Katie Jones Interviewed

scubacuda writes "Greplaw has interviewed Katie Jones (of the real Katie.com). In addition to the details of the dispute regarding Penguin's 'branding' of the book Katie.com (which many /.ers 'reviewed'), she shares the details of her conversation with cyberlawyer Parry Aftab, how she believes Penguin's title change suggests that it thought it could steamroll her without recourse, and the tremendous amount of support the geek community has shown her." Ms. Aftab has several blogs. Ms. Aftab, if you contact us with a response to these allegations, Slashdot will publish your response (we've also written to your email address). Another reader notes: "Yesterday /. ran an article about the book Katie.com. Out of curiosity I just visited the Amazon.com website to see how many more reviews were on the website. Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars."

Comments

Katie Jones should get paid

[stecoop]

Shouldn't Katie Jones get royalties from Penguin for using her domain name? After all, in the interview, she stated that Katie.com can't be used as Katie Jones bought it for. She had her resume and pictures of her family and now it might draw pedophiles; therefore, she had to remove the pictures and contact information. A lawsuit should be drawn against Penguin for damages against her domain name and royalties should be paid for that domain; after all Katie Jones freely and fairly bought the domain.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Burstgoof]

The problem is that she hadn't trademarked or copyrighted 'Katie.com'. That's the only reason that Penguin has any ground to stand on. If she had 'katie.com' copyrighted and/or trademarked, SHE could have sued THEM for using the title. Of course, how many of us think of trademarking our domain names on a regular basis? Especially a personal site?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

If her data was on the web and was not protected so only certain people could see it then I don't see how she could say they damaged her domain name. Once something is on the internet and anyone can view it why should someone else who links to it be wrong to do so? That would be like a story here being linked and /. being sued over it because the server went down from views.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that she hadn't trademarked or copyrighted 'Katie.com'.

From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html #register:

Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.

So, by using the domain "katie.com", she HAS copyrighted it!

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

First of all it isn't penguin suing - it is Katie Tarbox's lawyer. Second you do not need to have a trademark to protect your domain name. Since katie.com the website existed long before katie.com the book there is no case here. No cybersquatting, no trademark violation, no copyright infringement, nothing.

If anything - the real katie can trademark the name now if she was doing some sort of business and then just say she first used the name in business in 1996. There is no case here. It is 100% bullying.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

You can't copyright a domain name. I'm amazed that you bothered to read the part of the FAQ that said when you can copyright but not the part that says what can't be copyrighted:

Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[dinivin]

Well, according to an e-mail I received from Katie Tarbox yesterday, Parry isn't her lawyer.

Dinivin

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't copyright a domain name. ... what can't be copyrighted:

Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents

I don't see "domain names" in that list. Unless it's lumped in under "names". But then, if it were, then certainly a BOOK NAME of "katie.com" would also be not copyrightable.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[rwven]

then what is the big deal here? If this A) existed before the book, and B) copyrights dont have anything to do with domain names...how can anything be said about it anyway?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

Why wouldn't domain name be lumped under name. After all it is a domain name. And you are correct - a book name cannot be copyrighted. Go look for the book "The Day After Tommorow" by Allan Folsom. It has absolutely nothing to do with that awful movie.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

There is no big deal here. Neither side has any case as I pointed out in another thread. If katie.com had a trademark then she may have a case against penguin for the name of the book. Of course, if that had been the case then they probably wouldn't have chosen that name in the first place.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[shokk]

As Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451) recently found out, he could not prevent "Fahrenheit 9-11" from being titled as such because one cannot copyright a title.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

If she had 'katie.com' copyrighted and/or trademarked

I certainly hope Penguin is not selling books in her state - Federal trademarks may preempt in other states where one has not registered the mark, but isn't my understanding correct that through its use within her state, she has the protection of the mark within the state? Or is this only for incorporated names and such?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Uggy]

IANAL, but I can read dammit.

Is registration of my mark required?

Copyright and Trademark are basically the same thing, at least in the US. UPTO does not need to grant you a trademark for you to have your asset trademarked. You can even use the little superscript TM if you wish. What they do say on their webpages is that _REGISTERED_ trademarks grant you additional rights, and should your trademark come in dispute I imagine it's an easier case. It's an added insurance for just such cases, but by no means necessary.

OTOH, she lives in UK, so the point is moot.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

Katie Jones has a good case. It's not legal for someone to come along and associate your business and contact information with their agenda. Mrs. Jones has suffered actual monetary damages. Additionally she has been subjected to emails detailing experiences she has no wish to become involved with.

How would you like it if somebody listed your business number as a rape or suicide counselling service?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Uggy]

And I guess Amazon.com isn't trademarked or copyrighted, huh?

Give me a break. Katie.com is unique (there IS only one). No one else has Katie.com... how can it be common. Short, maybe but uncommon? IBM is short, but uncommon. K-a-t-i-e may be common as a surname, but katie.com as a unique brand presense is definitely trademarkable.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I registered mine as a business name- TM status is harder and more expensive.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

Please point out the appropriate law that this falls under. Katie.com is not a trademark and it is not clear whether it was ever used in business.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

She could have trademarked Katie.com, but she didn't, and it's probably too late now. Way to miss the point.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

Amazon has many trademarks I am sure. As with the poster above I refer you here to understand the difference between a trademark and copyright.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

K-a-t-i-e may be common as a surname

Sorry, but I have never EVER met anyone with the surname 'Katie'

Surname = Last Name
Given Name = First Name

You are one of those people who need to stick to one syllable words, like "first" and "last".

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that depends on your definition of "used in business." Mrs. Jones felt that having herself associated with the book could cause damage to both her personal and professional life. Sounds to me like it would affect her "business".

And it's harrassment. Since penguin publishes all over the world, including the UK, I'd get an injunction that they not publish their book using that title.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Uggy]

Hey it's less confusing in Spanish, okay? *G*

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

I don't see how it is harrassment and I still don't see what law it violates. And business means commerce in this instance.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, by the time she wrote that email she had, of course, fired her.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[macdaddy]

"Justin" is a cowboy boot company for example. Common surname but also a business name

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[shufler]

Byron Katie: http://www.thework.com/

Even more

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to register trademarks.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Gumshoe]

Apart from the stunningly obvious fact that the titles "Fahrenheit 451" and "Fahrenheit 911" are not the same and a copyright on the former would be of absolutely no use to Bradbury, I find it humorous that Bradbury himself has a history of, shall we say, borrowing titles. For example, the title of the book "Something Wicked This Way Comes" comes from Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's MacBeth and "I Sing The Body Electric" was the title of a chapter in Walt Whitman's book, Leaves of Grass.

I'm reminded of Disney at this point. Here we have someone who plunders the public domain, adapts and creates something new from what they found there and then complains when others do the same to their own creations.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[hackstraw]

Its not worth fishing through some 503 errors, but in yesterday's article about this, a few people said that they had mailed Katie Tarbox, and she said that she had no control over the situation, that it was Penguin that was doing the lawyering.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

While criminal law might not get you far, I'm fairly certain a civil suit has some legs to stand on.

#1. Increase in traffic = monetary damages. It's not free advertising, it's misleading people into believing katie.com is something it isn't.

#2. Type of traffic = damage to character. Katie.com is now associated with child abuse, which means that the owner of katie.com has that burden to bear.

#3. Emotional damages, due to the above traffic and the sicko tendencies of the visitors. These people wouldn't have ever visited katie.com without Penguin publishing the book.

Penguin can be blamed for all of these things by publishing the book under the title Katie.com. Prove damages and a civil suit just might go through, and damages seem fairly provable here.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

At the risk of getting modded down overrated again I will continue to tell you that there is no law protecting her. Based on your arguments she has a very good case against slashdot as well for posting her link. The mods seem to agree with you but you are not a lawyer and you are just way off base.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[spiritraveller]

Royalties? No. If she were famous, she could sue for misappropriation of her "likeness". But that only applies if the use of her likeness was already commercially valuable.

OTOH, I think she has a great case for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Using the name of someone's personal website as the title of a book about child sexual abuse certainly qualifies as "outrageous and offensive".

She would also have to show "severe emotional distress." But I don't think that would be too difficult considering that she had pictures of her own children on the site before she started getting emails from pedophiles.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[1u3hr]

As Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451) recently found out, he could not prevent "Fahrenheit 9-11" from being titled as such because one cannot copyright a title.

Well, you're right that you can't copyright a title, but the two titles you mention are quite different, and the name "Fahrebheit" belongs to neither Bradbury nor Moore. I'm amazed that Bradbury thought he had a claim on it. Bradbury, like most writers, has often titled his stories with quotes from poems or other literary works. Basically, I think he just hates Moore.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

Actually I pointed that out in another thread. I said that if she just registered the name now she would be fine because all she would have to do is say she was doing business in that name since 1996. Until she registers however she has cannot sue (or she could but would probably lose). And she was never really doing business under that name so it is really moot.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[AndroidCat]

Fired? Parry was an experienced Internet lawyer, but recently her methods became .. unsound. A team has been dispatched up the river to terminate ..

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[1u3hr]

IANAL, but I can read dammit. Is registration of my mark required? Copyright and Trademark are basically the same thing, at least in the US.

Which part of the page you linked said that? None that I can see.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

The only sensible response to this little game that penguin is playing, is simply to write a book and title it 1-800-631-8571 (Penguin Group's customer service phone number).

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Eric S. Smith]

A lawsuit should be drawn against Penguin for damages against her domain name and royalties should be paid for that domain; after all Katie Jones freely and fairly bought the domain.

I agree, and I think that the people commenting on the trademark and copyright angles of the situation are missing the boat. It looks to me like there's a plain old common law tort, here: Penguin's behaviour has unfairly and unreasonably caused Katie Jones a bunch of trouble. Should she file a zillion-dollar "pain and suffering" suit? Probably not, but it's quite obvious that Penguin has wronged her, and they ought at minimum to have stopped doing so as soon as she notified them of the problem.

If the change of title from girl.com to katie.com really happened as Katie Jones says, that just makes Penguin's behaviour worse. The phrase "knew or ought to have known" does crop up in the common law a fair bit...

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[decepty]

...for the same reason a company name can be copyrighted or trademarked or a product name. See, just because it has "name" in it doesn't automatically lump it in under "name"... however IANAL.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

Holy crap. How many times do I have to repeat the same post. You cannot copyright a company name or a product name. Please read this to understand the difference.

I am not sure what is worse. The fact that people don't know the distinction already or that I have to repeat it so many times.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Uggy]

Same thing as in "You don't need to explicitly register them in order to be protected." Sheez.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from the stunningly obvious fact that the titles "Fahrenheit 451" and "Fahrenheit 911" are not the same

Yes of course, changing 2 digits makes all the difference in the world. Moore has already commented to the effect that he appropriated the title. Perhaps you ignored the tagline: The temperature where freedom burns.

In short, it's stunningly obvious that you're wrong.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[tsm_sf]

And this is why I hate hearing about personal heroes in the news. Feet of clay.

Why does the name Joe Shlabotnik keep popping into my head?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[TomSawyer]

Bradbury, like most writers, has often titled his stories with quotes from poems or other literary works. Basically, I think he just hates Moore.

Yes, since Bradbury didn't want any confusion to lead to him being associated with an extreme political view, he must therefore hold personal hate in his heart for Michael Moore.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean, like that RIAA phone number rap?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[ckaminski]

Trademark is not the same thing as copyright. I'm fairly sure Microsoft doesn't have a copyright on Microsoft, but does on the source code to Windows, and has a trademark on both Microsoft, and Microsoft Windows.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a diff on the two titles and the tag line, and guess what I found?

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME

holy shit -- REVALATION

moron

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes of course, changing 2 digits makes all the difference in the world.

Do you know what "same" means?

Moore has already commented to the effect that he appropriated the title.

and...? I assume you have a point.

Perhaps you ignored the tagline: The temperature where freedom burns.

Where in Bradybury's book does that phrase appear? How does this support your argument at all?

In short, it's stunningly obvious that you're wrong.

You may need to explain it again because none of what you've said makes any sense.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[decepty]

I apologize for offending your superior intellect and making you repeat yourself. I meant to put "can't be copyrighted but trademarked" but unfortunately I am too stupid to find the "Preview" button. Thank you for being so patient and not jumping down my throat... oh, wait, you did? Lick my balls.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[tsm_sf]

She's famous* now. Would she be able to use this against any future printings of the book?


* For a given value** of fame.

** I think she's probably at 'Minor Recurring Character in 80's Sitcom' by now***.

*** Yes, I just finished a Terry Pratchett book.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[RazzleFrog]

First I don't believe that for a second. Second I said nothing about the ability to trademark a name so you post would have made even less sense. Don't try to backtrack and correct yourself.

And apology accepted. Most people do offend my superior intellect but few recognize it. I apologize for jumping down your throat but when you several responses all saying the same thing I think you would also get a little edgy.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Black Jack Hyde]

Here we have someone who plunders the public domain, adapts and creates something new from what they found there and then complains when others do the same to their own creations.

"Fahrenheit 451" is public domain? Does Bradbury know? It doesn't seem to be on gutenberg.net, imagine that.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Gumshoe]

Fahrenheit 451" is public domain? Does Bradbury know?

Title's aren't copyrightable therefore the title is by definition in the public domain.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[spiritraveller]

She's famous* now. Would she be able to use this against any future printings of the book?

Heh. No. The measure of damages for that claim is the value of the use. In other words, what that person could have charged for the use. The "fair market value" if you will.

Her fame has only come about as a result of the book, instead of the other way around.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[LordPixie]

"Fahrenheit 451" is public domain? Does Bradbury know? It doesn't seem to be on gutenberg.net, imagine that.

What the...Did I just read a Slashdotter implying that the burning point of paper should be removed from the public domain ? That's some crazy shit right there.


--LordPixie

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fahrenheit 451" is public domain?

No, but Shakespeare's work is, and Walt Whitman's work is. You need to pay attention.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[GFLPraxis]

Sorry, but this is hilarious.

To quote:

"#1. Increase in traffic = monetary damages. It's not free advertising, it's misleading people into believing katie.com is something it isn't."

She just got Slashdotted.
That's probably worse than anything Penguin ever did in the way of traffic ;)

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Ohreally_factor]

Never get out of the browser.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Ohreally_factor]

The reason (I think) people are looking at the trademark angles is because there needs to be an actual legal basis to bring and win a tort claim.

On what legal basis, what law, should Katie Jones bring a claim against Penguin or Katie Tarbox? Because they used the words "katie.com" as the title of a book? As noted elsewhere, this couldn't be the basis of a claim because of the trademark/copyright issues. So, what's the "comon law tort" basis for a claim?

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I have never EVER met anyone with the surname 'Katie'

Here's 59:

http://phone.people.yahoo.com/py/psPhoneSearch.p y? srch=bas&D=1&FirstName=&LastName=Katie&City=&State =&Phone=&Search=Yahoo%21+Search

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[1u3hr]

>Bradbury, .... Basically, I think he just hates Moore.
Yes, since Bradbury didn't want any confusion to lead to him being associated with an extreme political view, he must therefore hold personal hate in his heart for Michael Moore.

I assume you're trying to be ironic. Actually, I looked that up before I posted and it appears, to my surprise, to be true.

Ray Bradbury: "Michael Moore is an asshole"
"Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case. He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission."

However, this is a translation from a Swedish interview, and as it was made by a right-wing blogger, may not be a neutral representation of Bradbury's views.

Anyway, in my opinion, it'd be absurd for anyone, including Bradbury, to argue that there would be "confusion" associating him with Moore's views. Anyone who gets the reference is aware that it's primarily a pun. Refer to the titles of Bradbury's books Something Wicked This Way Comes (Shakespeare); I Sing The Body Electric! (Whitman), Golden Apples of the Sun (Yeats). Bradbury didn't need anyone's permission to use these (even if the authors had been alive), and no one is thinking that Shakespreare endorses his books.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[1u3hr]

Same thing as in "You don't need to explicitly register them in order to be protected." Sheez.

So why didn't you say that? Sheez.

Re:Katie Jones should get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

"I certainly hope Penguin is not selling books in her state"

Since she lives in England, that's highly likely.

Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[garcia]

There's no agenda, hidden nor otherwise, I just want them to leave me alone and I've always been very open about that. I also don't relish the publicity as she suggests.

Of course there is! If there is no drama there is no way to make the story like Reality TV. Without the story being like a Realty TV series how could they attract the interest of possible readers?

I'm not really making any 'efforts'. I've asked for them to acknowledge responsibility and to stop using my domain name. They haven't. The Amazon reviews I think just serve to show how strongly the Internet community feels about this.

Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name.

My privacy has been completely invaded by their use of my domain name.

Your webpage was on the Internet. You had your resume and pictures of your family there. You chose to allow this information to be accessible. They didn't invade any privacy by naming their book that.

I don't agree with Penguin on this one as they are obviously completely in the wrong but I certainly don't agree with Katie that she is 100% right either. Tell them to fuck off. They have no leg to stand on. Katie.com was around before their book was titled and it has nothing to do w/their book. They can eat it. Case closed.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

What did Katie do wrong?

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[tanguyr]

You could draw a parallel with the implied right to link to a web site. In effect, Penguin are just publishing a non-clickable link to Katie Jones' site. Of course, when lawyers start calling up and claiming that they now OWN your domain name because they published so many links to it, well, that's a whole other ball of wax...

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[ubertemp]

Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name.

At first she didn't tell them what to do with the name. Penguin had demanded she give up the address and all she wanted was to keep her existing domain. So to use your example: you register bill.com, Gate's book comes out, the publisher demands you give them bill.com

Still think this is fair?

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[falcon5768]

Your wrong in the fact that Katie DOES have a right to tell them they cant use Katie.com... putting a .com site on anything (even as a title) is like advertising for that site..... its the EXACT same reason why people are not allowed to use phone numbers other than 555. What has to happen is the law has to be changed to giving you exclusive rights to a domain name, therfore problems like this (of which Katie isnt the only person who has been bossed around by big companies) wont happen. This isnt like squatting... they are blaintent trying to steal her domain by making her life as misserable as possible.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[slartibart]

Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name.

I don't think this is about the name, is it? I expect the publisher can call the book whatever they like (including someone's domain name, if it's not trademarked). The issue here is that the publisher thinks they can force her to turn over the domain name, which is positively ludicrous.

Katie Jones is the rightful owner of the domain. Penguin knew she owned it (or should have known) before they even chose the title of the book. Corporations can't just go around making up product names that they know full well are already registered domain names, and expect to steal the domains right out from under the current owners.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Karma Farmer]

If I wrote a book with the same name as your website, LazyLightning.Org, and then advertized and promoted my book LazyLightning.Org, would you be upset?

What if I hired a promoter to get me on TV as much as possible, with instructions to make sure that every time I was on TV I was introduced by my name and with the name of my book, LazyLightning.Org. And, what if I made a point of promoting my book, LazyLightning.Org every time my paid promoter managed to get me in front of an audience?

Are you saying that you'd have no reason to be upset?

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the funny thing is is that penguin's, the fat cow of an attorney parry aftab's, and katie tarbox's behavior is classic squatting. Traditionally a squatter is someone who moves into a preexisting property and co-opts it for their own use. This is exactly what has happened to the domain name katie.com. The fuckhole's actions basically have been that they think the domain katie.com should be coerced into fitting their agenda of therapy, advocacy, self promotion and profiteering, rather than Mrs. Jone's, the rightful domain holder, choices of usage of that domain.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[FooAtWFU]

The issue here is that the publisher thinks they can force her to turn over the domain name, which is positively ludicrous.

What's more, it reeks of extortion. "Things will only get worse"? That sounds like a threat to me, anyway.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I owned rights to the lazylightening.org website I'd be extremely upset, but I'm not certain I'd have much legal recourse.

There's a huge difference between being upset and possessing a legal right.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

mod you up, you are SO correct.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[vmaxxxed]

Hello, Im not a lawyer, much less a "cyber lawyer".

But I understand that you can claim a domain name if you own a trade mark for it, right ?

Well, I own alejandro.net, and I own a birth cetificate for that since 1972.

If i were a freelance consultant like she is, then
my name would be my trade mark.

If katie can prove that the term "Katie" has been registered as a trade mark for herself, she should have the right to own it, and, IMHO, she has
more right to claim the name for her life's work, than a publisher and a book.


-Alex

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[dave420]

Especially if "LazyLightning.org" the book was about a webmaster who loved goats a little too much, and spent most of his day vomiting on orphans. Remember, the subject matter of the katie.com book is something very close to what katie.com the site is trying to erradicate.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody with some money needs to write a book about a teenage debutaunt who decides that it'd be fun to be a prostitute for spending money. And how she whores herself out to a bunch of rich child molesting good old boys. And then title it katiet.com.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[PitaBred]

People are actually allowed to use numbers other than 555-XXXX. They just don't out of habit/tradition and respect for people who have phones. There is no law (feel free to disprove me) that says you MUST use a 555-XXXX number if you are publishing something fictitious.
The main problem is that people aren't seeing domain names as a parallel to phone numbers, or anything else identifying.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[jargoone]

You are correct, there is no law. In fact, a year or so ago, a movie (Bruce Almighty) used a real phone number. Comedy insued for the owner of the phone number.

Linky here

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your webpage was on the Internet. You had your resume and pictures of your family there. You chose to allow this information to be accessible. They didn't invade any privacy by naming their book that.

Sure ... so, if I put up a popular web page telling people to mail stuff to 2100 East Cliff Road, Apt. 118A, Burnsville, MN 55337, you would not have a problem with that? I mean, you put information about yourself up on your webpage, link to it from a slashdot posting.

