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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."
without ever googling for the domain name they used? Unbelievably clueless.
I thought trademark was a right guaranteed with or without going through the trademark process. After her first "sale" (visit from an outsider), she would have held a trademark on her site.
The Political Programmer
the fact that the sex.com ruling made web names property. I would think that with that precedent, and judges love those, that the owner of the site can not be forced to turn it over. She was there first.
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
As a UK citizen, she should just go to the police with the threatening legal letters, and raise a charge of harrassment against Penguin Publishing. Point out that Penguin Publishing published her e-mail address everywhere in order to get a lot of people to harrass her. I'm sure that there is a lot of stuff she can do under UK law to stop this illegal baiting.
... it would be nice to see a lawyer with a heart for a start ... I'm not holding my breath though.
Penguin are clearly in the wrong here. I will just choose to not buy any book published by Penguin, it is the least I can do.
I hope that a lawyer sees this and decides to help this person out
Couldn't Katie Jones sue Katie Tarbox for libeling her as a sexual assault victim?
If I were Katie Jones, I'd setup Google AdWords on my front page, and perhaps a sponsored link to the katie.com book on Amazon, and use the proceeds to power a legal fund.
If the problem remains unresolved (and the domain unusable for the original purpose) maybe selling katie.com to a porn company would be a good way to get both some remuneration for the trouble and some one-upmanship at Penguin and Katie Tarbox. I'm guessing that domain might be hot property by now. Dealing with a "niche" porn company (I'll leave that to y'alls imagination) might be even more profitable, and a lot better still at raising bloodpressure at PP. CT
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It would have been more effective to link the site, as even slashdotters on a mission are too lazy to cut and paste. Nonetheless, I've done my slashdot duty and used your link. I can only hope the other million /. readers do the same.
http://parryaftab.blogspot.com/
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'd gladly host her site for free, just for the controversy.
Because I have no doubt she'll win, and in the mean time you can't buy better ghetto publicity than a publisher of paperbacks trying to strong arm a young mother into giving up her domain name so they can give it to a victim of an online sexual predator. That's like a puppy fighting with a kitten -- two strong appeals to your sense of humanity, duking out over a friggin' email address?
Anyhow, you really want to cheese off Penguin? Don't Goatse the site Katie.com...instead, use it to post erudite and insightful critiques of the book, call into question the events inside and the validity of its conclusions. After all, they're marketing the book with YOUR website on it...might as well use your website to convince people not to buy their book. Shit, I'll volunteer for that, too...got to put this rhetoric degree to use for something besides mod 5 posts.
Incidentally, after a quick USPTO.GOV search, it appears Penguin didn't register katie.com, either. Since the owner of katie.com has prior art going back to 1996, I think she could still register her trademark...and sue the SHIT out of Penguin for misuse of her domain name. But IANAL...I'm a computer guy with a rhetoric degree and outrage that anybody could be so greedy to cash in on their own tragedy as to threaten a young mother.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Check out this link. This guy had to stop referring to an old software company he was involved with in order to not get sued. You might recognize the name of the old company.
Instead, they suggest that the domain name should be given to them as a "donation." I generally donate money to causes that are essentially "poor." I don't see any poor people on Kate T.'s side of the fence.
Did anyone here read the book? One thing that jumped out at me was the way she talked about living in a very wealthy area (New Canaan, CT). For example, her swim team didn't have to do fundraisers because they were just given the money for travel, etc. Now there's a domain name she happens to want, and she seems to expect that it should also just be given to her. It does seem like Katie T. has a strong sense of entitlement.
I emailed the author, and got this reply: I appreciate your thoughts and understand them completely. It is not posted on my web site, but this issue is between Katie Jones and Penguin Putnam. They own the name Katie.com as a published book and decided to call it that. I can do nothing in my power to change it. I would suggest if you would like your voice to be heard and a chance that something is done about it, direct your sympathy to Penguin Putnam. For the record I have never harassed Katie Jones for her site. Best, Katie Tarbox Whether that is true or not, I have no idea, but in the interest of fairness, her reply should be noted, I think. I have to admit, my (limited) knowledge of publishing seems to indicate the actual author has very little juice here.
John Kenneth Fisher
Table of malContents
I appreciate your thoughts and understand them completely. It is not posted on my web site, but this issue is between Katie Jones and Penguin Putnam. They own the name Katie.com as a published book and decided to call it that. I can do nothing in my power to change it. I would suggest if you would like your voice to be heard and a chance that something is done about it, direct your sympathy to Penguin Putnam. For the record I have never harassed Katie Jones for her site.
Best, Katie Tarbox
I sure don't envy her. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but what she doesn't say makes it sound a lot like she isn't altogether pleased with the way Penguin Putnam has been dealing with things. Actually, it sounds to me like she didn't ask for this and is tired of it.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
I recently read a story about your book and the problems it has been causing with the legal owner of Katie.com, Katie Jones.
