --
    The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
    1. Re:Imagine how you'd feel.... by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well its not like Ford in the early days before his death printed an anti-semetic news paper or anything. OR that dupont supported the Nazis in ww2 and now they support GM.
      I mean its not like it's freespeech or anything like that to effectivly say that you should buy another comapanys products.
      After all anyone can hold up a sign out side of their fence that does the same thing, and who says that they arent employed by one of the companys? Why shouldnt I be able to point my domain name where ever the hell I want?

      --


      "Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
    2. Re:Imagine how you'd feel.... by Eric_Grimm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, gillbates -- I have to hand it to you because your argument shows you are a very smart and innovative thinker. I am even more impressed if it turns out that you are not a lawyer. You have made an argument very similar to the one that Ford's lawyers made.

      It helps to read the papers that were actually filed with the court -- especially this one.

      As you will see, we [in other words, my clients 2600 and Corley, and me, the lawyer who represented them in the case] have already fully adressed your argument. We have already explained -- with considerable legal authority to back up our argument -- exactly why FORD's position was completely wrong on this score, as a matter of law. And Judge Cleland (who has hardly expressed any eagerness to be a "friend of 2600" squarely agreed with 2600's argument.

      That said, you are in the company of some very smart an creative people. The lawyer who argued the case for FORD, and who came up with the same argument you did, is named Tom Lee. He is a former law clerk to Hon. Clarence Thomas and teaches law (IMHO, teaches it wrong, but that's what he does) at a school out in Utah. He was also a law clerk on the Fourth Circuit (the most "conservative" of the United States Courts of Appeals).

      Tom Lee has been very active for many years in the Federalist Society -- an organization that is dedicated to packing the Federal bench with ideological "conservatives." Spencer Abraham (former Senator from Michigan) -- the sponsor of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act -- was one of the founding members of the Federalist Society, and made sure that Greg Phillips, Tom Lee's law partner, was invited to testify in favor of the ACPA. Ted Olsen (the guy who argued the Bush v. Gore case for Bush) is also a big Federalist Society member and booster.

      And, through Alberto Gonzalez -- who plays a big role in the Bush White House, the Federalist Society looks poised to do a lot more damage to the federal bench in years to come.

      Please do your part to get the word out on some of the hypocrisy that the Federalist Society is pushing through the legislative process, and which hypocrisy the EFF is helping to expose.

      Remember what Professor Lessig said just a couple of days ago -- "Sometimes when I read Slashdot debates, I wonder whether you guys get this connection either. . . . [T]hese debates about freedom get bogged down on these pages. And this leads me to the greatest pessimism: If you guys don't get the importance of neutral and open platforms to innovation and creativity; if you get bogged down in 20th century debates about libertarianism and property rights; if you can't see how the .commons was critical to the .com revolution, then what do expect from judges?

      You guys . . . built an architecture of value. Until you can begin to talk about those values, and translate them for others, courts and policy makers generally will never get it. . . .

      We need translators. We need to translate the values of the network into terms that nontechnical people get. And we need to watch for changes in the architecture or mix of technologies layered into the network, and raise warnings about how those changes will alter the environment for innovation and creativity. As one of my heroes in the law, James Boyle, puts it, we need an environmentalism for the Internet. You are the environmental experts. You can credibly show the world how changes in the ecology of the Internet will destroy the environment for creativity, innovation, and freedom that it produced.

      Will you do that? Again, I am skeptical. Rather than trying to focus this debate, or agree on ways to make others understand, you guys immediately turn these questions into irrelevant bickerings. When someone reported that I had written a book described as the "Silent Spring" of the Internet, that opened up a thread about whether in fact DDT had harmed the environment. Someday, when freedom is gone, and all we've got is the right to whisper our thoughts to those closest to us, our children will look back and ask, why did we think we had the luxury to quibble?

      But if you don't want to become translators, if you don't want to write environmental impact statements, if you don't want to try to convince the North in California that if it gets taken over by the South, freedom and innovation ends, then you could do as Torvalds has recommended: give money to those who are fighting the battle, in particular, EFF. I'm on the board of EFF, so blissfully biased about to whom. But whether EFF or someone else, follow Torvalds and the other christ-figures in history: Tithe. Take the cost of Internet access (whether you pay it or not) for one year; send 10% to an organization fighting for your freedom."

      Thanks for your attention.

  3. When will they learn.... by Skapare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When will they learn that if someone is linking to their site, they can determine that through the HTTP Referer header and stick in some logic to do some of their own redirection or change the dynamic content. They can surely make the link as ineffective as if the original page had made an error in the link and put in the wrong domain. Or are corporate suits just too dumb to realize they can control something like their own web site?

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  4. Nope. by mindstrm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry.. Trademark law requires 'resonableness' on the part of the public. Trademark law was *not* created in order to prevent slander.
    Also..'fuckgeneralmotors' is not slander. 'Scientologysucks' COULD be slander, depending on if it's opinion or fact (hey.. it DOES suck.. but that's another story).

    Trademark is not there to 'prevent your name from being associated with objectionable language'. It's there to prevent others from benefiting from the use of your mark, period, or from otherwise 'diluting' your mark.

    Oh.. and please note.. the only mark in dispute here is the hyperlink to 'ford.com'. THey are NOT EVEN USING THE TRADEMARK ON THE SITE. The domain name is not what's in dispute... Ford was trying to say that using the word 'ford' in the hyperlink, because it came from a site called 'fuckgeneralmotors.com' was diluting the value of their mark.
    And the judge called bullshit.

    This is not a slander case. It's a trademark case.

  5. Re:I can see why ford would be pissed. by geckoFeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nonsense. If Ford were just pissed they could've blocked access to their site from fuckgeneralmotors.com. Would've taken 2 minutes if they were slow. Instead they reach for the lawyers. They're not concerned about their trademark, they were trying to establish a precedent they could use to intimidate others.