What if, on that same web page, I tell people to call 952-707-1982? Obviously, you chose to allow this information to be accessible.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

*ensued

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

you are exactly right my friend. remember the
dispute over newton.com ? i don't remember the
guys name, but it was owned by a man named newton
who ran a bbs service.

the bastards at apple still own newton.com and they
don't even sell the newton anymore.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Cpt_Kirks]

867-5309?

Damn, now the frickin' song is stuck in my head!

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is:

555-867-5309

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[dasmegabyte]

This is the most insightful post using the word "fuckhole" in months.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But I understand that you can claim a domain name if you own a trade mark for it, right ?"

Not if the domain name existed before the trademark did.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[Random832]

for the record, the "non-assigned phone number prefix" was narrowed to 555-0XXX about [i believe] five years ago, and now stands at 555-01XX.

Re:Nothing for us to see here, move along.

[ganley]

Yeah, I was immediately reminded of the (not very good) movie Pacific Heights, where Michael Keaton moves into the basement apartment of a couple's big Victorian house in San Francisco and then proceeds to drive them out of their own house. Except his behavior seemed more conscionable than the people who are bullying Katie Jones.

Mike Rowe

[ParticleMan911]

I think Mike Rowe and Katie should get together.

Re:Mike Rowe

[DaHat]

I don't think Katie's husband... the guy who bought the name for her would like that too much.

Re:Mike Rowe

[rembem]

Yeah! And after all this is over, she should auction the letters from Penguin on eBay.

Re:Mike Rowe

[Finuvir]

You're not suggesting Katie get together with someone she met on the internet?

Re:Mike Rowe

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Katie Jones would be a pedophile.

Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Jailbrekr]

While I am sure that Katie Jones really appreciated the outpouring of support for her cause, I think that voting the book down was the wrong way to show your support. The book does little damage to Penguin, but does an immense amount of damage to the author of the book. The author did not perpetrate this crime, Penguin did.

The author has been a victim once, let us not make her a victim again.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[pyrrhonist]

The author did not perpetrate this crime, Penguin did.

Then why is the author's lawyer harassing the owner of the domain?

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[GoRK]

If the author doesn't even have the final say about the TITLE OF HER OWN BOOK, then something else is seriously wrong.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Penguin and Katie Ts lawyer are being weasels. Penguin knew it had a problem with the original title "girl.com" a porn site at the time, and switched it to katie.com to pick on someone they could take on. girl.com is just a place-holder, so they should buy it, switch titles and apologize.

Oh yeah, thanks to yesterdays post, the Katie T lawyer's email is parry@aftab.com and her cell phone 201-463-8663.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

how about the author publically DEMANDING they change the name of the book and publish a public apology??

Oh wait that would be the right thing to do, and we can no longer expect that kind of behaivoir in the USA.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[ackthpt]

Both Katies were victims here, of overzealous legal advice and business decisions. What Tarbox went through is horrendous and the book should be of value to warn other children. What Jones went through should not be repeated, but from Microsoft to Time Warner it seems to happen too often. Jones should be entitled to some punitive damages from Penguin, since it was their lack of research and their harrassement which caused her harm. There's simply no excusing Penguin on this one.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

If Katie Tarbox has a problem with her book being slammed because of how it's publisher acts, then she should have her attorney contact penguin and make them fix it. Just because someone was the victim of a combination of their own bad choices and the misfortune of meeting up with a asshole, doesn't justify their own bad behavior or the bad behavior of those acting in concert with them.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[deathazre]

according to poster, the book was not voted down on amazon. A good number of the negative votes disappeared.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

The author has been a victim once

The author wasn't a "victim", she got buyer's remorse and changed her mind after skipping school to meet a guy she thought was going to be 23 and was caught making out with him by her coach and her mother - the guy who's life they decided to ruin to assuage their guilt about being bad parents and bad children is as much (if not more) of a victim of the whole thing as anyone.

The next victims will be those who cherise privacy as this Lifetime movie will be used as an excuse to pass more draconian laws.

I mean what is the lesson here?
Behavior - Reward:
Ignore your kids and hazards to them - Reward: Appearing to be a strong, supportive parent
Lie to your parent and sneak around, intenionally going to see an older guy for sex - Reward: Get to be labelled a victim-hero and make money off the story.
Be a sleezy guy who made out w/ an under age girl - Reward: go to jail for a long time.
Be a lawyer wrapped in the flag of protecting children, but victimizing others in the process - Reward: Money, angel status with the Oprah/Lifetime TV crowd, begin reviled by the /. crowd.

I am tired of society making drug users, "reformed" criminals and every other kind of scumbags into some kind of fucking hero. As far as I am concerned, KatieT is in the same boat, a bad kids that becomes a hero for the consequences of her own very deliberate actions catching up with her.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish your post had not degenerated into USA bashing, because your first sentence was actually one of the best ideas I've heard yet. As it is, you'll probably be labelled a troll. Oh, well...

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[boarder]

Actually, that might not be the case. In general, books such as this one get bought by the publisher for a flat fee and the copyright becomes theirs. Most people who write novels may own the copyright, but one time writers like this usually don't. I'm betting that Katie T. isn't getting much, if any, more money based on how many more books she sells.

BTW, if you read Katie J's website, KT's lawyers are badgering her as well. KT is no longer a victim, but is helping to victimize someone else. KT is now out of college, so it's not like she's a little girl anymore. She's an adult with a responsibility to act like one. If she really doesn't want to hurt KJ and really has control over her book, she should tell her lawyers to back off and demand the same from Penguin. If she doesn't have any control over Penguin (which she says she doesn't in an email from KatieT.com), then she should speak out publicly against Penguin for trying to use the internet to victimize another woman (that's what the book is all about).

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

The litigation is not being sponsored be Penguin, it is being pursued by Katherine Tarbox and her own lawyer. That said, there are more effective ways to make your voice heard than negative reviews on Amazon-for instance, I've seen quite a few email addresses thrown around Slashdot over the last few days...

Ian

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Juvenall]

I won't even get into how I don't feel even an ounce of pitty for a stupid little girl with all the common sence of a door stop (or certain executives in charge of a group of litigious bastards), but to call "Ms. T" a victim in this too is just dumb. Not only does she has at much at stake here as Penguin, but she could at LEAST offer up a public apology on her site or help pay for bandwidth costs on account of her ignorance. ..all that aside though, if I were Katie Jones, I'd turn Katie.com into a hardcore porn site simply out of spite.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Mr. Slippery]

If the author doesn't even have the final say about the TITLE OF HER OWN BOOK, then something else is seriously wrong.

Yes, something is seriously wrong. Yes, publishers do re-title books. Yes, book publishers have been known to screw writers in much the same way that music labels screw musicians.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Jonathunder]

It's a standard part of the contract to get a book published, in most cases, that the publisher decides the title. The author can suggest a title, but most of the time the publisher's marketing department has much more say in what the title will be.

If an author doesn't like that, he or she could self-publish. But self published works are rarely successful.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[trendescape]

I think she should be made a victim again. She should stop using computers, and rename her book to something more appropriate.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[heybo]

You are wrong. It is the author's lawyer doing this. When you hire a shark they become you "Acting Agent". Other words they are YOU, and acting on your desires and acting in your behalf. So Katie T. is the perp it this one.

To me it would seem that after being a victim herself it would give her some insite and wouldn't victimize others.

Does everyone else see a trend here? Just today all the articles on lawyers and the law suits. Like to one posted today about some lawyer getting his feelings hurt because someone called him a name on Yahoo. If we followed Shakesphere's advice and took all the lawyers out and shot them. I do think the world would be a better place. At least there wouldn't be all these suits.

This case is a case of site hijacking. If anyone should get anything out of the it should be Katie Jones. After all she was there first.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like Bush's attorneys argument that counting the votes in Florida would cause irreparable harm to their client. The only irreparable harm was that people's votes weren't counted.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[macdaddy]

Agreed. IF the publisher wanted to micro-manage the book, HER book, that much she should have found another publisher.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

You don't know much about publishing do you? All big publishers do that: think music industry only worse because book publishers have had a lot longer to practice at it.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[AviLazar]

While it's convenient to say that, you should also understand that when an author is trying to publish their book - unless they are very well known (i.e. stephen king) they are at the mercy of the publisher.
Yes Katie Jones could have attempted to go to another publisher - but that doesn't mean they would take her, offer her the same deal, or even agree to let her keep the name.
I think it was irresponsible to name the book "Katie.com" when there is such a site which is not related to the book.
But who am i? Hopefully this will go to court and the publishing company will get it's butt handed to it - but in such a manner as to not harm Katie Jones (assuming she had no hand in this debacle).

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[AviLazar]

Hmm edit, I got confused - change Katie Jones to Katie Tarbox :) Thats what I get for typing and trying to speak on the phone at once.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[JawFunk]

If the author doesn't even have the final say about the TITLE OF HER OWN BOOK, then something else is seriously wrong.

That's bullshit. If a publisher is going to agree to spend the money to print and market your book, they will also decide how to attractpeople by coming up with an appealing title. For example, I could put out a book called "The Economics of Personal Income", or I can create a captivating title like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" (see book by Robert Kiyosaki)

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

which, btw, is a load of crap

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[nysus]

I called and just got a message. But the phone is apparently on. It rang several times.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[mikedaisey]

This really isn't accurate. In practice, the author gets to choose the title in the vast majority of cases, and certainly I know of no cases where the author isn't consulted and signs off on the title in question.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[KKin8or]

Then why is the first Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the UK, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the US? Not because JK Rowling changed her mind-- it's because the US publisher thought American kids would be more likely to read it if it had the word "Sorcerer" in the title.

Authors often don't have a final say in the book title. And depending on how old Katie T. was when the book was published, she may have had even less say. Blame Penguin's marketing department.

Re:Voting her book down is the wrong tactic

[legojenn]

it's because the US publisher thought American kids would be more likely to read it if it had the word "Sorcerer" in the title.

Don't forget the duplicate sales when obsessive kids buy imports so that they can get both covers.

Amazon censoring bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they have a patent on censoring the truth now?

Re:Amazon censoring bastards!

[doublem]

Do they have a patent on censoring the truth now?

Dude, there is SO much prior art on that one, even the USPS won't grant a patent on it!

Re:Amazon censoring bastards!

[nuggetboy]

Funny, last time I went down to the "USPS", they wouldn't let me file a patent on ANYTHING. They would let me mail a letter, though.

Re:Amazon censoring bastards!

[warpSpeed]

Dude, there is SO much prior art on that one, even the USPS won't grant a patent on it!

Dude, what does the US Postal Service (USPS) have to do with patents? Your probably thinking of the US Patent and Trademark Office, (USPTO)

Re:Amazon censoring bastards!

[Anonymous Writer]

Do they have a patent on censoring the truth now?

One-click censorship, perhaps? And maybe Micosoft has the patent on double-click censorship.

Re:Amazon censoring bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe Micosoft has the patent on double-click censorship.

I think MS has the "click and hold to start up censoring app" patent.

Re:Amazon censoring bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? What's art got to do with granting patents??

-USPTO Officer

Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Greg Larkin]

What is Amazon doing now - monitoring the traffic it gets to certain books and then removing reviews that contribute to a less than average rating? How do we explain the reduction in reviews from 300+ to 81 and the boost in the rating?

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[benzapp]

this has been going on for a long time at Amazon.

Who actually trusts thos reviews?

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll feed the troll.

Amazon is in the business of selling books. So, of course, you will usually see mostly good reviews.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[callipygian-showsyst]

Amazon removes reviews all the time! They removed a review that I wrote about a book on Java because I pointed out (in the context of a factual review) that the author had been arrested (and plead guilty on related charges) for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year old girl he met on the Internet!

The review was up for a while, and then they dropped it!

I suggest you all go to Amazon and rate all the "one star" reviews helpful, and all the others "not helpful" for Katie.com

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[dave420]

Because those reviews are obviously from people who haven't read the book. I mean, the reviews are supposed to be feedback about the book, not about something else. They're also bound to be blatantly unobjective and biassed, which skews the rating of the book. /. fucked with amazon's data, and they unfucked it. What's wrong with that?

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[pyrrhonist]

They removed a review that I wrote about a book on Java because I pointed out (in the context of a factual review) that the author had been arrested (and plead guilty on related charges) for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year old girl he met on the Internet!

I do the same thing with Perl books, and I still can't get Amazon to believe that Tom Christiansen was found dead with a goat, 16 feet of surgical tubing, duct tape, and a grapefruit. (I keed, I keed)

Seriously, though, dare I ask what book it was, and how you know?

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then the reviews that say "oh this book has an important message" should also be pulled.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Writer]

They removed a review that I wrote about a book on Java because I pointed out (in the context of a factual review) that the author had been arrested (and plead guilty on related charges) for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year old girl he met on the Internet!

Perhaps you should re-post that review, but under the "Katie.com" book. I'm sure people buying that book would like to know that the store they are buying it from is also selling a book written by exactly the kind of person that "Katie.com" warns against. That would really piss off anyone who read the book and gave it a good review.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[crem_d_genes]

Because those reviews are obviously from people who haven't read the book.

The choice is not whether one has read the book, but *is it helpful* - as in does it help you make the selection in buying the book.. To answer *No* it is not required that one already have ready the book.

As for this:
They're also bound to be blatantly unobjective and biassed, which skews the rating of the book. /. fucked with amazon's data, and they unfucked it. What's wrong with that?

If you think Amazon's data is not already skewed and therefore in need of *unfucking with* - Then consider what has been business-as-usual for Amazon (they have had the ability to know of the practice since the database contains the necessary information):

This was earlier this year -

"Everyone could see that - oops - some of the site's reviewers really were the author's friends, relatives and even, at times, the author himself. Perhaps worse, other "reviewers" were really arch-enemies of the author, intent on sinking their rivals' work."

Interestingly in this story - a former Amazon literary editor said in the article (link above) - ""Think of it as a chat room," says Marcus. "Anonymity is part of the Web in general." So in effect, to have this book about the potential evil of chat rooms, by using the name of a woman's site who gains income by hosting chat rooms, and then have Amazon decide to take the (cough) "high road" in this current story? Methinks the purpose of removing unfavorable comments is to boost sales.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[nuggetboy]

I did. I'll admit my naivete in that before I read this thread, I pretty much took for granted that the ratings on Amazon were a relatively accurate overview of the quality of books. I'll still look at the ratings as I've found they do match up pretty closely with the quality of the books. However, I'll just give them a little less credence.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[callipygian-showsyst]

I know because he plead guilty. It was in all the papers.

The book is this one. I wrote a serious review of it, and mentioned the author's arrest in passing. Amazon pulled it after a few weeks.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[jellybear]

Details, please.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Chasuk]

The review was up for a while, and then they dropped it!

As they should have. The mistakes that an author makes in his or her personal life have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the content of the book. Even if the book had been about raising kids, the advice in the book still might have been valid. Judge a book by its content, and nothing more.

I am saddened and shocked that a point this obvious should even have to be discussed.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[pyrrhonist]

I know because he plead guilty. It was in all the papers. I wrote a serious review of it, and mentioned the author's arrest in passing. Amazon pulled it after a few weeks.

Wow, that's bizarre. It's interesting to note that he is not listed as an author on either the 5th or latest editions.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly the same type of person. Yes, they both exploited other's and invaded their privacy and used the Internet to do that. But domain hijacking and legal harrassment are not the same as statutory rape.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they would do that to a review of the Koran. After all, Aisha is reputed to have been 9 years old when she got married...

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[stwrtpj]

They removed a review that I wrote about a book on Java because I pointed out (in the context of a factual review) that the author had been arrested (and plead guilty on related charges) for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year old girl he met on the Internet!

Had I worked for Amazon and was in charge of filtering reviews, I would have removed your review as well. Your statement in the review had nothing to do with the merits of the book as pertaining to Java programming, and is thus tantamount to using a smear campaign against the author instead of debating the merits of the work itself.

I suggest you all go to Amazon and rate all the "one star" reviews helpful, and all the others "not helpful" for Katie.com

Vindictiveness generally does not get you very far.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Chasuk]

Because those reviews are obviously from people who haven't read the book.

The choice is not whether one has read the book, but *is it helpful* - as in does it help you make the selection in buying the book.. To answer *No* it is not required that one already have ready the book.

The "x of x people found the following review helpful" info is not a review, which renders your point moot.

If you think Amazon's data is not already skewed and therefore in need of *unfucking with* - Then consider what has been business-as-usual for Amazon (they have had the ability to know of the practice since the database contains the necessary information):

Isn't this sort of like arguing that two wrongs make a right? Or, more germanely, that one shouldn't try to fix a problem at all, because it will still be fucked up, anyway?

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[squiggleslash]

This nugget of information may have been "factual" but was it relevent? Assuming it was true, was it a necessary fact for potential readers to know or was merely confrontational and antagonistic?

I ask because I've written a fair few reviews (27) for Amazon so far, both positive and negative, and never had a review pulled. I think it might be that I have an annoying habit of actually writing facts relevent to the product at hand. I rarely care about the people involved except, for the occasional DVD review, to say whether or not they can act, or for a book review, whether they can write and whether they're competent in the field they're writing in.

It strikes me that making personal allegations (true, provable, proved in court, author convicted, or otherwise) doesn't actually help buyers make a decision. If this book on Java was any good, people needed to know that. If it sucked, people needed to know that. If the author's a paedophile, then the courts and a jury need to get involved, but there's nothing inherent about paedophilia, to the best of my knowledge, that affects the quality of books on Java. Or was he chosing some exceptionally dubious examples?

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[crem_d_genes]

Or, more germanely, that one shouldn't try to fix a problem at all, because it will still be fucked up, anyway?

Of course it will still be fucked up. It's the web. The *company* cannot be reliably counted on monitor the reviews that sadly contribute to its revenue stream. The thought that anyone with half a brain actually believes those reviews is pathetic. Check out that link again I posted - The author himself posting his own reviews - what a joke - And read further - "Internet sites like Amazon.com don't seem as concerned with conflict of interest". They only change it when it suits their purposes.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Amazon wasn't censoring that's a bad assumption to make. For the most part only people who like a book, or really hate it are going to bother reviewing it.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the book is a self-help book, or psychology or some equally innane stuff, sure I think the author's life has some weight in the content of the book.

But, otherwise, yeah, I agree with you.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[cliveholloway]

"Judge a book by its content, and nothing more."

So, if the book was written by a convicted pedophile, and they were getting $5 for every copy sold, you would see no reason not to buy that book. Would you honestly buy it if you knew that?

Interesting...

cLive ;-)

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[carlos_benj]

I'll take a stab at it and say that the reviews were removed because they were not reviews. The negative comments were about this particular situation which has no bearing on the content of the book itself.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Chasuk]

Honestly? Yes, I would.

Of course, there are exceptions. In Japan, there is a gentleman (Issei Sagawa) who is notorious for killing and eating a Dutch co-ed. This may be folklore, but I believe that Issei Sagawa authored a cookbook, and thereby profited from his crime.

No, I wouldn't buy his cookbook. But I would buy his book on bicycle repair (assuming that he had written one), if the book were otherwise worthy of purchase.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, I probably would have checked it out to be sure. But there are enough decent Java books out there that I don't have to be contributing to the existance of child molesters. It'd be a better world if they all died, and if I can nominally increase the odds of one starving to death, it's for the best.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[dasmegabyte]

Let's not forget that Lewis Caroll, author of the youth fantasy Alice in Wonderland, was a mathematician who liked to photograph nude children. One might say his obsessions with logic puzzles and the innocence of youth helped create one of the most influential works of modern western literature.

In fact, a lot of great author were perverts or deviants...with the notable exception of Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov, who despite his writing the most famous modern tale about a sexual relationship between a man and a young girl was not himself sexually interested in children -- in fact, he's claimed the story disturbed him as he was writing it.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[Random832]

(in the context of a factual review) that the author had been arrested for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year old girl he met on the Internet!

If it's the same person (if not, mod parent offtopic), the statement was not factual - she was 17.

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[stephenbooth]

And at the time that was probably quite legal. Age of consent has changed from time to time and culture to culture. As I recall Juliet (in the play Romeo and Juliet) is only supposed to be 14 (when first introduced it is stated that she'll be 14 at Lammastide which is in a 'fortnight and odd days') when she married Romeo (who was supposed to be 16, although I don't think it's explicitly stated in the play). In that society that was quite old for a girl to be unmarried. Mind you it was normal for a couple to marry at a very young age but not consumate the marriage for some years.

Stephen

Re:Amazon is censoring its reviews?

[squiggleslash]

As long as he's not actually making his living from his crimes, yes, I'd see no problem buying the book.

Punish him for the evil he does, not the good.

Ex Amazon Employee

[Foofoobar]

I was with Amazon from 95-97 and helped build there buying dept and one of the things we fought against was marketing have direct control over reviews and stuff.

After I left, they started removing bad reviews of books all the time... especially when they were overstocked and wanted to sell more. Amazon is not the friendly business it used to be and I try to purchase everything I can through alternate sources.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, I wouldnt be surprised if amazon simply purged all 'reviews' entered yesterday during the several hours after slashdot posted the story. clearly, there's large probability the 'reviewers' didnt read the book beyond it's title, like most of the negative reviews to books by Al Franken or Anne Coulter.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[wayward]

That's really interesting. There were a number of reviews that suggested that something in a book might not be factually accurate, and Amazon made all those reviews disappear. It was sort of Orwellian and made me have less confidence in Amazon.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Dark Lord Seth]

Then again, some books don't need reading in order to judge the contents. ( Referring to Ann Coulter's books, not Katie.com ) Besides, I saw most of the reviews and most mentioned the fact that the publisher was trying to strongarm Katie Jones into giving up her domain name, with the occasional cry for a boycott on Penguin (something). Nothing much about the book itself, just the publisher.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Tim C]

In other words, most of them weren't reviews at all; sounds like removing them was fair enough then.