I was appalled to read about how your lawyers, or penquin's lawyers acting on your behalf, are trying to steamroll Mrs. Jones into "donating" her property. Instead of bullying her into giving up her rightfully owned domain name, might I suggest politely offering her a nice sum in exchange? Any reasonable person would see that as being the decent thing to do.
It disgusts me that you were the victim of an online predator, and now it also disgusts me that you have become a different type of online predator.
I strongly urge you and your publishing company to either deal with Mrs. Jones in a respectable manner, or leave her alone altogether. I also urge you to put pressure on your publisher to stop this despicable behavior.
Sincerely,
(my name here)
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
Next question: how do we donate to KatieJ's legal defense fund?
...
Can't let rabid left-winger legal sharks and their clients pull this kind of garbage
If people would seriously like to do this, we could set up a Paypal account. Are there a significant number of people who would want to do that?
The book was originally to be titled "girl.com" but that turned out to be a porn site, so they changed it to "katie.com" instead
Question: If the publishers knew that katie.com was taken, why didn't they just call the book katietarbox.com or katherine.com instead? (Assuming that neither of those domains have been taken).
They could have thier own website up and running, posting whatever they wanted. Instead, they currently have the stubborn owner of katie.com with the website and mounting legal fees. Plus if they owned their own domain (like katietarbox.com), they would (possibly) be making more $$ from their domain.
oh, and for the record, I am on the side of the original owner of the katie.com domain. I just don't understand why people are so stupid sometimes.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
*********
Rob, we never tried to take katie.com, Katie Jones is doing all of this for publicity. We were always using katiesplace.org. I am also not Katie's lawyer or anyone's lawyer and Jone's knows that.
I donate 90% of my time to running a charity that protects people online. But replying only feeds Jone's hidden agenda here.
For that reason, I request that you not share this without my advance permission.
-----Original Message----- From: Rob Miles [mailto:rmiles@theskepticalreview.com] Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 2:42 PM To: parry@aftab.com Subject: Katie Jones and katie.com
Please stop your campaign to force Katie Jones to give up HER domain, katie.com. Even since the book by the came out, she has dealt with unwanted and unwarranted attention. Maybe this all started as a mistake or an oversight, but to plan to release additional material under that same name (as reported by Ms. Jones on 7/30/04) is certainly mean-spirited at this point.
As of 7/27/04 your site lists a new venture with Katie Tarbox named katiesplace.org. If this means that you have in fact given up on trying to force Ms. Jones to give up her rightful domain, then I apologize for the above and offer you my deepest appreciation.
***********
For the record, I consider any email sent to me to be my own property, regardless of any request or disclaimer saying otherwise.
"5 of 622 people found the following review helpful:
..." ...
..
***** (5 stars)
Katie.com by Katherine Tarbox was a great book to read. I would recommend it to ages 12 and up. I liked Katie.com because
"203 of 203 people found the following review helpful:
* (1 star)
The writer of the book and the publishers should be ashamed of themselves.
DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK, and certainly think again about buying from this publisher."
"Wow" is right. At present there is over 200 negative reviews of the book, "modded up" by at least 80-90 people each, and the few 5 star reviews have been "modded down" to nothing, giving this book a final rating of two stars.
Do y'all have any idea how many people are buying their books on Amazon these days, and how many people will see thiss? This *will* have an impact on book sales, I guarantee it. I bet Penguin will stop harassing Katie Jones and they will probably issue an official apology within a couple weeks.
In alt.activism.children the only person whose taste buds are dead enough
to permit him to perform oral sex on Mike Echols, alexplore, writes:
> When the conversation was with 13-year-old Katherine Tarbox of
> New Canaan, Conn., the subject was piano playing, one of young
> Katie's passions.
You know, we all heard this touching tale when Parry Aftab was flogging
the book to death. It's 100% Sex Abuse Agenda embellished tripe.
> Katie, who was staying with her mother, Andrea, and her teammates
> in the same hotel as Kufrovich, went to his room at about 9:30
> p.m. Her worried mother squeezed the details from one of Katie's
> friend, and rushed to Kufrovich's room with police - but not
> before the pedophile had a chance to kiss and fondle her.
In reality, when the police entered the room, both Katie and her network
acquaintance said "nothing had happened." The guy was allowed to leave
with no charges being filed.
Later, after being programmed to think of herself as a victim, she filed a
complaint, and decided to become a media darling, write a book, meet Parry
Aftab, and function as the poster child for Internet luring.
Hey, why turn down a lucrative career opportunity, right?
They also managed to get the FBI involved, and charge her "predator" with
a couple of those vague new "intending to" and "traveling for the purpose
of" laws. He got 18 months.
To make matters worse, Katie titled her sob story "Katie.com." Well, the
20 year old owner of www.katie.com, who lives in London, was less than
amused when she started getting millions of hits from the Child Sex
Hysterics.
And so it goes.