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."
Well it looks like someone in the publishing department should have done their homework before approving the title.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
Gee, or do you suppose they could have just gone to the website www.katie.com. Why on earth would they need to google it? Or were you just trying to use a cool term?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Why on earth didn't they look it up first?
And since it was clearly meant to be a generic name for the book title, why are they demanding rights to the website? I mean, no one's going to go to "katie.com", they understand that it's simply a symbolic book title.
fuck googling for it, why the heck fsck dang shat didnt they just type the bloody address in?
Archive.org has the site as active from 1998.
liqbase
How about either giving the book highly negative reviews on amazon, or in the review, state the situation clearly for all possible buyers of the book. Most people would be appalled at Penguin's bullying tactics and be happy to boycott the book. Sales would slump miserably (at least through amazon) and the publisher might actually get a clue that they should change the title.