The same thing happened to all the glowing reviews of Half Life 2 (iirc) on amazon.co.uk - there were literally dozens of 5 star reviews for it (and Doom3, etc). A few weeks ago, I checked the page to see if they had an updated release date, and all the "reviews" had gone.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, some books don't need reading in order to judge the contents. ( Referring to Ann Coulter's books, not Katie.com )

You must be at least a little bit embarassed to say that, aren't you? It's one thing to be one of the idiots who crapfloods Amazon with negative reviews about books they haven't read, but to say so...?

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

After I left, they started removing bad reviews of books all the time... especially when they were overstocked and wanted to sell more. Amazon is not the friendly business it used to be and I try to purchase everything I can through alternate sources.

So where would you suggest looking for unbiased reviews?

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a fairly simple thing to write a web bot that keeps 'reviewing' that book. Does anyone have an archive of the 300 or so reviews from yesterday??

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[sik0fewl]

Yep, something like that. Here's the post I posted yesterday in the original discussion. It was never modded so it's likely nobody read it:

Amazon.com seems to be deleting a lot of the reviews. At one point there were 215 reviews and now it's down to 140 (and still declining).

People, when you write your reviews try to make them sound intelligent if you don't want them to be deleted. At least I *hope* they're only deleting the "this book sucks and Penguin are greedy bastard"-type reviews. Try to shed a little light on the situation (even if it has already been done in other reviews.)

And then my reply to myself a few minutes later:

Eek.. 95 by the time I was done writing that post...

14:52 - 89
14:53 - 87
14:55 - 85

Well.. you see where this is going.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations on taking the red pill. Amazon is a huge corporate entity with only one concern. It is not unusal for such entities to decide that their best interests do not lie in the same direction as their customers'. After all, they hired one of wal-mart's top marketing execs.

That they would try to manipulate people's perceptions of the product they sell is no surprise in this modern corporate wonderland.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[DerekLyons]

That's really interesting. There were a number of reviews that suggested that something in a book might not be factually accurate, and Amazon made all those reviews disappear. It was sort of Orwellian and made me have less confidence in Amazon.

Your claim is utter nonsense. Of the 81 surviving reviews, numerous are critical of the book. There is nothing (beyond slashdot rumormongering) that could lead one to assume that any part of the book is not factually accurate.

Amazon was quite correct to remove the reviews that were about the activities of the lawyers and not about the book.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Lord_Dweomer]

"The same thing happened to all the glowing reviews of Half Life 2 (iirc) on amazon.co.uk - there were literally dozens of 5 star reviews for it (and Doom3, etc)."

Maybe they managed to get the leaked source code to work!

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[wayward]

Since the thread was about Amazon censorship, I was talking about what I'd seen of a book, which did not happen to be "Katie.com." In fact, the book I was referring to currently has 150 reviews. Sorry if my post overtaxed your reading comprehension.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[orkysoft]

Yes, it looks like they have removed the comments manually, instead of just removing all comments on the book from the time Slashdotters started "crapflooding" the page.

BTW, I found the "crapflood" pretty amusing, actually.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Chacham]

Nice that you fought it.

I once left a critical review at BN.com. yet it never made it. I then check other reviews, and found basically no negative reviews. Amazon many times has negative reviews on books. So, i really only by from them now.

Just something i looked at once, and quickly too.

Any comments?

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Foofoobar]

I wouldn't doubt it. We fought Barnes and Noble because they were the evil empire at the time. I've come to realize that alot of companies use their websites as propoganda machines in this sense to increase sales. Doesn't make it correct behaviour though.

Re:Ex Amazon Employee

[Chacham]

Fought??

Wait, what?

[cephyn]

Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars."

Wait, it has FEWER reviews today than yesterday? What's the story there?

Re:Wait, what?

[randyest]

Well, the story is that the bad reviews were deleted. Granted, many of them were tirades against Katie T, her fat lawyer, and Penguin. But they were negative. And now they're gone.

Amazon, of course, has the right to remove reviews -- it's their site. After all, they're in the business of selling books, not providing a forum for socio-political discourse.

Kind of a shame though. Many of them were funny, especially the one with the lawyer's cellphone number included.

Re:Wait, what?

[Tony Hoyle]

Amazon routinely remove 'unfavourable' reviews.

I've had a few of mine deleted, sometimes several days after they were written.

Re:Wait, what?

[NeoSkandranon]

I imagine some admin deleted all the flamebait/troll reviews that cropped up from people who hadn't RTF'ing book but were simply pissed about the domain incident

Re:Wait, what?

[AEton]

It's kind of like what happened to satiric "The Pet Goat" reviews - most of them are gone now, deleted into oblivion.

Happily, the classic "The Story About Ping" review is still available, though I'm not sure whether the Amazon reviewer plagiarized from the /. story or vice versa. (There was some question as to whether the submitter was really the author of the Amazon review.)

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

SO why don't we all just re-post the reviews?
And re-repost the reviews.
And re-re-repost the reviews.
etc.

I'm up for a couple of weeks of copy/paste at Amazon.com.

Re:Wait, what?

[tenton]

Off topic here, but do you really need to put 'ing after the F? The 'ing is part of what the F stands for. ^_^

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and don't forget the joys of reading Family Circus reviews on Amazon either!

Re:Wait, what?

[NeoSkandranon]

LOL, i guess not, was attempting to delineate a little because RTFBook looked wierd to me

Crapflood reviewers...

[heyitsme]

A couple months ago some journalist made some disparaging remarks about Phish and Phish fans (phans). Those "phans" with internet connections found the journalist's book on Amazon (a cookbook I believe) and did the same thing they are doing to Katie T.'s book.

It's a shame people do this... becuase actions like these don't gain any ground, and just end up leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[kooshvt]

... found the journalist's book on Amazon (a cookbook I believe) ... just end up leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth

Was the cookbook that bad?

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[LeninZhiv]

Although to the credit of slashdotters, the overwhelming majority of the one-star reviews given to katie.com were intelligent explanations of why, given the hypocritical conduct of the publisher, readers should steer clear of the title, not brainless flaming. Some even suggested other books for young adults which address internet safety instead.

Not that that stopped amazon from pulling them all anyway...

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's a shame people do this...

Absolutely. We have to get rid of this mob democracy myth; it dangerous, and hurts our Good Bushian Overlords Control over us, our locations, and our minds.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Altus]

maybe they just dont like seafood?

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[heyitsme]

Absolutely. We have to get rid of this mob democracy myth; it dangerous, and hurts our Good Bushian Overlords Control over us, our locations, and our minds.

I know it was a troll, but I'll bite. Mob democracy? What the hell are you talking about? Having 500 people log on to a private business's site(Amazon), and ABUSE their system leaving bad reviews (without reading the book, no less) is completely detached from democracy.

These people clearly broke the terms of the site (reviewing without reading, focusing on topics besides the book [i.e. the litigation]). So what did Amazon do? they did things Slashdot style... moderation! But instead of marking -1, Flaimbait, the deleted the crapflood because unlike slashbots, Amazon is smart enough to to deal with trolls.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[kurthr]

... found the journalist's book on Amazon (a cookbook I believe) ... just end up leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth

Was the cookbook that bad?

They were until Amazon cooked them!

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Anonymous Coward]

If one of the books I was planning on buying had been involved in an incident like this, I'd damn well want to know about it so that I could avoid supporting those abusive arseholes. The negative reviews aren't crap at all, they are very important information.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[emtboy9]

Having 500 people log on to a private business's site(Amazon), and ABUSE their system leaving bad reviews (without reading the book, no less) is completely detached from democracy.

I realize this is off topic, BUT, actually, that sounds a LOT like democracy to me... at least modern democracy here....

Think about how many people actually go to the polls and vote for a particular candidate simply because he or she is affilitated with a particular party.

Or how many women voted for Al Gore in 2000 because they thought he was "sexy". And that was actually polled...

How many people vote a particular way simply because their parents vote that way, or because some puffed up hollywood actor tells them to??

With the exception of Amazon.com being a private business, and thus the site being private property, the "Mob Democracy" idea sounds a LOT like voting here in the US... Sorry, but it does. Most people vote without having even an inkling of what the positions of the candidates are, what the issues are, or what electing a particular person will mean in the long run...

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Anne_Nonymous]

Go check out the Amazon reviews on Michael Moore's latest book. It's like the battle for Stalingrad all over again; the Commies and the Fascists fight a vast and bloody battle, the Commies win, but are left with a city of only rubble. It's simultaneously hilarious and disgusting.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Idarubicin]

It's your call:

PHISH SOUP WITH PHENNEL

1 lb Phlounder
Bones from Phish
1 Bay leaph
4 Parsley stalks
2 Lovage stalks
6 1/4 c Cold water
Sea salt
6 Black peppercorns
1 Small onion
1 Carrot
1 Leek
1/2 lb Hake
2 tb Butter
1 tb Phlour
2 tb Sour cream
2 tb Chopped phennel leaves

Put the phish bones in a pan with the bay leaph, parsley, and lovage.
Cover with cold water, add salt and peppercorns, and bring to boil. Simmer for 30 minutes....

(Full recipe here.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Zibblsnrt]

Although to the credit of slashdotters, the overwhelming majority of the one-star reviews given to katie.com were intelligent explanations of why, given the hypocritical conduct of the publisher, readers should steer clear of the title, not brainless flaming.

Unfortunately, the point of reviews is to review the book, not the publisher.

-PS

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it got bad reviews! The last thing a Phish phan needs is an instruction manual on how to get cooked.

Re:Crapflood reviewers...

[aggiefalcon01]

Was the cookbook that bad?

I ate my sig.

Can't have been very helpful for you ...

Cyberlawyer?

[frostman]

What exactly is a Cyberlawyer anyway?

Is that some kind of half-human, half-robot lawyer?

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[CableModemSniper]

You will be litigated. Reistance is futile.

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[philbowman]

Wow! They've made one that's actually half human?

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

She specializes in cases concerning "cyber", as in "wanna cyber, baby?"

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

*golf clap*

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[freeze128]

She should team up with RoboCop!

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

One day, you will say just wikipedia it instead of google the phrase. As of today though, there ins't a listing on en.widipeida.org for cyberlawyer. Anyone wana be the first to build the listing?

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[NanoGator]

CYBER LAWYER PRIME DIRECTIVES:

1.) Swerve the public trust

2.) Neglect the innocent

3.) Uproot the law

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[TrevizeNet]

That's Cyberlawyer, remember how Dr. Evil always wanted sharks with frickin laser beams

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[wimvds]

It's a lawyer that knows exactly how to act like a cyberstalker. Shouldn't Katie J. file a complaint there? >:-)

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Anubis350]

0) Protect all lawyers from danger:
others must read:
1)Swerve the public trust, if not in conflict with law 0
2)neglect the innocent if not in conflict with 0 or 1
3)uproot the law if not in conflict with 0, 1, or 2

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[sharkey]

Ack!! At least warn a guy before you link to a picture like that. Still, she should get together with this guy. They seem to be two of a kind. Both are aggresive lawyers on the attack, both took nose-dives off the ugly tree and both are working to words being totally reviled by the geek community.

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

That'd be half snake, half robot...

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Cpt_Kirks]

What exactly is a Cyberlawyer anyway?

They use "IANAL" instead of "Esq.".

Re:Cyberlawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) Swerve the public trust

2.) Neglect the innocent

3.) Uproot the law

4.) ???

5.) Profit!

Identity Theft

[Pirow]

I find it amusing that there's a post in Parry Aftab's blog about Identity Theft Insurance, yet she's helping with the theft of somebody's online identity.

Re:Identity Theft

[JamesKPolk]

Her theft insurance must work like Mafia fire insurance: You pay us and nothing will happen to identity. Don't pay us and "things will get worse than they are now."

Startling discovery about Ms. Atfab!

[callipygian-showsyst]

Her name is an ANAGRAM of "A FAT B*"!

Coincidence? I think not!

Re:Startling discovery about Ms. Atfab!

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha! That is truly AMAZING!

Re:Startling discovery about Ms. Atfab!

[Anonymous Writer]

Her name is an ANAGRAM of "A FAT B*"!

Take a look at her photo. This looks like someone who has never walked past a twinkie without stuffing it into her face. She called and harrassed Katie Jones a week after Jones gave birth. Atfab truly is a fat b*.

Re:Startling discovery about Ms. Atfab!

[_xeno_]

Anyone else notice that the photo (that she presumably picked out herself) looks surprisingly like a certain Star Wars character? (Seriously - compare one to the other. It's uncanny!)

I have to wonder what on earth she was thinking when she chose that photo. She has better ones on her webpage... why choose that unless you want to be associated with Jabba?

Re:Startling discovery about Ms. Atfab!

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks like someone who has never walked past a twinkie without stuffing it into her face. She called and harrassed Katie Jones a week after Jones gave birth.

She was just jealous that KatieJ had been able to lose about 10lbs in less than a day.

Not that surprising

[American AC in Paris]

"Yesterday /. ran an article about the book Katie.com. Out of curiosity I just visited the Amazon.com website to see how many more reviews were on the website. Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars."

So what? Most of those negative reviews were posted because of the brouhaha with Penguin and the Katie.com domain; they didn't weigh in on the quality of the book itself. Hell, most of the reviews were from people who had never read the book. If Amazon didn't police their reviews for this kind of abuse, any two-bit asshat with a bone to pick could tank a perfectly good book's reputation with a few hours' work.

Re:Not that surprising

[philbowman]

> any two-bit asshat with a bone to pick could tank a perfectly good book's reputation with a few hours' work

You underestimate the abilities of your fellow /.ers. Few hours, indeed..

Re:Not that surprising

[ChiefoftheChiss]

Dude, where's my review...!!! We should /. the crud out of that review page to make up for our stolen reviews!

Re:Not that surprising

[American AC in Paris]

Point, Phil.

Re:Not that surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

If Amazon didn't police their reviews for this kind of abuse, any two-bit asshat with a bone to pick could tank a perfectly good book's reputation with a few hours' work.

or the other way around like this .

Re:Not that surprising

[Pizzop]

Yeah, but this policing shit doesn't way out where authors come in and post good reviews for their own books under the guise of anonymous posting. It's like taking out false positives but saying "The false negatives don't hurt anyone." That's bullshit, cuz dipshit's will review their book up, have friends do it, and then a poor sap will buy the book, find it sucks, and he wasted his money. All because no one bothers to police the other side of the fence.

Re:Not that surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

> any two-bit asshat with a bone to pick could tank a perfectly good book's reputation with a few hours' work.

So, instead any two-bit asshat drawing a paycheck from a publisher can push up the ratings of a piece of trash not worthy of lining a bird cage, let alone wiping my dogs ass with a few hours' work. Yeah, that certainly is ok, then.

Re:Not that surprising

[Bromrrrrr]

This is too funny:

Before [David] Hasselhoff, no one seriously thought of rock music as actual art. That all changed in the 1990s, though, when Hasselhoff created an undeniable work of art which remains, after a number of years, one of the most influential albums of all time

Want their opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, can anyone find Amazon's Press release? on our militant action :)

Wish I was a fly on that office wall!

Not a copyright issue

[treehouse]

I don't think this is a matter of who owns katie.com but rather what right anyone has to publically display your web page, email address, home address, or phone number. IANAL but if Katie Jones' actual phone number had been used as the title of a book about sexual harassment, she would have every right to sue the publisher for any actual or potential harassment she herself might suffer. Same thing should apply to web sites.

Re:Not a copyright issue

[RazzleFrog]

Sorry but she would have no case either with her phone number or web address. No one ever sued Tommy Tutone for 867-5309 even though it caused quite a headache for owners of the number. I would also point out that unless you specifically pay to not have your number published there are millions of places to find your home number.

As for the website - there is noting private or personal about a web address. As KPMG will tell you you cannot reasonably expect people to not use your domain name - even if you have a trademark on it.

Re:Not a copyright issue

[falcon5768]

actually not true, they settled out of court with the tommy tutone song.... tommy paid everyone the money they needed to geth their number changed.

Re:Not a copyright issue

[RazzleFrog]

Never happened. That's just an urban legend.

Re:Not a copyright issue

[Fezmid]

The difference (IMHO) between the Jenny song example and this one is that the Jenny song doens't list an area code. It'd be the equivalent of a book title, "www.katie." and having the user guess the domain.

FWIW.

what a nitpick

[LeninZhiv]

You may find fault with what words Katie J. is able to find to state her case, but don't try to turn the whole issue around completely: she's not the one who's doing anything here, it's Katie T.+lawyer+Penguin who are attacking her continued use of her own website. How you can get from that to Katie J. being an attention hog is beyond me; no one would be interviewing her in the first place if this hadn't happened.

Just because she doesn't defend herself flawlessly doesn't make her wrong all of a sudden.

Katie.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Katie Jones should redirect traffic to some raunchy porn sites ;-)}

Re:Katie.com

[dr_dank]

Maybe Katie Jones should redirect traffic to some raunchy porn sites ;-)}

As opposed to those non-raunchy porn sites?

Re:Katie.com

[Mateito]

Like this one?

Re:Katie.com

[dr_dank]

I saw that cat-ear guy at HOPE. I wept.

Re:Katie.com

[battlemarch]

I suggest that she redirect to the site of a book publisher other than Penguin.

Lets make amazon work then

[tekwiz]

Lets do the reviews again, this time aiming at Amazon and Penguin...if nothing else maybe it will alert their non tech savvy buyers to what kind of shit they pull with reviews..

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN.

[Foofoobar]

Welll yes they were prior to 96 when they went corporate. Once they went corporate though, all common sense went out the window and the almighty dollar and stock holder concerns rule out any sense of fairness and responsibility. *shrug*

The proper way to give a bad review

[shawnmchorse]

The mistake we made was in giving negative reviews of the book that only talked about the domain name thing. What really needs to happen would be more one star reviews like the following I just spotted there:

This book royally sucks, August 5, 2004

A Kid's Review
It is poorly written, contradictive, boring in all passages, and written by someone with a sick pendant for the perverse. I have seen better pieces of the litterature in the weekly "Garfield"-strip... and comparing this book to said comic, is even a disservice to Jim Davis!

In other words, stay away from this book, it's hardly worth the paper it's printed on.

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[CrimsonAvenger]

Of course, this particular review is semiliterate, at best. Not sure I'd trust a review saying "it is poorly written" by someone who writes so poorly.

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have to be a musician to appreciate good music? Do you have to be a painter to appreciate a portrait?

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[LordK2002]

...with a sick pendant for the perverse

What, like a hypnotist's watch in the shape of a penis?

K

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[j-beda]

When I went looking on amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk yesterday, the .ca site had one review about the domain name (out of 83?), written May 14, 2002, but the co.uk site had only about three reviews in total I think. Today the .ca site has a new negative review about the domain name, but the .co.uk one still has only about three reviews total.

The amazon.com site does show a lot of "votes" for some of the negative reviews though.

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[RealAlaskan]

I just posted one which goes like this:

Although there may be some value in this book as a cautionary tale, I'd advise against buying it for two reasons. First, Katie Tarbox doesn't seem to have learned a vital lesson from her mistake: children are dependent on their parents, and need to trust them. The young readers at whom it seems to be aimed may learn to be careful when they sneak behind their parent's backs, but that's not the right lesson to learn. Second, the publisher, Penguin, deliberately titled the book katie.com, although they knew that was the domain name of a website belonging to a British woman, who used the site to post pictures of her children for relatives to view. After the book was published, she began to get hate mail from pedophiles. Penguin has ``hijacked'' her domain, and is callously exploiting her, in the same fashion that the pervert described in this book exploited the girl who wrote it. Purchasing the book will encourage the publisher to commit more such abuses in the future.

It'll be interesting to see if they let it onto their site.

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[dhalgren]

Of course not. But you do need to be a musician to be qualified to evaluate the mechanics of music; you need to be a painter to comment on the technique used in a painting. As in any field, you can only comment as a layman until you have developed your own expertise.

Re:The proper way to give a bad review

[CrimsonAvenger]

Now that you mention it, I did find that my appreciation of music increased after I started learning to play a fiddle.

That said, how can someone who can't spell "literature" be expected to recognize it when he sees it?

Site getting slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Interview with Katie Jones of (the Real) Katie.com posted by scubacuda on Friday August 06, @01:13AM from the racketeering.com? dept.

Copyright Katie Jones (the real Katie.com owner) shares with GrepLaw some of the details of the dispute with Penguin's "branding" of its book, Katie.com.

Katie talks about her conversation with cyberlawyer Parry Aftab, how she believes Penguin's title change (from girl.com [then a porn site] to Katie.com) suggests that Penguin thought it could steamroll her without recourse, and the tremendous amount of support the geek community has shown her.

Katie, you're involved in an interesting dispute over your domain, Katie.com. Tell us more.

In a nutshell, in 2000 a book was published by the name of 'katie.com' - a story by a girl who was molested by a guy she met on the Internet. Katie.com the domain name belongs to me and the first I heard of the book was when I started to receive email from people thinking I was the author.

And when did you first register your domain?

My husband bought the domain for me as a gift in 1996. He registered one each for us (his is gareth.com) and we both felt we were extremely lucky to get our own names with a dot com extension at a time when they were being snapped up very quickly.

So they could have known that Katie.com was registered to you?

