Slashdot Mirror
The Saga of Katie.com
digitalcaffeine writes "The gist of the story is that Katie Tarbox became a victim of an online sexual predator when she was 13. She wrote a book about it in 2000 and Penguin Putnam made the title of the book 'Katie.Com', which unfortunately was a domain name owned by Katie Jones since 1996. Now Tarbox's lawyer is demanding that Jones turn over the domain name.
Penguin refuses to apologize, saying that it would be a violation of their free speech to re-title the book and that Jones never trademarked katie.com, so they can do what they want with the words."
To answer some questions that I've received today, firstly as far as I know the rather aggressive lawyer who contacted me yesterday is not part of Penguin Puttnam but is working with Katie Tarbox on future projects and trying to gain control of my domain name for these projects. She informed me that things would 'only get worse' for me from here if I didn't do something about it - i.e. give it to them.
Finally, a point about this domain name. When this book launched I had no choice but to take down the content I previously had published on the front page because of the traffic coming to the site and having no choice but to remove it if I didn't want my professional and personal reputation damaged by it. I still use it, although I don't link from the front page of course, and one day I sincerely hope I'll be able to move my content back up where it belongs.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
because her best chance of winning this in court (bearing in mind that there has only been one previous legal precedent and the legality is still a little muddy) is to prove that she is not keeping ownership of the domain to "cash in on" or deliberately adversely affect the book or the publishers' reputation.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
No, you pretty much have it right. This story has been around for a while and very little has changed. You can google for older stories if you like.
Katie J. is in a no-win situation. If she offers to sell the domain or sue for damages, she'll be accused of trying to profit off of Penguin's book, and would likely lose the domain in a trademark dispute to WIPO.
But Penguin's use of katie.com is directly causing her harm, because she effectively can't use it for its intended purpose because of all the traffic it is getting. And even if she got Penguin to change future editions, the damage is already done -- katie.com is effectively useless for anything that is not associated with the book. The only way to remedy this is to sue for damaged caused by Penguin's behavior -- which, as we already discussed, she can't really do.
This is why I'm not a lawyer. It seems like they're all schmucks.
if you would like to let penguin know what you think of their strongarm tactics, you might find the following information useful:
c o.ukn guin.co.uk
Penguin Books Ltd, Pearson Customer Operations
Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex, CM20 2JE
Fax: 0870 850 1115
www.penguin.co.uk
customer.service@penguin.co.uk
orders@penguin.
export@penguin.co.uk
internationalsales@pe
Penguin Group (USA)
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.penguinputnam.com
Penguin Group (Australia)
250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, VIC 3124
Australia
Tel: 61-3-9871-2400
Fax: 61-3-9870-6086
www.penguin.com.au
Penguin Group (Canada)
10 Alcorn Ave., Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario, M4V 3B2 Canada
Tel: (416) 925-2249
Fax: (416) 925-0068
www.penguin.ca
Penguin India
11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Tel: 91-11-2649-4401
Fax: 91-11-2649-4402
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Penguin Ireland
25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
Tel: 00-353-1-661-7695
Fax: 00-353-1-661-7696
Email: info@penguin.ie
www.penguin.ie
Penguin Group (New Zealand)
Private Bag 102-902, North Shore Mail Centre, Auckland 1310
Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel: 64-9-415-4700
Fax: 64-9-415-4703
www.penguin.co.nz
Penguin South Africa
24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, 2169, South Africa
Tel: 27-11-327-3550
Fax: 27-11-327-6574
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Trademarks don't necessarily need to be registered. See http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/common.html for a brief summary of common law trademark rights, but also do a google search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q= common+law+trademark+and+internet&btnG=Search
What you'll find is that trademark law is actually a lot more complex--and often contradictory--than you think.
OK, everyone seems a little confused about this - like, why now when the book was published in 2000?
For those that don't RTFA:
- In 2000, this book came out, and Katie Jones asked Dutton (subsidiary of Penguin) to change the title, as she had the domain name and they were hijacking it; as a result of the book title, KJ was receiving emails both detailing peoples abuse at the hands of paedophiles, as well as abusive emails from paedophiles themselves. See here and here. KJ took loads of stuff (including pictures of herself and family) off the site as a result - and Penguin ignored the request. I can't find the original slashdot article, although I'm sure there must have been one.
- Now, four years later, Jones gets a nasty letter, and this slashdot story is posted. This is caused by KT doing some thing about teaching kids about online safety (whether for money or altruism I don't know) - and them calling it Katie.com. Source.
- It seems the lawyer, one Parry Aftab, has a website.
There's a good summary (almost as good as this one) here, and suprisingly, on CNN.
She (Katie Tarbox) is, btw, answering to Emails sent to that address.
Just got a reply from her.
She seems to be in the opinion that she has no control over this, and it's Penguin Putnam who is at fault. Kinda of a cop out, if you ask me, and sidestepping the issue discussed in the article about her lawyer trying to intimidate Katie Jones to hand over katie.com for free.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill Big MultiNational Corporations
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
--J
You do have legal copyright on anything you create, without having to file it with the copyright office. If proof can be found that you published it beforehand (and webpublishing counts) then you own legal copyright to the name (not necessarily trademark, though). However, this still prevents me from writing a book called "slashdot.org" about a bottlecap collection (or whatever) and suing for millions.
Technically, although copyright may not protect names per se, the total website as a whole, which includes the name "katie.com" falls under a published/created body of work in text, and is copyrightable. If a book is copyrightten, regardless of trademarking the title, the title is copywritten along with the content therein. Katie Jones clearly has legal precendent to utterly smear Penguin Putnam into the ground for using her name, but mercifully she just wants the whole mess to go away. I'm (a) putting great hesitation before buying any Penguin Putnam book now because of their overboldness upon the innocent (an ironic charge indeed) and (b) glad I am not Putnam who should have otherwise backed off long before they lost so much business.
What next, are they going to sue Linux for having a penguin logo? Who came first, I wonder?
thehomeland(.org)
As a friend of Katie Jones and the guy who hosts the katie.com domain...... Wow, you Slashdotters are an amazing bunch. No other site that has carried the story has generated a response as big the one from Slashdot. I thought my server had died earlier today, the amount of traffic it recieved was so large, and all from Slashdot. Thank you for taking an interest in this issue.
God I'm tired of this.. Katie T is nothing but a greedy selfimportant bitch.
She was NOT raped. She did go and meet a sleezy guy who turned out to be a lot older than she expected... But she did this when she was 17.. not 13 as all the press material implies. Additionally, she wasn't raped at all... Her mom and coach walked in on them while they were kissing and feeling each other up.
He was eventually charged with crossing state lines with the intention of having sex with a minor.. he was also charged with some bogus CDA seducing a minor over the internet charge. The CDA was overturned later that year.
The only victim here is katie.com
Oy! This all took place when she was 14. She *wrote the book* when she was 17, and it was published when she was 18. Just to clear that up.