Domain Names to Suck More

A submitter writes: "MSNBC is running this article about a free speech lawyer who will be doling out sites with the word 'suck' in it for free. He and others are afraid that too many of these gripe sites have been taken away from their owners and given to the target companies and is willing to fight in court for these people." We posted about the VivendiUniversalSucks decision earlier.

Comments

Hmm

[NiftyNews]

That's all well and good for free speech, but these stories always make me wish I had a piece of the Domain Name sales pie. The # of people that actually visit these X-sucks.com sites is slim to nil. Feel free to spend the money, I guess.

Why doesn't the sucks.com owner do this?

[Greyfox]

The sucks.com owner could lease out second level domains under his domain and make a tidy little chunk of change for himself. This would, at the very least, make it much more difficult to have domain names siezed and transferred to them, since they'd have to take the trademark dispute to court rather than some completely unaccountable international IP committee.

Re:Why doesn't the sucks.com owner do this?

[Hater's Leaving, The]

You're forgetting the gay.com story. (or whatever the site was)
The server used PHP to answer every
your-mate's-name-here.is.gay.com
request with a faux news page revealing the fact that
Your Mate's Name Here was in fact gay.

For some bizarre and stupid reason the site was pulled because a senator (kennedy?!?) put his own name in the URL box of his browser, and didn't like what he saw.

i.e. If you are responsible for the 2LD (or 3LD in the case of countries with .ac/.co etc. 2LDs), then you are responsible for everything under your 2LD.

THL.

No need to complain

[Evanrude]

Why complain about having a *sucs.com site named after you. Use it as a tool to fix your problems? Or just be flattered that someone took the time to develop a website dedicated to telling the world how much your company sucks. Isn't the irony there pretty thick already?

Re:waste of time

[Bobo_the_Chimp]

> Why can't people that lost their domain
> names just fight their own battles?

Ok, let me get this straight. Because I can't
afford to match legal dollars with GM, it means
that I don't have the right to free speach?

I'm sure the lawyer here is trying to make
a name in this arena, but I have no problem
with that - it's a win-win sitution. The people
who have lost their right to protest with
domains now can do so with sub-domains.

usuck.com

[dimer0]

I tried to do the something similiar last year. I set up a subdomain redirection site so you could assign microsoft.usuck.com to wherever you wanted, etc. (Actually, that site pointed HERE - and I didn't do it). I had over 70,000 domains being redirected.

After the spam community started using my domain service for their own good, Verio threatened to pull the plug, so I stopped that service. What a pity.

It was so fun, though. Getting emails from parents saying their kids were going to drop out of school because people had set up redirections from (example) johnsmith.usuck.com that ended up redirecting to gay porn sites.

these also pose a problem to politicians

[DontCallMeShirley]

The Bush campaign registered every derogatory domain name they could think of, to keep people from having websites that would post negative info about him. I'm sure other politicians have done or will do the same, it is a race to get them before someone else does. I wonder why they even bother - if someone thinks they suck, and wanna have a site to say so, why not just let them. Isn't that what freedom of speech is mainly about? Being able to express our pleasure/displeasure the government?

Re:these also pose a problem to politicians

[Kamel Jockey]

The Bush campaign registered every derogatory domain name they could think of

In an ironic twist, Hillary did not register hillary2000.com, which ended up in the hands of a group of people who were strongly against her candidacy.

The funny part was that people from Hillary's campaign would post messages on the hillary2000.com site saying things like:

• Its illegal for you to use this site!
• We're going to sue you!

So much for free speech!

Re:Question

[TheConfusedOne]

First, you're attempting to apply logic to the situation. Never a good idea when legal matters are involved. Second, you should probably read all the fine print when you sign up for a domain name. Hell, read the fine print on that toaster you bought.

There's lots of language in these things about the applicable laws, regulations, and the right to choose venues (where any trial might take place). If you recall the UCITA had some particularly odious language about venue choice and gave all the power to the vendors.

Finally, *THE INTERNET ISN'T A LOCATION*. While you may live in NY, where is the server that's hosting your site? Maybe it's in your basement, or a local ISP, but maybe it's somewhere else in the US or the World. Second, where are the resources used to find and access your site? The distributed nature of the Internet laughs at national borders (though nations are trying to erect borders).

The WIPO and ICANN are organizations created by international treaties. Mainly they exist to exert US laws on the rest of the world, so we shouldn't complain (if we're "greedy blood-sucking RIAA-spawn corporations") about the rules they impose on us.

So, remember when you sign up for that domain name, read the fine print.