They must've known. Early publicity for the book stated that it was going to be called girl.com and at that time girl.com was a porn site. Suddenly it was changed. This is a clear indication that they knew the title of the book would be significant. I imagine that they thought I was a 'nobody' that they could steamroller me without recourse.

How has the Penguin's "branding" of Katie.com restricted the use of your domain?

I originally had links to my business, my resume, and also personal items such as photo's of my son and other family members. Seeing as my business is online chat / community development it was obviously not in my best interests to be linked to the subject matter of this book so I removed that. And of course, I didn't want people who were interested in the subject of pedophilia or molestation viewing pictures of my baby boy.

The Register covered your dispute a few years ago. Anything in particular that made the issue resurface?

I posted an update to my website http://www.katie.com after I had a phone call from Parry Aftab, a lawyer working with Katie Tarbox on a new project. The lawyer asked me to 'donate' my domain name to them, attempted to emotionally blackmail me into doing so, and when I refused then got quite nasty about it and told me things would 'only get worse' if I didn't. The update was picked up by the blog community and then the press.

Have you ever talked to Katie Tarbox? Might she be able to do something about it, if she so wanted?

Never. She's never approached me. I've read responses she's written to other people denying all responsibility and blaming Penguin. But she's continuing to work using the term 'katie.com' for publicity, and apparently about to launch materials for schools using the title too, so regardless of whether she had control over the title of the book (and I'm sure she must have to some extent) she could choose to put an end to this invasion of my privacy and use another marketing tactic, but she doesn't.

Have any lawyers tried to steamroll you? (On your website, you mention an "aggressive lawyer" [and then link to Parry Aftab, the executive director of KatiesPlace.org who is working with Katie Tarbox])

Yes, Parry Aftab called me ostensibly to write an article for 'Information Week'. It transpired during the conversation that she was working with Katie Tarbox on a new project, at which point I began to feel misled about the purpose of the call. She told me that I should donate the domain name to them, or redirect it to their new project/site. I politely refused and she continued to attempt to pe

Re:Site getting slow

[chimpo13]

I like that Katie J says, "I have not accepted money" that was offered to her by fellow geeks. Just wait until she receives a bill for the slashdotting.

Re:Site getting slow

[Otter]

Here's what I don't get -- girl.com is available now! If that was their first choice anyway, they could have quietly snapped it up for less than the cost of paying a lawyer to threaten Katie #1. Meanwhile katie.com is going to fight them and the price of girl.com just went up.

Re:Site getting slow

[Claw919]

Excellent work, Slashdotters.

She's getting slammed on her site with all kinds of traffic, just gave birth to a baby boy, and just wants to be left alone, and the best suggestion you can come up with?

Turn katie.com into a porn site.

*Sigh*...

Re:Site getting slow

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the proper way to deal with the Penguin folks is to look at their corporate organization chart (Google searches for things like "Penguin Putnam President" or the like yield these). Then you can look up the names of department heads on whitepages.com or similar sites. For instance, John Makinson is in charge of the London operations and a search in London for Makinson yields a J Makinson. I don't live in England and don't want to dial overseas to call and see if indeed it is the same J Makinson, but if it is, all you Londoners should give him a call and ask him about katie.com. Bring it to their doorstep.

Re:Site getting slow

[Anonymous Coward]

and the best suggestion you can come up with?

No, that's a suggestion. There are many others in case you haven't noticed.

Re:Site getting slow

[Gumber]

So, either Katie T. is being an unsavory human being in allowing her lawyer to harrass and bully Katie J.

Or: Katie T. has just given her lawyer broad agency to pursue her interests. If so, then I'd say that the lawyer is failing to serve her clients interests in inviting all this bad publicity.

And/Or: Katie T's lawyer is basically latched on to Katie T. and is exploiting her for her own gain, little different than the pedo who exploited her in the first place.

Either way, the attorney should be fired, or worse.

Katie.com as a porn site

[doublem]

Hey, it's her damn domain. She can do what she wants with it.

Something tells me if the site suddenly wen to a hard core "Barely Legal Teens" site, Penguin's interest would perk up REAL soon.

Any self respecting porn web master should be chomping at the bit for all the guaranteed traffic that such a domain would ensure.

And the owner's argument when Penguin sues her? "I could not longer use the domain and had to finance the process of moving all of my personal and business activity to another domain."

Penguin would either have to spend a lot of cash on a lawsuit or changing the name of the book.

Penguin really is being arrogant and irresponsible.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[Anonymous Coward]

Any self respecting porn web master
Funny turn of phrase.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? It's just a honest business.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[Anonymous Coward]

They should focus on may-december porn. So that it's all young girls/old men. That'd teach the fuckers.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[Anonymous Coward]

that is the most elegant solution.

sell it to a porn site. after that the whole process is screwed. they cant sue because she can sell it to whomever she wants, the publisher will shit bricks and try to sue a porno site that will simply send back profanity and ignore them by the time ICANN get;'s around to doing anyhing the book's name will be tarnished so badly they will be FORCE to change's the title.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[Anonymous Coward]

This is certainly crude, but I think that Katie.com should turn into a "barely legal" site...

We'd really see how Penguin would react to that one.

Of course, Katie (of the website katie.com) probably has much more integrity than I.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[be951]

Penguin would either have to spend a lot of cash on a lawsuit or changing the name of the book.

Or Penguin (or whoever is behind the new business ventures of selling "safe web use" materials to schools, etc...) could do what they should have done in the beginning: offer a fair price to buy the domain name.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[doublem]

Of course, Katie (of the website katie.com) probably has much more integrity than I.

Selling out to a porn site would probably be the "Conceding defeat but not giving those bastards at Penguin my real domain name." way of giving up completely.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[immakiku]

That can be seen as a tactic rather than a way of selling out. If she does indeed change it in that way, she'd: 1.) Get money for all her troubles. 2.) Give Penguin an ultimatum: change the book's title, live with their book's title as a porn site, or purchase/sue for katie.com. She'd be turning it around into free advertising for herself. It's better than not doing much right now.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[Cpt_Kirks]

Why? It's just a honest business.

The acre and a half of popups on my screen can attest to that.

Re:Katie.com as a porn site

[grolschie]

> The acre and a half of popups on my screen can attest to that.

Amen brother! Although, thankful that CTRL-W works quite nicely. What about all those "honest" activex popup porn-dialer installers that people stupidly, though ignorantly, give permission to install to view some of these "honest" businesses. Or the flood of beasty, kiddie, sicko, etc stuff that arrives in peoples inbox. Who are these people?

2 issues here...

[abkaiser]

1) I emailed and received a response from Katie Tarbox yesterday:

"I appreciate your thoughts and understand them completley. 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."

According to her, it's the publishers at fault here. Can anyone verify this?

2) I like the reference to the "hacker movement" supporting Katie Jones. Perhaps we should start spreading the news a-la Kevin Mitnick? Start plastering "FREE KATIE.COM" stickers everywhere!

Re:2 issues here...

[drinkypoo]

According to her, it's the publishers at fault here. Can anyone verify this?

I can un-verify it. She's the author of the book. Generally speaking the publisher clears the title with the author. If she didn't get the right to veto titles in her contract, then she's at fault just because she's clueless, it's kind of like accidentally shooting someone while checking to see if a gun is loaded. Only less violent.

Re:2 issues here...

[xstein]

Start plastering "FREE KATIE.COM" stickers everywhere!

She wants to be left alone, not to raise awareness or gain publicity.

Re:2 issues here...

[pyrrhonist]

According to her, it's the publishers at fault here. Can anyone verify this?

It's Katie T's lawyer that is harassing Katie J, not Penguin's.

Re:2 issues here...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) I emailed and received a response from Katie Tarbox yesterday:

"I appreciate your thoughts and understand them completley. 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."

Interesting... I sent her some hate mail yesterday and she responded with a threat to sue me. I did write some pretty mean shit, though...

Re:2 issues here...

[skreuzer]

I emailed her yesterday and got the exact same response you did, word for word....

Re:2 issues here...

[Coryoth]

Notably several people posted responses they got from here. They were all exactly that. I would suggest that it is a form response, probably prepared by her lawyer. To test that theory out, I sent an email that essentially said "I understand it's Penguin's fault, but you (presonally, and separate from Penguin) could always make an honest offer to buy the domain of Katie Jones". I have received no response to this - notable because most people that got responses got them promptly.

Jedidiah.

Re:2 issues here...

[dillon_rinker]

RTFA. She's not an adult. There is no legal, ethical, or moral code that makes her liable for this. She didn't accidentally wound someone; she she accidentally let a savvy, experienced adult take advantage of her. Kind of ironic.

Re:2 issues here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post your correspondence. I am intrigued.

Re:2 issues here...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the FUCK does that have to do with the domain issue? And now, I'm pretty sure Tarbox IS an adult, seeing as the actual physical contact took place when she was 17. This book was written in 2000, which logically means she was 17 before the book was written, which makes her about 21-22 right now.

Re:2 issues here...

[jellybear]

The best way for her to be left alone is to make people realize that her website is not associated with the book title katie.com

If the public becomes aware of that fact, they will ignore both the site and the book, and life will return to normal. Public awareness of the controversy would also make the domain name less desirable to penguin because of the associations in the public mind.

Re:2 issues here...

[Merk]

She's at least 18. I believe 20-something. The incident occurred when she was 14, but that's a long time ago.

Re:2 issues here...

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA Yourself, asshole. She is, in fact, an adult now. So why don't you put up an apology for being such an ass?

Re:2 issues here...

[dopaz]

"At the age of eighteen, Tarbox published her memoir and became the leading advocate for Internet safety regarding Internet predators"

She's not a what?

Re:2 issues here...

[poot_rootbeer]

She's the author of the book. Generally speaking the publisher clears the title with the author. If she didn't get the right to veto titles in her contract, then she's at fault just because she's clueless

Do you work in the publishing industry, or are you just spewing your own ideas about how you think the industry SHOULD work?

I'd bet you 20 Karma points that veto power over a book's title is not a standard clause in an author's contract with a book publisher. Katie T. just wrote the book; the marketing of it (including the title) is more than likely all Penguin's doing.

Re:2 issues here...

[drinkypoo]

I like to read authors' blurbs. The blurbs I read that have anything to say about the title generally include something about someone at the publisher suggesting it to the author. So, I don't really know shit, but from what little I do know, it seems to be standard.

I also like to think that the author is responsible for what is done in their name, but of course most people aren't big on personal responsibility.

Re:2 issues here...

[cyberformer]

Authors have very few rights when it comes to how their books are published. Publishers aren't yet quite as repressive as the RIAA, but the only way for an unknown author to get published is to sign away virtually all rights for a very small royalty.

Having said that, it looks like this repellant lawyer is actually representing the author, not just the publisher, though we can't be sure. And the book sold quite well, so the author does now have a bit more influence over Penguin.

Re:2 issues here...

[DerekLyons]

According to her, it's the publishers at fault here. Can anyone verify this?

I can un-verify it. She's the author of the book. Generally speaking the publisher clears the title with the author. If she didn't get the right to veto titles in her contract, then she's at fault just because she's clueless, it's kind of like accidentally shooting someone while checking to see if a gun is loaded.

Um, no. Publishers almost never clear the titles with the author and authors almost never even get offered the right to veto titles. The only exceptions are the billion selling authors (King, etc..).

Re:2 issues here...

[RevAaron]

She's 21 now.

Re:2 issues here...

[xmod2]

This is the same response verbatim that everyone who emailed about this subject got. This doesn't account for the katie.com Internet Safety courses her and her lawyer are looking to start tho.

Re:2 issues here...

[stephenbooth]

Firstly she's 21 now so definately an adult. Secondly the age of criminal culpability (the age where you're judged to be liable for your own actions unless explicitly ruled incompetant based on psychiatric evaluation) is around 10-14 years depending on jurisdiction. North Carolina has executed 14 year olds in living memory and Texas (where Katie Tarbox lived) has laws on it's books allowing the execution of 11 year olds (those are laws recently introduced, not old laws still hanging around from a couple of hundred years ago). If the law considers her cognizant enough of her actions to be executed for them then it must surely consider her cognizant enough to be sued.

Stephen

if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[WormholeFiend]

for her intended purposes, then by all means she should do as one slashdotter suggested in the previous thread about this, that is, post shock photos of goatse for example, although tubgirl might be more appropriate in this instance, should the book's success really take off.

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[aslate]

An amusing idea, but i wouldn't do it unless she isn't going to try and sue/take some form of legal action or has already failed her case. Otherwise it may harm her defence if she fought-back like that. I mean, if she forwards to goatse or something and then claims that she had to remove pictures of her baby (like she says she had to) she's kinda ruining her defence.

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[PReDiToR]

How about redirecting anything that doesn't have an explicitly specified page name redirected back to penguin.com?

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[Mateito]

Did anybody else notice that Parry Aftab and Tubgirl could be twins?

(Links not posted because its lunchtime).

And have you ever seen Tubgirl and Parry Aftab in the same room? Maybe we've had it wrong all this time, and the site is actually tAbgirl.

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[the_mad_poster]

Problem: Penguin steps on your foot.

Solution: Give free advertising to penguin.

Heh.. sometimes sarcasm helps us see more clearly.

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[Anonymous Coward]

if no page specified, forward it to http://girl.com, the original title :)

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[the_mad_poster]

I just visited girl.com . It's just a stupid squatter trying to make ad revenue with yet another bullshit web portal. Wouldn't want to send people there :\

Re:if her katie.com website is no longer usable

[stephenbooth]

Who are Penguin's biggest competitor(s)? Send visitors there.

Problem: Penguin steps on your foot.

Solution: Give free advertising to Penguin's competitor(s).

Or maybe send them to Project Gutenberg?

Stephen

someone who should be slashdotted

[falcon5768]

http://www.aftab.com/..... I mean come on, a lawyer is bad enough... there are too many of those. But a lawyer who apparently has no clue that its not squatting when the person owned the domain YEARS before the book was even made and whos sole buisness is to screw people on the web because there ARE so many loopholes in Internet Law..... that just deserves a slashdotting in my book.

Re:someone who should be slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

My forefinger already hurts from all the reloads, maybe I should install Opera ;)

Ah, back to it again...

Props for a good idea!

Re:someone who should be slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit!

Are all female laywers total fucking pigs or just all the ones I have seen?

zos

Re:someone who should be slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

How about contacting Information Week and telling them their expert Privacy Lawyer is a joke.

InformationWeek
600 Community Drive
Manhasset, NY 11030
Official office hours: 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET
(516) 562-5000 CMP Media LLC main number
(516) 562-5036 Main editorial fax number

http://www.informationweek.com/contactus.jhtml

Re:someone who should be slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

According to her site, she's been on the "O'Riley Factor."

There's joke potential there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to find it.

Re:someone who should be slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found that Ms. Aftab is somewhat less than an expert on technology issues. I think that this may be due to a lack of desire or ability to perform any rigerous thought. Just consider the following article written for information week http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=16000567.

I had some real issues with this article and challenged her in the discussion thread http://www.informationweek.com/forum/showReplies.j html?sid=300001&fid=601011&tid=123900011.

I'm sure you will be able to figure out which person I am ;-)

I wouldn't feel very threatened by Ms. Aftab. I have known alot of lawyers in my life and Ms. Aftab's ability to present a cogent argument (at least to me) paled in comparison to the abilities of other lawyers I know.

Bad Reviews Still There

[Fringe]

I just checked; the negative reviews are still there.

Amazon has an odd sorting scheme, but if you click "view all reviews", you can then further sort by rating or by usefulness. Do the latter. Look for most useful... all are voted useful but one or two stars, mentioning the website bullying. Then click for least useful... those are the five-star ones focusing on the story BEFORE the bullying came out.

You just have to RTF screen.

Re:Bad Reviews Still There

[nuggetboy]

Yah, but you still can't see the "300" posts originally reported. Still says only 81.

Re:Bad Reviews Still There

[valkraider]

If you will notice, the few that are still there that are related to the domain name issue, are dated much older...

Based on that, I am guessing they simply just removed all reviews posted yesterday....

New kinda ghetto music

[Anonymous Coward]

parry aftab

==

bay fart rap

(Man my head hurts)

Better Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

She should just use the goatse.cx image.

Re:Better Idea

[doublem]

Nah.

If she turned it over to a porn site at least then she could get some $$$ for all this frustration.

I don't want to think about the bandwidth bills she's facing as a result of all this.

Write the Penguin Publishing execs.

[nortcele]

Here's what I sent.

Subject: katie.com book and domain issue
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 12:30:14 -0600

To: david.shanks@us.penguingroup.com, john.makinson@us.penguingroup.com,
doug.whiteman@us.penguingroup.com, nigel.portwood@us.penguingroup.com,
anthony.laurino@us.penguingroup.com,

Gentlemen of the Penguin Group,

After reading today about the katie.com disparity between the book
and the internet domain, it appears that Penguin needs to admit an error
and correct course. As an individual involved in the internet with my
own "untrademarked" domains, I would be highly offended if the same
were to happen to me.

I expect that the internet community will rise to assist Katie Jones
with financial obligations encountered in dealing with this situation.
I for one would also help her if the opportunity arises. Losing
goodwill with the internet community isn't something Penquin
should desire. Please re-evaluate this.

Thank you

Re:Write the Penguin Publishing execs.

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to hit them in a way that'll cause them to "get it"? Then find all the phone numbers you can for Penguin publishing, their secretaries, the officers, editors, janitors, etc. And then go and take out a bunch of ads in the yellow pages for things like plumbing, pizza, appliance repair, escort services and then use Penguin's numbers. So that it starts to filter into their head what it's like when someone takes your contact information and associates with something that has nothing to do with you.

(If you can get this shit into a yellow pages, it'll cause them some grief. I've had my number for over a year and I still get calls for the home business that had it before I got it.)

Re:Write the Penguin Publishing execs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, now I realise I misunderstood what you suggest.

I just ordered them lots of pizza and some escorts.

(I decided not to involve plumbers because false alarms are a biggish deal for them. Pizza places OTOH take this stuff as routine, at least the ones with bad food and lousy service which I used.)

Re:Write the Penguin Publishing execs.

[katanan]

i pasted that and sent it to all those addresses, everyone should do the same.

Re:Write the Penguin Publishing execs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should give feedback to the honorable lawyer too. Anyone have her contact information?

Re:Write the Penguin Publishing execs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, copy-n-paste an email to a publishing company. And what for? To show what a good lemming you are? To prove you are incapable of an original thought? That you know how to use cut-n-paste?

Doing this does absolutely nothing. No, dumbshit, write you own f'ing letter.

Maybe she should trademark it

[schon]

Mabe Jones should trademark katie.com, and then sue for infringement.

She's been using the mark for 9 years, and Penguin comes along and tries to co-opt it - I'd say that's grounds for a lawsuit.

Amazon!!

[Gundampilotspaz]

I am really disapointed about the Amazon.com review fix, which I assume is true /. had never lied to me before. Amazon say the attention that the book was getting as a chance to sell some copies, and then deleted the negitive reviews. What a bunch of asses! This means that they may have done this in the past, buyer beware!

You need a link for a /.ing

[doublem]

Making the URL a link makes it much easier to /. a site.

Thus:

http://www.aftab.com/

I will now proceed to fire up Opera and set it to reload the page every 30 seconds.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Coryoth]

I will now proceed to fire up Opera and set it to reload the page every 30 seconds.

Why not

$ while true; do curl http://www.aftab.com > /dev/null; done

It would seem more efficient.

Jedidiah.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[AngryScot]

I can still get to the site!

I want you refreshing every 2 seconds at the least :P

while your at it click here cause my site can always do with more traffic :)

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[nooch]

Yikes! I wish I hadn't tried to help /. that site! Jabba... I mean Parry is scary! She looked hungry, and it scared me...

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[doublem]

Because I'm running Windows at work. :(

Is curl and option in Cygwin?

I'll have to toss together something with wget and a rm command instead.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Coryoth]

Curl is indeed available on Cygwin.

Have fun.

Jedidiah.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Anonymous Coward]

I clicked the link but it was Tubgirl! With her clothes on this time!

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[SmilingBoy]

Making the URL a link makes it much easier to /. a site

Not necessary if you install the Linkification extension for Firefox.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Merk]

I wonder if she's having problems with people filling out this form? You'd think that with such an easy way to vent their frustrations, thousands of annoyed internet users would be using the form for purposes she probably didn't intend.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[T-Ranger]

(for ((i=1;i<=10;i++)); do wget --delete-after http://www.aftab.com ; done )2>/dev/null >/dev/null

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[nusratt]

" now proceed to fire up Opera and set it to reload the page every 30 seconds"

why 30, when you can do 5?
after all, the goal hasn't been attained until a SETTING of 5 yields a RESULT of 30 ;-)

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better, pull down this 126kb image:

$ while true; do curl http://www.aftab.com/_borders/MVL.jpg > /dev/null;
done

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[doublem]

Man, I LOVE /.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Samrobb]

[user@box pwd]$ uname -a
CYGWIN_NT-5.0 claus 1.5.10(0.116/4/2) 2004-05-25 22:07 i686 unknown unknown Cygwin
[user@box pwd]$ curl --version
curl 7.11.1 (i686-pc-cygwin) libcurl/7.11.1 OpenSSL/0.9.7d zlib/1.2.1
Protocols: ftp gopher telnet dict ldap http file https ftps
Features: SSL libz NTLM Largefile

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[doublem]

mattm@DOUBLEM ~
$ curl
bash: curl: command not found

Sadly, it's not a default package.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Samrobb]

True. Then again, there's not a whole lot that gets installed by default, and it's pretty easy to use the setup utility to install curl.

Re:You need a link for a /.ing

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with downloading a copy of the whole wonderful site to /dev/null .
Even better than a page refresh. :)

Whichever Way, Penguin Have Won Now Though...

[g_bowskill]

There are two ways this can end, Firstly Penguin give in and drop the whole shebang, they lost nothing and gain a whole heap of free publicity. This story is circulating the Internet as we speak and It's going to make people remember this book title, and I gurantee a good number of people will go out and buy this book now.

The other ending is that Penguin get the Domain, either legally which is highly doughtful or by buying it from the rightful owner. This means they still get all that juicy publicity and the domain name.

As my old media teacher always said, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Re:Whichever Way, Penguin Have Won Now Though...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a third way: convince Katie Jones to sue Penguin for misusing her domain name, and to sue Aftab for harassment.

Re:Whichever Way, Penguin Have Won Now Though...

[OverlordQ]

I dont know about you but no matter what publicity the book gets, I wont go out a buy a book about a girl that got molested by a guy she met online. So many common sense 'rules' were broken there.

so basically...

[SQLz]

If Penguin was to sue the real katie, and win, then it would set a precedent that all you need to take over a domain name is write a book entitled with the particular domain name.

Shit, I hope it happens because I already started work on my new novel, slashdot.org. Its novel filled with greed, power, lust, set in the computer hacker underground.

Re:so basically...

[automagically]

So we should get a fund together to help get Katie J. a movie deal about the whole incident and call it katie.com

Re:so basically...

[Mateito]

If katie J loses her domain, she should write a book about being fucked-over on the internet by a giant penguin (ie, the truth), and publish it as penguin.com.

Re:so basically...

[cavemanf16]

Seth Finkelstein? Is that you??

LOL, just kidding, Seth. I do think michael sims is a jerk. Cheers! :)

Donations for Katie Jones

[TheFlyingGoat]

Katie Jones should set up a Paypal account linked from her website, where people could donate money to help offset her bandwidth and legal fees. If she donates the excess money to a charity, it'd still be clear she's not using the website for profit. If she donated to a victim's charity of some type, it would be a good gesture to show she supports the point of the book, just not the tactics involved. I'd definitely be willing to donate a few bucks to help Katie Jones out.

Re:Donations for Katie Jones

[NaugaHunter]

Katie Jones should set up a Paypal account linked from her website,

I'd think that if she did this then the other lawyers would find it easier to say she benefitted from the publicity and would subpoena her income tax records and other information about her assets. It would be better to somehow donate to something else, like E.F.F. (Not that I've seen anything yet about them getting in on one side or the other, but you get the point.)

Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[dinivin]

I exchanged a couple e-mails with Katie Tarbox yesterday, and she insists that Parry is not her lawyer. If that's the case, who is Parry working for?

Dinivin

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, herself?

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet she wants katie.com for herself so she can then sell it to penguin for $lots.

and yes, "lots" is a number.

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, same story here. I'd guess Parry is her lawyer, but she doesn't want the flac coming her way so she's tring to deny it.

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[be951]

Parry Aftab's website claims that she will be on "O'Reilly Factor" this month (although she misspelled O'Reilly on her site). Perhaps Bill will hit her with some tough questions about being an internet abuser? Bill's fan email is oreilly@foxnews.com

Some questions I'd like to see him ask are along the lines of :
Katie Tarbox claims you do not represent her, but Katie Jones feels that you did claim to represent K.T. Who do you really represent in the matter of the katie.com book title/domain name issue?

Isn't it hypocritical to present yourself as a defender of rights online while trying to get a valuable domain name for free through threats and intimidation?

I'm sure others of you will have insightful questions as well. And at least making O'Reilly aware of this conflict could also make the show more interesting.

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[cmowire]

See, that's interesting.

If you check out Katiesplace.org, you see Katie T, and Parry Aftab's name promenantly.

If you check out Katie T's projects page, she also mentions Parry Aftab as being part of these projects.

If you check out Parry's blog, she talks about katiesplace.com being a collaboration between her and Katie T.

Nope. Sounds like Parry is working with Katie T to me, as shown by publicly available information on the pages "controlled" by the respective folks. Thus, Katie Jones still has the story with more easily verifiable truth to it.

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[JMagnus]

yes, Anonymous Coward is the perfect handle for someone who would post such offensive drivel.

NO ONE DESERVES TO BE RAPED

EVER

sociopathic moron...

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you know anything about O'Reilly, you'll know that he doesn't care about what's right or fair, he cares about pleasing idiots who make judgments off their gut instincts. So who will he side with more? The teennage victim of a pedophile or the geeky girl getting in her way?

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Inebrius]

Perhaps someone could write a series of books about the seldom praised benefits and other positive aspects of being stalked, molested and abused, throw in a chapter on NAMBLA...

and title the books Katiesplace.org and katiet.com, and then suggest they donate the websites, or sue them for ownership. If Katie T doesn't appreciate the association, tough.

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[ageoffri]

I just sent the below email to the O'Reilly address.

Mr. O'Reilly, It has come to my attention that Parry Aftab is claiming she will be on your excellent show this month. I'd like to make sure you are aware of the cyber abuse she is a part of while at the same time claiming to be a "leading expert" on Internet privacy and cyber-abuse. The domain katie.com was registered 1996 by Katie Jones and in the year 2000 Penguin published a book by Katie Tarbox with the title katie.com. The original title of the book of was going to be girl.com, but at the time girl.com was an online porn site. The title was changed to katie.com this shows that Penguin did research the domains and chose to use katie.com knowing that it was already registered. Now this has destroyed the ability of Katie Jones to use her domain. In conversations between Katie Jones and Parry Aftab, Parry urged Katie to donate the domain because it really belonged to Katie Tarbox because of the book title.

I would love to see you grill her on why an expert on Internet abuse would condone and attempt to use emotional blackmail in this manner. This is a clear case of abuse with malice forethought by Penguin, yet Katie Jones is a private citizen without the resources of a company like Penguin. The only hope she has is for influential and respected members of the Press, like yourself, to show this blatant abuse to the world.

This is an issue that I would love to see a good strong precedent set for because I own the domain of my last name and do not want to ever have to go through something like this myself.

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

figrues that sleeze like Parry Aftab would stick close to other sleeze like O'Reilly....

Re:Is Parry Aftab Katie Tarbox's lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, we all know Tarbox was the victim in this case because Clinton got a BJ from a fatty. It's pretty clear who doesn't watch the O'Rielly Factor *dadadalungnnn* oh wait, that's from the Fox News Magazine show that tanked after Maury Povich left to scam on ungly korean chicks.

Here's an interesting thing . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I was nearly able to register katiejones.com - figured I'd donate it to her or something. I then thought better of it when the credit card number page came up; after all, $35 is a bit much for a "random act of kindness." If it had been $10, I'd have done it. Here's the thing, though: a cyber squatter already seems to have the domain that Network Solutions was trying to sell me . . .

Re:Here's an interesting thing . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

You could just use a cheaper registrar.

Re:Here's an interesting thing . . .

[nlindstrom]

I then thought better of it when the credit card number page came up; after all, $35...

You're an idiot. You can register .com domains for $8.95 over at www.godaddy.com.

Another idea

[StuckInSyrup]

Maybe Katie.com should become a page, where domain hijacking victims can find help. I know that Katie is really pissed off by now, but on the other side, now she has some experience with this kind of stuff.

Parry "Capone" Aftab

[Anonymous Coward]

Well obviously, Katie Jones didn't pay for the insurance.

"That's a real nice URL, Ms. Jones. Would be a shame if something happened to it."

What about /. effect? Re:Katie Jones should get

[D3]

Just remember, if she can sue for damages done to her website, others may try to sue Slashdot for DoS.

Re:What about /. effect? Re:Katie Jones should get

[Smile005]

I don't think that it's the same thing. She would be suing not just because she's getting a lot of visitors, rather because people would be thinking there's a link between Katie.com and the book.
Is Slashdotting really DoS? I mean it's not as if it's a co-ordinated attack.

Re:What about /. effect? Re:Katie Jones should get

[iamacat]

because people would be thinking there's a link between Katie.com and the book

Hey everyone! Download great free pr0n here!

The Fat B's Contact Info

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this fatass asshat shyster a piece of your mind: Parry Aftab: parry@aftab.com 201-463-8663 (her U.S. cell phone). -

TUBGIRL IS SEXY!

[Anonymous Coward]

I will buy the domain for $5000 to put up tubgirl.

Donate to katie

[adamgeek]

from what i found at the USPTO search.. there is no trademark on katie.com. Katie needs to TM her domain (prior art back to 1996, remember), and then she will be the one with all the power. Of course, IANAL so what she really needs to do is consult a lawyer who knows about trademark law and this kind of stuff.

I'm personally willing to donate money to help her (this kind of crap angers me soooo much) and I would encourage other /.'ers to reply saying they will as well. Yesterday her friend replied here saying he would post a paypal "donate to" link on her site if there was enough interest.. even $2 or $5 from a small percentage of the /.'ers who seem to care about this issue would be enough to turn the tide for her, i'd imagine. A lawyer is a wonderful thing (you should see all the traffic citations that don't appear on my record ;)

Re:Donate to katie

[goopie]

Hrm... I think if you read a bit more carefully, as you'd see that she is located in the UK... I don't think that USPTO searches will help in that case.

Re:Donate to katie

[proxima centauri]

I don't know about the USA, but in Canada, even if you didn't TM a domain name, if you can prove you owned the domain prior to any other people claiming the name, then you're all good.

Re:Donate to katie

[Mordaximus]

I'd gladly help up but what kind of Pandora's Box do we open in the process of getting Katie a trademark? Seriously, if we set a precedent here, would every domain owner in the world also have to trademark their domain names to avoid this exact nonsense?

I'd much rather help pay for legal aid, and hurt Penguin with a boycott.

That being said, where do we send the money? And where do we send the money to help the next Katie who gets her rights trampled on? Be nice if a /. subscription went in part to pay for some trained attack lawyers for cases like this. It'd make it more worthwhile having one :)

Re:Donate to katie

[ebh]

What worries me about this is that Penguin is a worldwide corporation. Would they have to trademark katie.com in every country where Penguin does or could do business?

Re:Donate to katie

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's the right approach. This will make it look like it's an absolute necessity to TM a domain name in order to protect it. This in turn means that every poor shmuck who wants to register a domain name must also fork out more money to TM it. Not good.

Instead, what we must push for is a defacto ownership of domain names. If you're the first person to register a .com domain name and it has not already been used in any international business, you own the domain name just as if it was TM'd, copyrighted and patented to death. Katie Jones should leave it as is and turn around and sue Penguin publishers for using her domain name which existed long before the book.

After all, I don't TM my full name, yet if someone published a book where they used my full name (unless directly applicable), I'd be able to sue their butts off. Here, the book title is katie.com, but the story is about a certain "Katie" and not the specific domain name katie.com which was already owned by Katie Jones.

Re:Donate to katie

[Bish.dk]

Be careful with the donations. It's possible that the alleged friend is just someone trying to make some quick money on the case. Hold back the donations until you see an official link from Katie's homepage.
She already mentioned in the interview that she hasn't accepted any donations yet, but has been offered plenty.

Re:Donate to katie

[paiute]

No trademark on katie.com? Didn't the book publisher trademark it as a matter of routine? Is there a lag time in application/posting? It's hard to believe penguin did not apply for a trademark.

Re:Donate to katie

[mqx]

It's clear that you are not a lawyer - because Katie has rights even though she does not have a registered trade mark. If this were not the case, people could just come along and register existing trade names and then sue a long standing owner.

In fact, Katie has a potential case against the publisher for negligence: the actual damages caused to katie.com seem to me to be forseeable, proximate and resulted in actual damage. The publisher is negligent for not doing its due dilligence.

Re:Donate to katie

[EvilIdler]

Well, the USPTO wouldn't be the first place she goes to if she's British.

damaged

[www.sorehands.com]

If I had a radio station that said that you could win a free lunch, fax a contest entry to your telephone number, then you are harmed.
But if send lots of traffic to a site, there is harm -- especially when you send people to the wrong site . If you send people to a site that is unrelated to what you are sending them for. If you go to a store for a car part, but the store is really a watch parts, wouldn't you be pissed?

Re:damaged

[crackshoe]

Thats a bad analogy becasue there are federal laws against unsolicited faxes.

Looks like they have a plan B..

[rajmobile]

Katie J's lawyer's website says they just started this page: http://www.katiesplace.org

reverse slashdotting?

[YouHaveSnail]

Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars.

Weird. This is the first instance I'm aware of where slashdotting actually decreases the response to the target!

You lack imagination...

[rewt66]

For real justice, try writing penguin.com (as was mentioned in the interview with Katie). Or, for bonus points, try microsoft.com

Re:You lack imagination...

[pjt33]

Or whitehouse.gov.

Re:You lack imagination...

[nukem1999]

How about the actual street address and/or phone number of this lawyer's house?

Re:You lack imagination...

[jellybear]

Then do you get his house?

How about the license plate on his BMW?

G*d d*mn lawyers....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ms. Aftab is probably laughing her ass off right now with all of the free publicity she's getting. C'mon /.ers, let's start working a little harder to take her site down!

Click here

and here

and here

and here!

Re:G*d d*mn lawyers....

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

It might be hard to /. since it's hosted at Earthlink, not on some DSL hookup...

Re:G*d d*mn lawyers....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ms. Aftab has a very resilient site. The site hasn't gotten enough traffic to melt yet. Melt the site!

Re:G*d d*mn lawyers....

[AC5398]

Free publicity? As what, a lawyer who creates car crashes so she can chase after ambulances?

Parry Aftab's reputation as an unsavoury lawyer with dubious judgement is currently being widely spread as a result of all this publicity, and it will harm both her and any project she undertakes/promotes.

What both KatieT and Aftab need to do is publically apologize to KatieJ and leave the domain katie.com out of any of their future efforts. Their, and Penguin's, attempts to intimidate Katie Jones has now spectacularly backfired. They will not be able to move forward with any venture until they make amends. It's astounding how KatieT and Aftab have sullied their and their cause's reputations amongst the one crowd they should have been working hard to positively influence.

And Aftab, if you read this, if you even think of starting trouble with Katie Jones, just remember there are thousands of Slashdot readers just itching to help Jones out.

The trolls are out early

[DesScorp]

"Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name."

Bzzzzzz! Wrong, sorry, but thanks for playing, and here's a copy of our home game.

The sex.com ruling established that domain names were indeed property, with corresponding rights. The whole issue here is that the rightful owner doesn't have the resources (read: money) to mount a legal campaign against Penguin. Remember, Katie Jones is in the UK, and if I remember correctly, the UK has the "Loser Pays" system. If Katie didn't win her lawsuit, she'd owe Penguin big. Penguin knows this. I hope the proposal to set up a paypal account to start a legal fund for her goes through. Penguin and their cronies really need to have their asses handed to them over this. And Aftab's assertion that, if Jones doesn't hand over the website "things will only get worse" just disgusts me to no end. And laywers wonder why they're despised.

The real bottom line here: Katie Jones is the rightful owner of her domain name, and Penguin and company have tried to hijack it without any compensation. They should suffer and pay for what they've done.

Re:The trolls are out early

[rapier99]

I'm wondering if the "loser pays" is what is keeping Katie J. from suing? If so, she should reconsider because that rule only applies if she sues in a British Court. If she takes Penguin on in an American court, it's our good ol' legal system that will dictate who pays. In the British system big companies can bludgeon small plaintiff's into submission with a heap of lawyers and pleadings because if they make the litigation too expensive for the plaintiff, the case will be dropped and big business gets their money back. Here, companies can try the same tactic, but in most cases, unless they can demonstrate that the plaintiff showed extreme bad faith in bringing the suit in the first place, they won't be able to recover their own costs.

Re:The trolls are out early

[NineNine]

All she has to do is counter-sue with a lawyer who will take this case on a contingency basis. Done. This kind of thing happens all of the time.

Yes, Amazon censors reviews

[wayward]

Amazon does censor reviews - I've seen mine and others removed. In this case, the reviewers involved seemed to have read the book. It was about a "nonfiction" book and the reviews in question pointed out that one of the accounts mentioned in the book may not have been factually accurate. Amazon censored at least one and removed the others

so you cant...

[WormholeFiend]

copyright the word "windows"?

Re:so you cant...

[RazzleFrog]

What's your point? I think you need to read this.

Re:so you cant...

[Gorobei]

Correct. You can't copyright a real word. You can't even trademark it: Microsoft has a trademark on "Microsoft Windows," not "Windows." No matter how much they'd like the generic word, they can't have it.

Re:so you cant...

[Zordak]

Tell that to Lindows

Re:so you cant...

[JDevers]

Well, the fact the M$ paid $20 million to Linspire shows that they had a definite fear of loosing.

Re:so you cant...

[crow23]

Actually you can trademark a word, you just can't trademark a word in it's generic sense. For example, you can't trademark Seats for use as a furniture store, but it can't be trademarked in reference to "concert and event reservation services." That was an actual case.

Microsoft probably can have a "Windows" trademark, but it's a lot easier to pay Lindows $20M to leave them alone than risk litigation that might declare their trademark for "windows" as legal.

The only thing that makes "Windows" generic with respect to the computer software is that many people refer to programs that run in "windows." If that term hadn't been used in such a widespread fashion, they might be able to maintain their trademark on "Windows"
IP-lawyer-in-training

Re:so you cant...

[Tassach]

fear of loosing

I see.. as opposed to a fear of tighting.

L-O-O-S-E is the antonym of TIGHT. EG: Your mamma is looser than a crack whore.

L-O-S-E is the antonym of WIN. EG: You are a total loser.

Re:so you cant...

[Anonymous Coward]

After what I had for lunch I have a very large fear of loosing.

Re:so you cant...

[The_K4]

No you cannot copyright the word "windows". However you can TRADEMARK it.

Re:so you cant...

[Pat69]

I see.. as opposed to a fear of tighting.

I see.. as opposed to a fear of tightening

But then, you probably saw this coming, didn't you?

Re:so you cant...

[trentblase]

Interesting. Does that mean that Staples is SOL?

Re:so you cant...

[Martin Blank]

Microsoft bought the Lindows name, so they'd be talking to themselves.

Re:so you cant...

[cfulmer]

That's just plain wrong -- you absolutely can register a trademark on a real word. Here are some examples: Ford, Coke, Cheerio, Delta, Target, McDonald's, Wendy's, Jet, Dick's, Subway, Bell, Apple, Polo, etc....

What you can't do is take a generic term for a type of item and register a trademark for that item. For example, Subway couldn't register the word 'submarine' in reference to their sandwiches, because it's a generic term relating to types of sandwiches. Similarly, Apple can't register the name 'Computer' or 'digital audio player.'

If I recall correctly, Microsoft was actually able to register 'Windows,' but how they got to do it was really fishy and there's some speculation that the trademark wouldn't hold up in the US, because it was a generic term at the time.

Re:so you cant...

[MarkGriz]

Hmmm....

+1 Funny, or -1 Flamebait.

Can we get a "0 FunnyFlamebait" added to the moderation system?

Re:so you cant...

[gwalla]

as opposed to a fear of tighting.

Actually, it would be as opposed to a fear of keeping something bottled up. "Loosing" is the gerund form of "to loose", which means "to let loose, to free". The verb form of the adjective "loose" (antonym of "tight") is "loosen", and the gerund of that is "loosening".

This has been your daily Grammar Fun Minute.

Re:so you cant...

[RazzleFrog]

Staples is an office store not a staple manufacturer. They may sell staples under their brand name but they are surely made by a different company.

Re:so you cant...

[Tassach]

I was hoping for the coveted +5, Troll rating :)

Re:so you cant...

[Anonymous Coward]

The opposite of "tightening" is "loosening", not "loosing".
However, the opposite of "loosing" is not "tighting", but "recalling" (as in "He is loosing the hounds!" vs "He is recalling the hounds!").

Call the lawyer and tell her what you think...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to whois:

Administrative Contact:
Aftab, Parry (PA286)
parry.aftab@COUNSEL.COM
Aftab & Savitt, P.C.
E. 80 Rt. 4, The Atrium, Suite 410
Paramus, NJ 07652
US
(201) 845-0100 fax: 999 999 9999

Re:Call the lawyer and tell her what you think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a perfect time for the internet catalog dump ala SpamKing... How's a couple hundred pottery barn rags everyday going to feel?

Re:Call the lawyer and tell her what you think...

[Mateito]

Better still, fax her!

Re:Call the lawyer and tell her what you think...

[immakiku]

Eh? I'm in Paramus right now. Maybe I'll go see what that building looks like :).

Re:Call the lawyer and tell her what you think...

[joggle]

Be careful what you say, though. She is a lawyer, remember, and can sue you for (almost) free!

One thing which can be done:

[imadork]

The EFF should monitor the trademark applications for "katie.com". If Penguin has registered it already, they should challenge it. If they haven't registered it, they should try to register it on behalf of Katie J, or else just monitor the applications and challenge it the instant it gets filed. Let's face it, lawyers for big companies only understand it when other lawyers do something that can threaten them -- every month that nothing gets done is a victory for the Penguin and their domain hijacking...

Even if Katie J only wins the trademark for katie.com in the UK - where she lives and her business is probably based - it will still be a moral victory, and proof that IP laws don't just exist for the benefit of big companies.

If Katie J doesn't want any money to fight this, I'll respect that, but I'll give (more) money to the EFF if they can help...

My published address

[davinciII]

To whom it may concern:

My clienthas recently begun publishing his address in the media as:
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

This letter is to serve as a cease and desist notification to you, henceforth to be referenced as "TWH" (The White House). Further attempts to use this address will be met with great legal effort. We will give you a chance to donate this property, and the reulting address, before any action is taken.

Regards,
I. Cheetam
Partner, Dewie, Cheetam & Howe

IAAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least a law student. And, since this is anonymous, I'll give you my impression.

Katie J. can't trademark Katie.com without actually using it (or planning to use it) in a commercial sense. That's trademark law.

Katie J. can't register Katie.com for a website because it's in the form of [descriptive term].[top level domain]. That's from a CAFC case a few months ago (In re Oppedahl & Larson LLP, Nos. 03-1525, 78/061,755, 2004 WL 1416361 (Fed.Cir. June 25, 2004)). The case affirmed the Trademark Board denying registration for patents.com.

Penguin has a shot at registering Katie.com for the book except I anticipate that Katie J. would oppose the registration. Plus, she used it first so Penguin can't really claim priority.

As far as Katie J. suing Penguin, tough. I can't think of an appropriate cause of action that might work. Who knows, you could probably try to bend something into place but my guess is that it won't bear up.

This is a case of first impression. You can phrase it in 2-4 different ways but it all boils down to this: There's no law directly on point to prevent this activity. Should there be? I think so. But I'm not a law maker. I'm (supposed to be) a law follower. And litigator. Maybe.

Re:IAAL

[Tharian]

I think the catch here, though, is that Katie J. _had_ been using the site for commercial use. She has even acknowledged this in the interview and also in the open letter on her site.

However, as others have pointed out already in response to this and other news items, she resides in a different country (the UK) so that could also be a factor since the US rules (likely) will not apply.

Re:IAAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Katie J. can't register Katie.com for a website because it's in the form of ...

I don't get it. Katie Jones (actually her husband) has registered katie.com in 1996 and she has used it ever since. But you know it. So can you explain what you mean in more detail? Is there some difference I don't understand between obtaining/using and *registering* a domain? :)

Re:IAAL

[Anonymous Coward]

"Katie" is a proper noun, not a generic descriptive term such as "patents" (as you pointed out), but note that we have sex.com, flowers.com etc etc.

Katie J was using this site as part of a business (web forums) before the name was taken.

The hardest part is that Katie J and katie.com (site) are UK based, and Katie T and katie.com (book) are in the US. I don't know what the international standing of the .com domains are, but I do remember a few cases a couple of years ago when US based sites were able to legally steal ".coms" registered by owners in other countries. As the owner of a couple of (sentimental value only) .com addresses, I hope that this has been fixed.

IAnALBIAJ (I am Nearly a laywer but in another juridstiction)

Slashdot her cell phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better... if you want to talk to ol' Parry...

201-463-8663 (US Cell Phone)

--AC

Amazon sales rank tracker

[Saeger]

Out of curiousity, I just added this book -- "Katie.com, My story" -- to Pud-of-Fucked-Company's amazon sales rank tracker. Currently the book's rank is 18836, and is updated hourly.

I have no idea what the rank was before this domain-thievery story got the attention is has now, but I really hope it doesn't increase because of "any news being good news."

--

Write your own book!

[tuple]

Katie Jones (the real owner of the katie.com) should write a book entitled 'katie.com' about being bullied over the internet by business'. Who would be laughing then? I know I would. :)

Re:Write your own book!

[spectro]

just to play safe, she should name it "The REAL katie.com" just make sure to put "The real" in very small font right on top.

reviews

[minus_273]

I dont know, I know it is a tenn book, but some of the reviews on that site, they were pretty bizzare. My personal favorite:

"Thanks, September 18, 2002
Reviewer: "karen588" (Grand Rapids, michgian) - See all my reviews
Hi my name is karen and I am forteen years old, i like this book very very muchl, my freinds at school told me abowt this book and it taugt me how to rite into a chatroom on the interent and how to meet older man cuz all the boys in my school are boring and thye dont know how to treet a girl good. now I rite on a chatroom every day and i have meet many intresting and good looking men. and all because this book showed me how. I will be more careful then the riter of this book thogh when I meet this men in person, I will not make the same misstakes. I would like to meet an older man cuz then all the girls in my school will be jelous of me.
"

Penguin knows it is screwed

[Ars-Fartsica]

Penguin knows it is in deep caca here - this is why they are resorting to threat and scare tactics often and early. They know that if the real Katie retains a competent attorney, they are in big trouble and may even have to pull the book.

Thankfully it looks like the ruse has failed and the true domain owner is not being scared off. A decent attorny would probably love the chance to tear into Penguin on this one.

From Parry Aftab's web site

[markov_chain]

The following are a couple of paragraphs from her bio. I'm already dizzy.

Since 1994, Parry has been leading online communities and creating places and opportunities for people to help each other online. Her first foray into providing online help, using unpaid expert volunteers, was when she created AOL's Legal Information Network's Legal Discussions. Hundreds of lawyers joined her to provide legal information, without charge, to people who visited their discussion boards. AOL's Legal Help model was soon replicated by Parry and her volunteers for Court TV's Legal Helpline, where the same volunteers would answer questions on the Web. You can read more about that from her intro to her first book.

One thing led to another, and Parry became one of the first cyberlawyers in the world. She was also was hooked on the Internet and all its promise. But to deliver upon that promise, the Internet needed to be safe, private and secure, and Internet users needed a place and people they could turn to when they needed help online, or they found themselves being victimized.

Imagine that. She uses AOL for a while in 94, and all of a sudden she is a "cyber expert" competent enough to decide for all of us that "the Internet" needs to be safe and private and whatever. It is enough to make an engineer's stomach turn inside out. What a repulsive, arrogant, slimy person. The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if she were involved in creating "cyberlegislation." Ugh.

Re:From Parry Aftab's web site

[machinder]

Her first book? Is that or is that not her "webserial cyberdetective" novel?

Re:From Parry Aftab's web site

[sharkey]

But to deliver upon that promise, the Internet needed to be safe, private and secure, and Internet users needed a place and people they could turn to when they needed help online, or they found themselves being victimized.

So, Parry Aftab claims to provide a safe, private and secure place for a person such as Katie Jones, who is being victimized by Penguin, Katie Tarbox and Parry Aftab?

Re:From Parry Aftab's web site

[doublem]

No, she provides a safe place for her clients to digitally rape others online.

The irony is thick in this one.

Re:From Parry Aftab's web site

[CPlusPlusOwnsYou]

My favourite line:

"She was also was hooked on the Internet and all its promise"

The promise of free porn?

Ha ha ha ha ha Parry Aftab is a fat slob

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god... this woman is so fucking fat that I'll bet she's begging for some person to come off a chat room and do her. My god, everybody is allowed a few pounds with middle aged, but this broad has abused the privledge.

I'll bet the pork chops quiver when she enters a room.

Katie...

[Anonymous Coward]

- You MUST get an attorney and go on the offensive. "I can't afford one" is not an excuse. Any time you waste will cost you more in the long run.
- You MUST remove your direct email address from your website unless you just desire to get overwhelmed with spam.

Just my 2 cents. I would also redirect the URL to the Goatse guy, or some other scary porn site just to play with them. But hey, that's just me.

Internet safety

[nuggz]

I was having a conversation with a parent a while ago, and they were shocked/disgusted at what their child (~10) was getting into on the internet.

I suggested the analogy of a 'big city', and that they simply shouldn't be left to wander alone.
There are many places fun and appropriate for all ages. But despite the best efforts of some there are places you don't want to go.

I really hope these cases get promoted much more so parents msarten up and watch their kids.

Re:Internet safety

[Chatmag]

I've known Parry since '97, when she was involved in Cyberangels. Her site, Wired Safety has a lot of good information and resources for kids on the 'net. Also, our Safety Section and Kids Chat Rooms have more detailed information regarding safety issues for both children and adults, and chat areas that we've previewed as kid friendly.

Re:Internet safety

[jafiwam]

Big deal. Bill & Belinda Gates give boatloads of money to charities to fight AIDS and stuff.

That doesn't keep BG from being an evil monopolist.

Parry is just a bully, plain and simple.

Newsflash!

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in!

Parry Aftab just ATE the real Katie! The whole case is moot now!

KatieT.com

[jekewa]

Didn't I read in the other article that the Katie responsible for the book could be reached at her e-mail address with her own domain? Why not just publish the book with that title instead? Sheesh!

I don't think I'd make a good lawyer, because there's no fight and no money in my solution...

Re:KatieT.com

[Anonymous Coward]

The book wouldn't sell if it was called KatieT.com

law degree + bionics = cyberlawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of cybernetics do cyberlawyers have? bionic fat arse? computer-assisted boredom ray?
Cyber overused prefixes on their titles?

I miss the Millenium edition lawyer 2000.

Lawyer wants to profit

[Anonymous Coward]

I would conjecture that Ms. Aftab has plans for the website to further her own career. I mean, she's a lawyer (bad enough) that specializes in internet stalkings, etc. Set up "katie.com" in conjunction with a book on the subject, with, of course, links and information to the lawyer's site in case any of the people reading the site want to take action against their wrongdoers. It's all quite simple, actually. She wishes to profit from the situation.

I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if they were stupid enough not to trademark katiet.com.

mod parent WRONG

[capt.mellow]

There are only 13 1-star reviews now. I can personally attest that yesterday I rated far, far more than 13 1-star reviews as 'useful'. Hopefully the meta moderation process will correct the parent's inaccurate 'informative' ratings.

This will make you lose your lunch!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.aftab.com/images/parry2.jpg

OMFG. If the choice were doing her, or a guy, I'd go for the guy. I'm not even gay.

Trademarks and trademark authorities

[shadow255]

from what i found at the USPTO search.. there is no trademark on katie.com. Katie needs to TM her domain (prior art back to 1996, remember), and then she will be the one with all the power.

First off, Katie Jones is a resident of the United Kingdom, not the United States, so it's little surprise that your search came up empty. I am not a lawyer either, but does it make sense that one should be expected to register a trademark for one's own properly-registered domain just to prevent this kind of thing? I don't know the costs involved, but it seems to put an unnecessary burden on the little guys of the 'Net. I think the idea to donate to Katie Jones for legal fees is wonderful, but don't encourage the courts to favor the view that one must pay twice in order to safely harbor a domain.

Sadly for Katie

[denisbergeron]

Other people have the same problem with other .com want ot be. On exemple is "http://nissan.com/ the owner mister Nissan from the west coat if I remember have the site from the beginning of the internet, and use the site to promote his services. The big corporation Nissan make then close the site.

Re:Sadly for Katie

[Anonymous Coward]

Which was first? The creation of the Nissan corporation, or the registration of the nissan.com domain?

Re:Sadly for Katie

[Anonymous Coward]

Some difference here. The company Nissan existed before Mr. Nissan registered the domain.

The book Katie.com didn't exist when Katie J registered the domain.

Which brings up the point: How stupid was her publisher? Just what the hell were they expecting to happen when they used a domin name registered by a third party as the title of the book?

The publisher deserves 15 yards plus loss of down for making such an obvious error in judgement.

Re:Sadly for Katie

[ageoffri]

The most important thing here is that nissan.com was being used to generate revenue. If Mr Nissan hadn't switched to making money off of car advertisments he would have had a much stronger case. As is, he clearly intended to benefit off of the Nissan car brand.

Tell Penguin Publishing USA what you think

[OYAHHH]

Their customer service phone number in the US is:

(800) 631-8571.

Hoochie mama!

[Secret Chimp]

Who the hell IS this?

In the end, this is all good for Penguin

[doublem]

This is what I think is happening:

Penguin is very happy about all this fuss. The book is getting free publicity, and the longer this goes on, the more sales of this book will be helped, while doing no real damage to the rest of the company.

They may buy the domain down the road, but they're more likely to file a lawsuit to take it, counting on this poor woman not having the cash to stand up to them in court.

As fun as it is to joke about it, I assume Penguin would sue her into oblivion if she were to sell the domain to a porn company, and would tear her to shreds and demonize her in the courtroom.

Re:In the end, this is all good for Penguin

[I_Want_This_ID]

They can and probably would sue her if she sold her domain name to a porn company. But the problem is that it's HER domain name and she has no legal obligation to do or not do something because of a book title that she had no interest in publishing.

In essence, penguin could jump up and down and scream all they want, but after their book and the actions they've taken, the only groups that would be interested in purchasing the domain would be penguin and a porn operator and the real Katie can't be legally compelled to sell to any specific group.

Re:In the end, this is all good for Penguin

[Lord_Dweomer]

"As fun as it is to joke about it, I assume Penguin would sue her into oblivion if she were to sell the domain to a porn company, and would tear her to shreds and demonize her in the courtroom."

And what exactly would they be suing her for?

Re:In the end, this is all good for Penguin

[doublem]

Well, this horrible Katie J person is trying to discredit the book Katie.com! Why, she is profiting by the resale of another person's copyrights!

My point was, they don't need a reason other than having enough money to sue her until she gives up, and having said litigation be less expensive than offering her a price for the domain that she would accept.

Feardotcom, domain and movie.

[Anonymous Coward]

The domain fear.com was registered in 1997, the movie "Feardotcom" came out in 2002. I dont see a connection between the domain and the movie, so is there a potential law suit there?

direct your sympathy to Penguin Putnam?

[lrucker]

Interesting phrasing in her canned reply - why would we be directing sympathy to Putnam, unless we thought they were in the right?

An idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a small idea - if someone can create a small "blog style" button/badge/whatever they call them. I, and maybe others, could post it on their sites or blogs and have it link to a site explaining the situation.

It might prove more useful in some ways than donating to a legal fund, since wide spread bad publicity is more harmful to tarbox, jabba the lawyer and penguin than a lawsuit - they are well equipped to defend against lawsuits but can't stifle thousands of sites telling the true story of big corp deciding to change the name of book from girl.com that could defend itself to someone they thought they could pick on.

The googlebot (and lately the MS search bot) comes by my sites daily (so do those creepy corporate image/brand monitoring bots) so if someone posts a button, I'll put it up today.

Your sooo wrong

[oliverthered]

Any book that gets so many review in such a short space of time must be worth a read, even for comedy value.

Fairness and responsibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they went corporate though, all common sense went out the window and the almighty dollar and stock holder concerns rule out any sense of fairness and responsibility.

"Responsibility", you say? The shareholders own the company. The company is responsible to the shareholders. It's not a charity. If they deliberately try not to make money, they've defrauded the people who bought shares.

There have, of course, been companies which embraced your special definition of "responsibility", the kind where the company is responsible to something other than its owners: Tyco, for example. Enron's another good one.

If you pay somebody for a pizza, you expect a pizza. If the shareholders pay Amazon to increase earnings per share, they expect Amazon to make a reasonable effort to increase earnings per share.

Everything that has gone destructively haywire in business over the last decade is directly attributable to mentalities like yours. It makes no difference at all whether the company is run as a charity for the benefit of "the little people", or for the benefit of swollen crooks like Dennis Kozlowski: A charity is a charity is a charity. If you don't make money, you're pissing your capital down the drain, and the wheels will come off sooner or later. Leave aside for a moment the sick waste of human effort involved in running a useless, non-productive imitation of a company; when the axe falls, who gets hurt? I'll tell you: The employees who lose their jobs. The shareholders. The vendors who are owed money. Not all the shareholders are wealthy; pension funds own stocks, and the people who get screwed there are often retired bus drivers and the like. Not cartoon "fat cats". The employees are mostly "little people", too. When the vendors get hurt, what does that mean in practical terms? They have employees, too, and most of those employees are not rich. They also have shareholders, who are not all rich.

Bottom line: Running a company like a charity is bad for everybody. Period. You're taking competent people out of the productive economy and setting them to "work" doing, essentially, nothing. They could be providing valuable goods or services; instead, they're making mudpies. How exactly is that supposed to benefit anybody at all? How exactly did the bizarre parasitic circus at Enron make the world a better place? Please clarify that point.

There are some parts of this that can be fixed by boards of directors, or by the law: The SEC does a reasonable job already. Boards can tie executive compensation to earnings per share rather than to share price. None of this is news. Bottom line, though, is that the "crisis in corporate governance" is a problem with people in business thinking that they're not responsible to the shareholders. They think the company is theirs, but they didn't pay for it themselves, so they don't value it. Control without ownership is a recipe for disaster.

Re:Fairness and responsibility?

[Foofoobar]

Just because you are fair with your customers does not make it a charity. You are confusing the concept. If I allow my customers the ability to review products but then selectively delete the negative ones when I am trying to push a product, am I being fair to the consumer?

People tend to think that corporations HAVE no responsibilities to anyone but their shareholders but this is entirely irresponsible; this is how we get Enrons and corporate irresponsibility... by obeying that bottomline and not remembering that you are there to serve your customers as well as your stockholders.

A classic example of what I am talking about is represented by Google who actually put it into their companies 'bylaws': don't be evil.

Pretty simple eh? Why don't all companies put this into their business plans and charters? Well because for some reason, people think that making money IS evil and that to make money you have to BE evil.

This is not true.

You can make money and be fair to your customers. You can please your stockholders and please your clients. It's a bit harder but you have a more solid base in the longrun (and fewer lawsuits).

/.ed again!

[heybo]

Kind of sad when harvard.edu's network won't take a little traffic. 404 page article.pl not found

"Pendant"? You mean "penchant". Moron...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look it up, dumbass.

Hey Parry, what is "cyberlaw"?

[nuggetboy]

Oh, here's your answer. Mmmmm, informative.

Oh boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotters show their maturity yet again, by flooding amazon with bad reviews, even though they have not read the book. I hate you fuckers.

Re:Oh boy

[Anonymous Coward]

So which one are you, Tarbox or Aftab?

'Parry Aftab, The Angel of the Internet'

[bot]

Anyone see this : For the amount of time and personal sacrifice Parry has devoted to making sure that everyone, especially children, can learn to use the Internet safely, privately and responsibly, Parry is often called the "Angel of the Internet.". Talk about cheesy, self promoting websites. This one takes the cake!

Re:'Parry Aftab, The Angel of the Internet'

[Anonymous Writer]

This one takes the cake!

It looks like this one takes a lot of cake.

Re:'Parry Aftab, The Angel of the Internet'

[Anonymous Coward]

"Angel"
as in "Angel Cakes"
as in "I ate too many fucking Angel Cakes and now I look like Tubgirl with clothes".

Listen and understand!

[ArsSineArtificio]

Is that some kind of half-human, half-robot lawyer?

That cyberlawyer is out there. It can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are destroyed!

Favourite quote from www.aftab.com

[Jackson_Ash]

'Parry often says that trying to describe her is like the parable of the six blind men trying to describe an elephant.'

Looking at her pics, I'd say it was safe to remove 'the parable of the six blind men' bit from that sentence.

JA

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very informative. Dude, you should submit this as a root comment, or maybe even submit an article about it.

you all are suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

KatieT and Aftab are playing you guys. More money rolling in their accounts now because of the free publicity. Should ignore them, the law will take care of them eventually.

If you're censoring bad words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the title should be "G*d d*mn l*wy*rs"

From inside the industry...

[Garwulf]

Well, I'm actually a published author who has written for two major publishers (Osborne/McGraw-Hill and Simon & Schuster), so I think I can actually add something here.

Regarding number one - is her publisher at fault? Well, yes and no.

Truth be told, the publisher frequently reserves control over the title of a book. Both of my books had titles chosen by the publisher (I got to put in a bit of input, but the final decision was theirs). A good friend of mine in the industry, Ed Greenwood, has had numerous books published both with Wizards of the Coast and Tor, and he told me recently that of all of them, he's chosen the titles of about two of them.

So, did Ms. Tarbox actually have control of the title? Probably not.

That being said, it sounds to me like the title was changed at a critical juncture. This may sound odd to those who don't know much about the industry, but the "point of no return" where the title cannot be changed actually occurs long before the book goes to the press.

It's a bit like one of those old Looney Toons where somebody rolls a snowball downhill and it grows and flattens a cottage. Up until the book goes into typesetting, major changes can be made. However, around the typesetting phase (which can be anywhere from 4 months to 8 months before publication), two things happen. The first is the typesetting itself, which is very time-intensive and quite expensive. In fact, my editor at both houses warned me that if I tried to make any major changes after typesetting began, I would actually be penalized for it. A new title counts as a major change, particularly if it's going to be used as a header.

The second thing is that the publicity for the book kicks into high gear. The book is going to be published within the next year, and to change a major part of the book being used in the advertising (such as the title) at that point is tantamount to shooting the book out of the window and starting again from scratch. If the President of the United States asks them to do it, they'll do it, but that's what it would take - it really is that expensive. The proverbial snowball is now the size of a house and halfway down the hill.

Once you get to the book going to the printer, there is just no way the title can be changed. Quite literally, if it was going to be changed, everything, including the typesetting and advertising, would have to be redone. That alone could destroy the profitability of the book, if it isn't a bestseller.

If the book is a bestseller, changing the title between paperback and hardcover, just because of the time, effort, and money spent on the advertising, would involve essentially starting everything over from typesetting - again, incredibly expensive, and now the publisher would be having to fight its own advertising. It just isn't worth it for the publisher to turn itself into a pretzel like that unless there may be a lawsuit that can bring the entire publishing house down (for that matter, a lawsuit might even be cheaper to deal with).

So, is Penguin Putnam to blame - as I said, yes and no. If the book had its title changed just as it was entering typesetting, which could have been as much as eight months before publication, the difficulties involved in changing the title again would simply be too great to be reasonable, particularly when there is no guarantee that the book will be successful enough to make an impact at all. The name may be changed in a future reprint, but at this point, a name change would be like trying to move a mountain. On the other hand, somebody really should have checked katie.com first to see what it was and contact the owner, but not doing so could have been an honest mistake by somebody in a really big rush.

As far as what the lawyer has done, it is unconscionable. However, it is also very possible that the lawyer was acting on Ms. Tarbox's behalf without contacting her first, in which case news of this would have arrived to the author after the fact (and after the damage had been done).

Re:From inside the industry...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, somebody really should have checked katie.com first to see what it was and contact the owner, but not doing so could have been an honest mistake by somebody in a really big rush.

I don't think the "in a rush" excuse flies. They had the time to check out "girl.com" but somehow completely forgot when it became "katie.com"? Sorry, but that's just impossible. Speaking of which, how many books out there end in ".com" anyway?

Re:From inside the industry...

[squiggleslash]

I don't think the "in a rush" excuse flies. They had the time to check out "girl.com" but somehow completely forgot when it became "katie.com"? Sorry, but that's just impossible. Speaking of which, how many books out there end in ".com" anyway?

I don't believe that argument is as clear cut as you and other slashdotters make it.

If girl.com was a problem and katie.com wasn't, and both were resolved, then it's more likely to be what girl.com was pointing at that was the issue, not who owned what.

Indeed, if girl.com was pointing at pr0n, and Penguin's response was to change the name, not try to buy the name "girl.com", then one likely conclusion was that Penguin had no intention of setting up a website to begin with.

This would seem to me to be especially true as there's no suggestion Penguin tried to buy Katie.com before the book was published. The major "conspiracy theory" that's come up about Penguin's actions are that somehow Penguin hoped to muscle Katie J out of her domain name so they could use the name for publicity.

But at the most critical time to do so, just before the marketing campaign for the book was about to start, they didn't even try!

I have a certain amount of sympathy for Katie J, but I'll be honest and say I think there's a lot more to this story than is being presented to us. I suspect, ultimately, it's more like this:

• Penguin chooses a name for the book, at the last moment discovers that the name is associated with porn, and changes it to something verified as not being about porn
• Otherwise, the launch of the book is typical. It's not hyped to the roof and back, because it's not that kind of book. Penguin sees the publication as the end of the process and expects to have no further involvement other than collecting and distributing royalties, and perhaps doing a second run if it's popular.
• Katie J starts getting unwelcome attention because of the title of the book from Internet kooks
• KJ blames Penguin and Katie T; Penguin takes one look at the costs involved in pulping the book and reprinting it under another name, says "No way", and tells KT they're not going to do it and that she can consider the matter out of her hands. The response to KJ is a resounding "Tough Sh*t"
• Unsatisfied, KJ continues to lobby Penguin and anyone else who cares to get the name changed. Meanwhile she's having to rebuild her site because she's concerned about the attention she's getting from the Internet's low-life. She blames Penguin.
• Other people involved in the process, such as "KT's lawyer" (Parry Aftab), peripherally or directly start to be drawn into the process. Relatively innocent, or at least well intentioned, comments, start to get taken out of context. Aftab suggests KJ might sell the domain name to KJ. Having been rebuffed, Aftab points out that the situation with Internet low life harassing her isn't going to get better (which is probably true.)
• There's more than one side to any story. We haven't heard directly from Aftab or Penguin at this point. Some of KJ's comments seem a little extreme to me, such as the demands that Penguin change the name of KT's books. This makes me think that she's not telling her story with 100% good faith.

Re:From inside the industry...

[be951]

If girl.com was a problem and katie.com wasn't, and both were resolved, then it's more likely to be what girl.com was pointing at that was the issue, not who owned what.

Essentially, they were concerned about whether the website could harm the book, but not the reverse. And the website was harmed by the book. The fact that Penguin did not forsee this could certainly be an oversite. The fact that they've chosen not to compensate or even apologize to KJ in any way, despite the fact that she was (allegedly/apparently) harmed, is not.

I'm fairly certain KJ has stated that she's never been offered money by Penguin, KT, or Parry Aftab. Whoever is behind the effort to get the domain name from KJ (no doubt someone who will benefit financially from the new business selling internet safety curricula to schools, etc...) apparently is trying to get it for free.

Re:From inside the industry...

[cmowire]

I had those sorts of thoughts, however, I tend to believe KJ more.

First, by the year 2000, folks realized that a domain name is something big and that owning any referenced URLs is also important. I mean, this wasn't 1989, before the September That Never Ended, this was 2000. And this isn't the first time that Penguin has tried to pull these sorts of stunts, either. Big companies have *never* had any sort of interest in the little guy and his personal page if said personal page gets in their way.

Second, in the only statements that have been made by Katie T about the issue, verifiable lies were said. Like Katie T trying to claim that she's not associated with Aftab, yet there being links on her page to Aftab.

I mean, the problem is, no matter how you dice it, Penguin did wrong. It's public record that her domain name was registered in 1996 and the book came out in 2000.

Re:From inside the industry...

[squiggleslash]

Now, hold on.

Yes, people were aware of the web in 2000 and knew it was a "big thing". However, even today I'd say the majority of the people I mix with who are not computer people have little or no understanding of the consequences of many things. The notion that a book given a "web site" name might harm that web site is not something that springs to mind. These people, remember, were publishers, not computer geeks. It's a very conservative industry at the best of times.

Secondly what you say is a "verifiable lie" has not been verified as a lie and you've misquoted her. What KT has said is that Aftab is not her lawyer. She has not denied that at some point she is or was associated with Aftab. Verifiably, the two worked together at some point on putting together websites concerning abuse, however this doesn't mean that KT's current legal representative is Aftab, it just means the two collaborated on a project.

Penguin has presumably made a mistake in 2000, that's verifiably correct, though the conspiracy stories that imply it was more than a mistake, and that Penguin was planning to hound some poor innocent out of her domain name in order to publicise a relatively minor book are simply ridiculous. It appears to me to be an obvious misjudgement with no apparent ill intent.

Penguin, according to some Slashdot posts, has renamed KT's sequel to avoid the whole ".com" thing altogether, which makes sense to me as it was a stupid name to begin with.

I might add that I'm actually fairly bothered by what's been written here on Slashdot since the story broke. We have people advocating a campaign of harassment over an issue where the other side hasn't been revealed and where the original story doesn't 100% make sense except with some extreme reading between lines. I do hope Aftab takes up Slashdot's offer to present a rebuttle, this crap needs to stop.

Re:From inside the industry...

[squiggleslash]

In fact, on that "verifiable lies" point:

Additionally, please also understand that while I have worked with Parry Aftab, she is not my lawyer, and I never asked anyone to speak with Ms. Jones about her website.

More here. Exactly what I thought she meant.

Re:From inside the industry...

[cmowire]

Ah, you are probably correct in that aspect -- Tis not a verifiable lie, just a lot of literary dancing around. Funny. But then, that's what getting a lot of emails will cause you to do, I suppose.

Nontheless, I still think that it's awfully hard for them to have thought far enough ahead to realize that girl.com wasn't appropriate but it was OK to direct traffic from an emotionally charged book at somebody's personal page. The point is, there was already a lot of evidence in 2000 that indicated that what they were doing was an incredibly *bad* idea. Maybe I'm just expecting intelligence out of people that's unreasonable, or something.

And, really, it's quite classy of Kathy T to have actually posted some sort of statemnt of appology. I'd love to see if Aftab does a similar gesture...

See, I think there's a limit that some folks have crossed. On one side of the line, there's emailing Katie Jones a letter of encouragement or contacting Penguin and letting them know that they did wrong and wouldn't it be nice if they, albeit 4 years late, tried to do something to make it right. On the other side of the line, there's turning this into your personal vendetta and sending incredibly crude letters to Katie T. Which is really dumb, no matter what planet you're from.

The problem is, the statistics aren't good. Aftab's rebuttal (there's no e at the end), unless she prostrates herself and asks for forgiveness, won't answer anything. When you have an issue regarding a conversation between two people, where there probably isn't any real record of it, there's never a good definitive ending where you can tell who was really telling the truth or not.

Parry Aftab's Sex Confusion

[Finuvir]

This isn't hugely important to the topic at hand but Parry Aftab calls herself "Parry Aftab, Esq." What's up with that? Maybe once she learns what esquire means she can start to learn what "I was here first" means. Idiot.

Re:Parry Aftab's Sex Confusion

[sxltrex]

Although it pains me to defend the bitch, her use of esquire is appropriate. See here.

Re:Parry Aftab's Sex Confusion

[Finuvir]

Interesting reading, thanks. I guess I just fell victim to another division by a common language. Being Irish--and therefore a speaker of British English--I have always known "Esquire" to be a slightly pretentious variation of "Mister". Anyone entitled to call themselves "Mister" (ie. any adult male) can instead use "Esquire", though never both. After some more reading it seems that this is a very recent use of the word, with no claim to being more correct than your (American) version.

Re:Parry Aftab's Sex Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought she was perhaps confused about her sex, due to this paragraph:

Parry Aftab only handles special cases, policy-development and consulting. he works closely with other law firms when special issues arise and her expertise is needed. She travels extensively and is involved in policy issues globally, especially in Asia and the EU

c'mon--he/she pronoun confusion, male name--who were you before you logged in to AOL?

Here's what I sent!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I sent this to their webmaster:

I find it somewhat humorous that on this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/seminar/events/security.m spx

the photo you use is that of a Macintosh PowerBook G4 15" (with the Apple logo on the back of the screen Photoshop-ed out), on a page about security summits and programs. While I don't want to get into a pissing contest about which OS is more secure, it's mildly humorous to find a Mac being used to advertise Microsoft's security, even if it is subtle.

Respectfully,

Andy Ringsmuth

I'll try and keep an eye on it and see if they decide to change the photo.....

Parry Fatab's Latest Blog Entry

[Anonymous Coward]

http://theprivacylawyer.blogspot.com/

The self proclaimed 'Angel of the Internet' makes a thinly veiled dig at Katie Jones. Maybe we should all comment

My next book's title ...

[Midnight Thunder]

For those of you interested, I will be naming my next book:

+1 800 788-6262

It will be about a bunch of corporate whores who enjoy making life difficult for people who stand in their way. And we'll see how Penguin appreciates this.

Re:My next book's title ...

[Anonymous Coward]

201-463-8663 (Parry Aftab's cell phone - listed on her web site)

Re:My next book's title ...

[uglydude]

right on.... !!!

Re:OK, I did MY part

[nusratt]

1. reverse-rated the existing reviews, as suggested -- ALL EIGHTY-ONE OF THEM.

2. added a bad review of my own.
actually not my own -- i just copied yours and fixed your spelling. ;-)
contradictive != contradictory
pendant != penchant
litterature != literature

Penguin changes the title of book....

[twigstamc420]

I just noticed that Penguin had issued a press release stating that they have changed the title of the book to "A girls life online"

Press release here http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/ab out/press.htm

My Evil Plan

[eXoXe]

I am going to change my name to Slashdot, write a book about my life, and then fight to get the domain... mwahahahah!

Text from press release...

[twigstamc420]

Plume Re-titles Book by Katie Tarbox A Girl's Life Online
In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and
the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change.
New York, New York, August 6, 2004 ... In 2000, Dutton published a hardcover book
called Katie.com by Katie Tarbox, an eye-opening account of one teenager's descent into
the seductive world of the Internet. After the book was released into the market, it was
brought to Dutton's attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet.
The fact that the book, Katie.com, and the website shared the same name was purely
coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when
Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that
the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever
with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.
Trena Keating, Editor-in-chief of Plume, said, "We have made every effort to clarify the
fact that Plume's book, Katie.com, and the website, Katie.com, are not in any way
associated with one another. In addition, it was erroneously reported recently that Plume
had asked its attorney to attempt to buy the web site Katie.com from domain owner Katie
Jones. This is absolutely not true. Ms. Jones confirms this point in a message currently
posted on her web site.
"We are not working in association with author Katie Tarbox or any other individual in
an attempt to assume ownership of the domain name address www.katie.com. Of course,
the personal views of the author are hers and do not represent Plume in any way.
"Going forward, Plume and the author have decided to re-title this book A Girl's Life
Online. This is an important book about predatory pedophiles on the Internet and how
we can protect our children. We changed the title to keep focus on this issue. The newly
titled book will be released next month. We have always taken this situation very
seriously. And we hope that by making this title change, it will demonstrate just how
dedicated Plume is to clarifying this matter."

CHILD

[Anonymous Coward]

Sinking to a new low....
http://www.aftab.com/taylorsessay.htm

Fatty Has a Daughter - Taylor Caprio Who is a student at the college of New Jersey.

Parry - Don't you just love it when people f*ck with your personal life?

/opera/wget/

[Anonymous Coward]

May I suggest the following:

while true; do wget -q -p --cookies=off http://www.aftab.com/; sleep 30; done

salt & pepper to taste.

redirect the site

[Anonymous Coward]

She should redirect the site to places like www.nambla.org until penguin fixes this issue.

Sadly, the site www.kaite.org is available, so they could have used that for a title, but I guess it doesn't have the ".com" feel they were looking for.

Re:OK, I did MY part

[shawnmchorse]

Mine? Gah! Thank goodness I don't write like that, I just copy and pasted someone else's...:-)

Easy to fix

[focitrixilous P]

ALright, here is the plan. Warn your friends and family not to visit the index page for a few days, and set this html code or some varient as index.html

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="5; URL=http://goat.cx">
<TITLE>Katie.com presents</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Thi s site is not affiliated with <b>that book</b>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Hey, the domain and book aren't related, right? So why would this be bad? Surefire way to reclaim your domain, take revenge on Penguin books, and give countless children nightmares for years! This plan is flawless! I seem to recall this happening to a video game. Some posters were on the walls with unused domains, which quickly became porn domains. I'm sure this was on games.slashdot a while back, but I've sunk eenough time into this post already.

Google-bomb Aftab!

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly sickening in all this, in every way, is the lawyer Parry Aftab. I think a campaign to Google-bomb her site would be in order. Either google-bomb her name so that it links to the goatse guy or something like that (another poster suggested tubgirl), or attach a term like schyster-slut to her website (http://www.aftab.com/). (Slashdot the site, too.)

(In order to Google bomb, links are spread all through-out the WWW that link a particualr term to a particular site, eg: "schyster-slut" links to http://www.aftab.com/, ie: schyster-slut; or "Parry Aftab" links to the tubgirl site, ie: Parry Aftab. The more links are spread, the more this combination rates higher in Google, till it reaches the top spot, and the top result from Google for the search "schyster-slut" is Parry Aftab's website.)

Evidence for the merit of this attack can be had, if you missed it the first time around, from these posts:

here

here

here

Correction...

[Anonymous Writer]

exactly the kind of person that "Katie.com" warns against

I meant exactly the kind of person that "Katie.com" (the book) warns against.

Now this is a disclaimer...

[NaugaHunter]

Being lawyers, our home page would not be complete without a legal disclaimer. Accepting the terms of the disclaimer is a condition to visiting our site. To our friends on the Net, we are sorry to condition our site on disclaimers. In a perfect world we wouldn't need this disclaimer, but in a perfect world, you wouldn't need lawyers either.

Actually, in a perfect world we would have morally responsible lawyers. At least, they would know that a buried agreement without even a front page click is unlikely to be enforceable.

Our website and the materials contained in the site are copyrighted. That means terrible things can happen to you, including being drawn and quartered, if you copy or alter anything we publish at the site. :-) We give all webbers the permission to copy our legal disclaimers, however, since limiting legal liability on the net is something we all want. Just don't blame us if it doesn't work. Also feel free to link to us.

Where'd she get her law degree - an online college? Who uses emoticons in a disclaimer? Who threatens being drawn and quartered in this day and age?

We intend for this page to provide interesting information to our visitors and function as the equivalent of a seminar attended by lawyers and lay people. No information posted here or materials provided is intended to constitute legal advice. We cannot guarantee that all queries will get a response, and we cannot guarantee the accuracy of posted information, especially as to each individual situation. All responses to queries in our chat area or by e-mail are only educating the recipient as to the types of issues typically relevant to their inquiry, and are not legal advice and should not be relied upon by any recipient.

Fairly straightforward and surprisingly reasonable.

We are lawyers licensed to practice law in the states of New York and New Jersey only. The availability of this site to residents of any other state or country is not intended as a solicitation of clients in those states or other countries.

Now I'm confused. How does someone only licensed in New York and New Jersey have anything useful to offer in a web domain case?

Neither the receipt nor the distribution of materials, including the use of private electronic mail, constitutes the formation of an attorney-client relationship. An attorney-client relationship will be formed with Parry Aftab only upon the execution and delivery of a retainer agreement and the satisfaction of the conditions contained therein. Materials distributed shall not in any event be deemed confidential or privileged.

Translation: no privacy of what you send us is intended until you send us money.

No one shall be entitled to claim detrimental reliance on any views or forms or models provided or expressed, or to claim that there is a duty to update answers or materials provided or to use care to protect the interests of the recipient. You should not rely on our statements (or those of any other website) for legal advice, and should always confirm such information with your lawyers, who should be responsible for taking whatever steps are necessary to check all information and personally assuring that the advice they provide is based on accurate and complete information and research from any available sources. Links are provided for your enjoyment and no endorsement should be inferred therefrom. Now with this said, enjoy the site....

Translation: No matter how we set up this site to look like it offers useful information, we make no guarantee we were qualified to present any of it.

I've always wanted to write a book. I think "aftab.com" will be a great title.

Re:Now this is a disclaimer...

[doublem]

I've always wanted to write a book. I think "aftab.com" will be a great title.

Great tile for a book about cop hunting down a pedophile ring.

Looks Like We Won!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/ab out/press/press76.pdf

Penguin is retitling the book, posted today!

Using the power of Slashdot for Good.

UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book title

[yoz]

Plume Re-titles Book by Katie Tarbox A Girl's Life Online (PDF)

(text reproduced below)

In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and
the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change.

New York, New York, August 6, 2004 ... In 2000, Dutton published a hardcover book
called Katie.com by Katie Tarbox, an eye-opening account of one teenager's descent into
the seductive world of the Internet. After the book was released into the market, it was
brought to Dutton's attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet.
The fact that the book, Katie.com, and the website shared the same name was purely
coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when
Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that
the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever
with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.

Trena Keating, Editor-in-chief of Plume, said, "We have made every effort to clarify the
fact that Plume's book, Katie.com, and the website, Katie.com, are not in any way
associated with one another. In addition, it was erroneously reported recently that Plume
had asked its attorney to attempt to buy the web site Katie.com from domain owner Katie
Jones. This is absolutely not true. Ms. Jones confirms this point in a message currently
posted on her web site.

"We are not working in association with author Katie Tarbox or any other individual in
an attempt to assume ownership of the domain name address www.katie.com. Of course,
the personal views of the author are hers and do not represent Plume in any way.
"Going forward, Plume and the author have decided to re-title this book A Girl's Life
Online. This is an important book about predatory pedophiles on the Internet and how
we can protect our children. We changed the title to keep focus on this issue. The newly
titled book will be released next month. We have always taken this situation very
seriously. And we hope that by making this title change, it will demonstrate just how
dedicated Plume is to clarifying this matter."

Don't forget bn.com

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to go to all the effort of reviewing the book on amazon to get the word out, don't forget to do the same at bn.com. Barnes & Nobel is a pretty popular seller too.

Someone please get some evidence

[bahwi]

Someone please get some evidence. If the lawyer is sending you letters, evidence. Right there. If the lawyer is only calling you, record it. Interstate phone calls need only one person of the conversation to know it is being recorded. Ditto in Texas. In-state, you'll actually have to check, but saying "I'm going to record this phone call?" When the lawyer calls is a good way, either they say yes, or they say no and you say "Then I can't talk." Either they'll call again and eventually give up, or they'll send a letter or fax(evidence).

So someone, please get some evidence or I can't really believe anyone without a grain o' salt.

Anyways, my two cents. There is no court action going on right now, there is a severe lack of letters, e-mails, faxes, or anything? Seems odd, but it could just be ignorance of what you can do.

I hope it all works out with katie.com getting to keep her own domain though, looking at her site now I don't see any benefit she could be gaining.

Katie's Place is eerily similar to Katie's World

[shostiru]

Yet another piece of fnorderific irony in this whole debacle is that Katie's Place sounds a lot like Katie's World. This particular Katie is over 18 now but she formerly did non-nude modelling when she was underage. If I recall correctly from the newspaper article I read about her site (Katie's World, not Katie's Place), she was the one of the first, if not the first, of many non-nude underage models, some of whom are very young (pre-adolescent).

It must be nice having your parents pimp you online to make money off pedophiles. I don't know if any of these kids ended up like the protagonist of "Katie.com", but I suspect it'll happen eventually. It's a beautiful world, huh?

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Well then, I guess no moolah for katie.com! She can go back to building an obscure blog. Problem solved! In other news, there was never a story here!

No they're not

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 81 reviews today. There were hundreds yesterday. The rating was down to 2 stars or so, now it's back up to three and a half.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true, just checked out their website.

Katie Tarbox get a clue...

[uglydude]

Kind of redundant the fact that she works with managing cybercrime, privacy and cyber-abuse risks... I wonder which side is she on? What they are clearly doing to that woman in katie.com is an abuse. I ask to anyone who can answer, what kind of IP does one have over a domain name that you have been paying for almost 10 years. Cleary the author in the book is reading too much Microsoft press, because she is basically trying to intimidate this person into giving her a domain that it is not hers.

Wait... so this means that if I write a book called microsoft.com, Bill Gates will handle me his domain name in a platter? Will that make me the worlds richest geek? I think I will do that and then hire this chick Parry Aftab, Esq. to bully them into doing so. Sheesh...

Obligatory A-N geek-style

[Safety Cap]

When I was on-line, I wanted to be in meat-space, when I was there all I could think of was getting back into the net.

.

Been off-line a week now, waiting for an IP address, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Parry squats on the net, she gets stronger.

.

Charging Katie Jones with "having an agenda" in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?

.

You know, one time we had a site DoSed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I ssh'd in. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' DNS record. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, from the TSU. Smelled like... victory.

Re:Obligatory A-N geek-style

[AndroidCat]

Slashdot .. I was still on Slashdot ..

GOOD NEWS

[nusratt]

There are other pressure points to use.
I'm sending the following to:

twoodman@us.ibm.com euffer@us.ibm.com jennie.allen.01@bbc.co.uk
mary.renouf@bbc.co.uk
rod.granger@pearsoned.com
liebmant@wharton.upenn. edu
joanna.prior@penguin.co.uk

It would be nice if someone else can research the contacts and major business partners of the following:
www.ftinteractivedata.com www.comstock-interactivedata.com www.esignal.com
The Economist Group
====
To All Addressees:
All of you work for the plexus of firms which includes Pearson Education (Penguin Books, Financial Times, FT-Comstock, eSignal, The Economist), or work for a firm which maintains a significant relationship with them (IBM Press, Wharton Books, BBC Children's Books).

Effective immediately, I'm refraining from doing business with (or otherwise patronizing) any of the named firms, because of the manner in which Penguin Books is attempting to steal the domain name of Katie.com from its rightful owner.

For instance, I won't be buying any of Penguin/Pearson's 75+ computer titles, or buying the Financial Times or Economist, or books from Wharton or IBM Press, or the services of eSignal.

I'm also publishing this letter to all the internet mailing-lists and discussion groups in which I participate, such as SlashDot and Yahoo Groups, and encouraging my peers their to do the same.

Yours Truly...

Re:GOOD NEWS

[nusratt]

make that
"encouraging my peers THERE to do the same"

DAMN!

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[uglydude]

And what about all the damage and stress this has caused to the owner of the book... how about some money here, a nice paid vacation to somewhere nice...

I am still going to write this book microsoft.com because If I hire that Parry chick she will get Bill Gates to bow before me and give me his domain.

PENGUIN CHANGES NAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the pdf at Penguin's Site. They are changing the name of the book to "A Girl's Life Online" or some such smack.

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[uglydude]

And what about all the damage and stress this has caused to the owner of the domain (not the book sorry typo no coffee)... how about some money here, a nice paid vacation to somewhere nice... I am still going to write this book microsoft.com because If I hire that Parry chick she will get Bill Gates to bow before me and give me his domain.

in context, a STUPID TITLE

[Antaeus Feldspar]

You know, one thing hasn't been mentioned that I find extremely significant:

Given the subject matter, "katie.com" is the frigging stupidest name possible for the book.

The book is about Katie Tarbox being exploited by an "Internet predator" (really, a predator who chose to use the Internet -- it's necessary to make this distinction because there are feebs like Parry Aftab out there). The last impression that Katie T. and Penguin and self-proclaimed protector of children Parry Aftab should want to give is that Katie T. in any way, shape or form encouraged or prompted the exploitation.

Yet, what is the meaning, the implication, of adding the ".com" extension (I mean, besides when it's being used for actual accuracy, which apparently Aftab and Penguin don't give two craps about)? Thanks to the whole dot-com hysteria, "dot-com" has come to mean in the public mind "something's for sale." pencils.com? Pencils for sale! hubcaps.com? Hubcaps for sale! girl.com? Girls for sale!

So basically Penguin and Parry Aftab are fighting hard, and fighting dirty, for the right to use a title that implies Katie Tarbox put herself up for sale on the Internet. Great going, guys!

penguin caved

[Mantorp]

they're renaming the book "A Girl's Life Online"

Update

[Anonymous Coward]

From Katie.com:

Penguin FINALLY do the right thing!
According to a press release on their site today, Penguin Puttnam have finally decided to do the right thing and rename the book. I cannot tell you how pleased I am!. Of course they should have done this 4 years ago and saved us all a load of grief, but I am thrilled that they've finally realised the consequences of their actions and admitted fault by retitling the book.

All that remains is to hope that Katie Tarbox does not continue to promote herself or her services as 'katie.com' as previously threatened and maybe then my life can return to normal :-)

I am sure that this sudden change of heart by the publisher is largely to do with the support this issue has received from the online community and once again I'd like to thank everyone very much indeed.

Yours very happily

Katie Jones

What kind of values does Aftab hold true?

[ScrappyLaptop]

From Aftab's own site:

http://www.aftab.com/selling_management_on_prevent ion.htm

"How do you get anyone to buy your ideas or you products for that matter? You sell it...plain and simple, you build a pitch and keep working on it until you breakdown their resistance to the sale...."

"So how to you convince them...?"

"1. Fear. Two things always work when you're trying to sell something, fear, and greed. (We'll deal with greed next...) Research some good stories about how large companies (hopefully your competitors) have been hit with large penalties, law suits, public relations disasters, crippling systems failures or government investigations and shutdowns.

(We'll help by giving you some great examples...)"

"2. Greed..."

"3. Protect Your Butt."

"4. Protect Your Reputation. Your children and spouse are being interviewed by The National Enquirer, your parents have moved away and changed their names, your babysitter is selling an unauthorized biography of you...all because a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad litigation/investigation/incident occurred that could have been avoided."

"5. Keeping Up with the Jones's. All your competitors are using similar preventive measures to make sure that you are the competitor hit with the seven plagues."

Re:What kind of values does Aftab hold true?

[Anonymous Coward]

This just proves what a slimeball aftab is

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it should be over until... ehrm... the fat lady sings.

What's left is that Ms. Parry "I love twinkies" Ass-tab should be "encouraged" to post a public appology.

It's too bad that the bar associations have been a smidge too hesitant about kicking lawyers out for "barratry".

Aftab's Tagline

[davinciII]

Her tagline reads:

"managing cybercrime, privacy and cyber-abuse risks"

dictionary.com defines "managing" as:
To direct or control the use of;

So,

"Controlling the use of...cyber-abuse..."

Yeah, that's basically a fair assertion.

Doubt that

[siskbc]

Katie T. just wrote the book

Considering the whole point is she was a kid who got abused by a pedophile, I think the longest thing she probably ever wrote was a social studies term paper.

Can you say ghostwriter?

A clickthrough index.html page suggestion

[Neuticle]

She should just replace the index page with a short block in large type saying something to the effect of:

"Penguin books is a horrible company, who unjustfully used my domain name as a book title, and are now using extortion to try to get me to give up the domain name I bought in 1996. Click here to continue to my page, which is completely unrelated to the katie of the book, whose address is katieT.com."

It would save on bandwith too

PENGUIN BACKED DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

the book is getting re-titled. check katie.com for details.

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Anonymous Coward]

In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.

And why didn't Plume change the book title at that point in time?? Jerks!

BETTER email tactic

[nusratt]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=117023&cid =9901135

RTFA yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read it, you fucking moron?

Go kill yourself. Thanks.

BETTER email tactic

[nusratt]

see the post at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=117023&cid =9901135

Penguin contact info

[hhardy01]

It may be of interest for those who want to offer constructive comments on the situation with katie.com that Penguin USA has listed the following toll-free number for "all other concerns": (800) 631-8571. See: http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/abou t/contact.htm#CONTACT

BETTER email tactic

[nusratt]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=117023&cid =9901135

give some useful addresses

Re:proof of the lie..

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we have aftab's address and phone number let the slamming begin.

Trademark and locale

[siskbc]

Hrm... I think if you read a bit more carefully, as you'd see that she is located in the UK... I don't think that USPTO searches will help in that case.

It doesn't matter that she's in the UK because 1) Penguin's the one claiming rights (and they'd register everywhere if necessary, being an international company), 2) these things are generally protected by international treaty and 3), I couldn't find it in the UK either.

Seems like Penguin doesn't have the rights they think they do. And I don't believe book titles are automatically trademarked - I've seem some that were, making me believe the rest likely aren't by default.

Re:Amazon is censoring - A simple questionaire

[crem_d_genes]

"You are about to review any Amazon book, or comment on a review. Please indicate which of the following is most accurate about yourself:

(x) Gandhi took lessons from me.
( ) George Washington was a lightweight.
( ) I could pass a polygraph with a tack in my shoe.
( ) Waffle maker at the IHOP.
( ) Misson accomplished.
( ) I am not a crook.
( ) I'm an editor for Amazon book reviews.

Your input is very valuable to us,
Sincerely. The editorial staff at Amazon.

NO, write the Penguin **PARTNERS'** execs.

[nusratt]

see the more comprehensive email at
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=117023 &cid =9901135

A Girl's Life Online

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick somebody register agirlslifeonline.com :)

A new slashodot Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Rights Online: Publisher Renames 'Katie.com'
Books

"In an update to stories posted the previous two days on Slashdot, Penguin Putnam publishing has issued a press release stating that they have re-named the title of Katie.com to 'A Girls Life Online'. Press release found on their press page."

/.ing Amazon?

[ATMosby]

So is Amazon able to withstand the force of angry /.ers posting lots and lots of negitave reviews of the book? Hit them where it hurts, can't very well sell books if the web site is down.

Re:/.ing Amazon?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a freakin idiot...

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Kentamanos]

Was coming in here to post the same thing I saw on the katie.com site:

Penguin FINALLY do the right thing!

According to a press release on their site today, Penguin Puttnam have finally decided to do the right thing and rename the book. I cannot tell you how pleased I am!. Of course they should have done this 4 years ago and saved us all a load of grief, but I am thrilled that they've finally realised the consequences of their actions and admitted fault by retitling the book.

All that remains is to hope that Katie Tarbox does not continue to promote herself or her services as 'katie.com' as previously threatened and maybe then my life can return to normal :-)

I am sure that this sudden change of heart by the publisher is largely to do with the support this issue has received from the online community and once again I'd like to thank everyone very much indeed.

Yours very happily

Katie Jones

Look who's Phone Number ...

[lake2112]

867-5309 Jenny

The book will be retitled!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A few hours after this story hit the front page at /. Katie Jones reports that Penguin publishing has decided to retitle the book!

4 years too late, but better than never. Perhaps their lawyers and marketing people finally got a love tap from the ol' clue stick?

I like to think the /. crowd helped bring this about.

Re:The book will be retitled!!!

[decepty]

Well the 300+ angry comments on Amazon (that mysteriously got deleted) couldn't have hurt...

Finger -- Ms. Aftab

[kmilani2134]

She can be reached via e-mail at parry@aftab.com and for time sensitive issues or for media on a deadline, at 201-463-8663 (her U.S. cell phone). From her site http://www.aftab.com/

Well, ...

[garethwi]

...she lost my support. Her husband is the bastard who nabbed my beloved gareth.com domain.

Now, if I were to write a book about it for Penguin, what should I call it?

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[ggvaidya]

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Rushes to book http://www.agirlslifeonline.com/

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[radish]

Maybe a free copy of the book? ;)

She's going to re-release the book

[miracle]

The book is going to be re-released under a new name, "A Girl's Life Online".
I found the following Announcement from the "un"real Katie. Here's an excerpt:

Today I am very excited to announce that Katie.com will be re-released and re-named A Girl's Life Online. From the beginning, I hoped that Penguin and Katie Jones would be able to resolve this issue. I never believed that I had any right to the name Katie.com as a website but simply viewed it to be the name of my book. That being said, I never wanted anyone to experience unwanted emails or traffic on the Internet. As someone who has been abused, I would certainly not wish to cause anybody pain. Therefore, I sincerely apologize to Katie Jones for any suffering she may have endured.

Apparently /. et. al did help..

[loftager]

.. according to katie.com: According to a press release on their site today, Penguin Puttnam have finally decided to do the right thing and rename the book. I cannot tell you how pleased I am!. Of course they should have done this 4 years ago and saved us all a load of grief, but I am thrilled that they've finally realised the consequences of their actions and admitted fault by retitling the book.

Wired Magazine

[otlg]

First of all I haven't had a chance to scan all the comments so sorry if this is redundant. Apparently from what I have pieced together from the variou articles over the last 2 days, Katie T. is doing something with Wired, some sort of joint venture type thingie or whatever (I quite frankly don't give a fuck what it is if she's involved). However, I think we should all write http://www.wired.com/news/feedback/Wired: and let them know how we feel. I mean of all publishers/magazines in the world you would think Wired would give a fuck about this. Hit 'em where it hurts.. the pocketbook.

Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is how we get Enrons and corporate irresponsibility... by obeying that bottomline

Enron wasn't paying any attention at all to the bottom line. They weren't making money; they were defrauding the investors by shuffling money around and redirecting it into the pockets of executives. Remember that maze of front companies they set up? None of those shells was selling a product. A profitable company doesn't resort to accounting fraud to cover up the fact that they're not making money, because they ARE making money. You don't seem to have a clear grasp of what Enron was actually doing. Same with Tyco: Kozlowski was embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars while he ran the company into the ground. He paid no attention to the bottom line at all.

You can make money and be fair to your customers. You can please your stockholders and please your clients.

True. But you don't do it by getting all hippy-dippy about it. You do it by selling goods and services at a profit.

Typical Face Saving -'Not Our Fault' Retreat

[gadlaw]

The only good thing you can say about this is that they pulled the trigger quickly before the bad publicity got even worse. After all- when you are caught red handed being a big bully you write a press release just like this one. We didn't do anything wrong, if anything was done wrong it wasn't us and we'll correct it right away now. Humm.

Re:Typical Face Saving -'Not Our Fault' Retreat

[proxima centauri]

who actually owns http://www.agirlslifeonline.com/ now ? :D

Re:Typical Face Saving -'Not Our Fault' Retreat

[siriuskase]

Whois but don't bug her, she wrote a nice apology on her other website: http://katiet.com/

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[AC5398]

Congrats! Both on Penguin renaming the book and on the baby!

Hope your life is a quiet and uneventful one from here on out :)

Amazon Censorship Saga

[wayward]

Just to follow up with details, in case anyone's interested. There's a book called "Pledged" by Alexandra Robbins that purports to be an inside view of sorority life. It follows the lives of four sorority women in unnamed sororities at unnamed schools. Although there is a need to protect the subjects, this arrangement also gives Robbins a lot of opportunity for fabrication. There were some things in the book that seemed really dubious. For example, Robbins referred to interviewing "Laney," an Alpha Sig in Nevada. A reviewer on Amazon pointed out that there weren't any Alpha Sig chapters anywhere in Nevada. Amazon apparently removed the review.

Robbins also included a claim by a former Chi Omega that her sisters had drugged her and arranged for her to be raped, since they were apparently tired of hearing her talk about being a virgin and wanted to "convert her to their ways." Problem was ... there were a lot of improbable things in the woman's story, and a grand jury didn't buy it either. (The woman's site http://www.chiomegasecrets.com was taken down, but you can see a copy of it courtesy of The Wayback Machine http://web.archive.org/. Note the numerous "conspiracy" accusations.) When reviews pointed out that her account might not be true, Amazon deleted their comments too.

Neverbuying from Amazon again....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Those reviews should not have been removed. I don't care if they were not really reviews. The whole thing is reprehensible. The parents never paid attention to Katie and that's the only way I feel sorry for her is that her workaholic parents did not pay enough attention to her. I ain't saying that the sicko was right, but she should have thought to herself that hey I am too young to be hanging out with a 27 year old.

My guess to the whole story

[Anonymous Coward]

- Penguin publishes the book.

- Katie Jones finds out, points out the problem but doesn't really sue because either she can't be bothered or she thinks she might get some useful traffic out of it. The publishers add a note to the book, Jones moves stuff to another website, everybody's content.

- At some point later Katie Tarbox meets with sleezeball ambulance-chaser Parry Aftab who's heard that there is money to be made on the internet.

- But Aftab and Tarbox don't want to spend their own money and think they should get what they want, they start harassing Jones who doesn't give in.

- The story hits the internet.

- To appease the online community, the publishers, who had nothing to do with Aftab and Tarbox's antics, are forced to change the book title after all.

- Aftab and Tarbox will ...?

IMHO, Penguin should've been more careful to begin with and they got off somewhat easy. But I don't think they're connected with Aftab's harassments. As far as Aftab, she deserves nothing less than total bankrupcy and deportation to Nigeria. And the book should be downplayed and even removed from circulation, it has gathered too much bad karma and considering her behavior, Tarbox should not be allowed to make any further profit out of it.

Sadly, this is not the end.

[doublem]

All the copies titled katie.com in print still need to filter through, and as stated in Katie J's response, Kattie T. hasn't said she'll stop trying to market her speaking tours and other materials as katie.com.

And there are untold copied of katie.com in circulation, which will be generating hits to Katie J's web site for a few decades to come.

Don't let up /.

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Kentamanos]

Just to make it clear, I'm posting a quote. I suppose I could have made that more clear :).

Cancel Your InfoWeek Subscription

[Stinkpot]

Parry Aftab is a columnist for Information Week magazine (http://www.aftab.com/) ...wonder what would happen if thousands of Slashdotters cancelled their subscriptions and named her as the reason....hmmmmmm

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[rohan_leader]

Now, Penguin and Katie Tarbox and Katie Jones come out looking good after all this! Great job!

The only person who's still sucking her thumb is Parry Aftab, who, after all these press releases still has a couple of questions to answer:

1. Was she representing Tarbox as Jones states she said in her phone call?
2. How the hell did she see that katie.com belonged to Tarbox?
3. And lastly, how did she think she would win?

IANAL, (thank goodness), but Aftab shouldn't' be able to claim she is representing someone when she isn't. For that, she is in the wrong. Obviously, Jones account of things has a bias slant to it, but from what I gather, Aftab was trying to extort the domain from Jones. Why isn't this illegal!

Frankly, lawyers like Parry Aftab, give a bad name for all lawyers everywhere.

You can't copyright a title...

[renehollan]

On the assumption that one can't copyright a title of an otherwise copyright work (presumably, extracting the title would be "fair use"), I see nothing wrong with simply titling a book with something that just so happens to be the name of a domain. By itself, the title "Katie.Com" does not strike me as a problem in the same way that a book about the history of Slashdot, titled "Slashdot.org" wouldn't be (and the subject isn't even the same in this case).

Trademark law doesn't appear to apply even if there were a trademark granted: a book about online preditors is not likely to be confused with a run-of-the-mill online business presense.

So, it appears that the issue here is not one of copyrights, trademarks, or patents. It isn't an intellectual property issue of any kind. That said, there may be a case for malice or at least negligence: would not a reasonable person assume that an internet-related book titled with a legitimate domain name drive traffic to that domain? And that the attention might be unwelcome given the kind of person likely to be encouraged to browse it? While NAL, as a layperson, I do think a case can be made for negligence. Dumb move.

Trying to hijack a domain, of course, raises the bar to malice and harassment. Dumber move.

But, let's for the moment consider the unintentional (which does not appear to be the case here) titling of a book as that of a valid domain name, driving some traffic there, that is not likely to come from a population of "undesirable browsers" (i.e. pedophiles). Say, for example, a book entied "JohnDoe.com" about a newbie's attempt to establish an anonymous, but visible presence on the 'net. Could the holder of the JohnDoe.com domain do anything if they could not demonstrate damages (assuming that they're not trying to be anonymous but visible and thus have their schtick usurped by the book)?

I doubt it.

That said, I do think that even if it were inadvertent (which I do not belive), it's a pretty dumb and unoriginal move on Penguin's part. Dumb, because of the potential legal liability, and unoriginal, because they could have picked so many other domain-like titles.

For example, what about "Katie...Com"? (Perhaps that's a bit too close and obscure at the same time). Or, "Katie, dotCommed"? You get the idea. Of course, for good measure, a disclaimer to the effect that "...except where noted, internet domains, email addresses, etc. are fictional and any resemblence to legitimate ones are unintentional" should probably be present for good measure. In such a case, Ms. Jones could chose to note on her site that it is not to be confused with the book. An inconvenience, perhaps, but the other alternative would be to have to show some kind on intent on the publisher's part to make the connection.

I do hope Ms. Jones gets compensation for the harassment and apparent extortion she appears to be enduring, in this particular case. Penguin has, so far, lost major karma in my book, though ultimately, the courts will have to pass judgement.

Cease and desist

[Particle Man]

You've used a portion of my name as your own. I've clearly been using it longer than anyone else on slashdot, and I demand that you cease and desist as I have reason to believe that your use of my name has caused me great harm.

This includes, but is not limited to: not being able to get a certain song out of my head for several minutes now; for that reason and also due to my being forced to type this message, not being able to give my work the attention I'm assured it deserves; and on a related topic, damage to my reputation due to what my colleagues are referring to as a case of extreme flatulence.

Hello Mr Cheney

[Foofoobar]

Heh. Hippy dippy? Caring about your customer is hippy dippy? Is this Dick Cheney? How's Halliburton these days Dick?

From http://www.aftab.com/

[n6kuy]

"Parry Aftab. Esq.,
The Privacy Lawyer(TM)"

Hahahahaha....

no, i'm afraid its far from over...

[Anonymous Coward]

what about all the damage thats been done so far ?

katie.com can NEVER go back to what it was before because everyone knows about it. and what about all the books out there that are still titled katie.com ?

it would have been over it the publisher had done the right thing four years ago. now, i'm afraid its too late. katie.com is screwed forever.

So what is this lawyer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a male or female cyberlawyer..According to "its" website, it doesn't know for sure. Maybe cyberlawyers are sexless, or A-sexual.

"Parry Aftab only handles special cases, policy-development and consulting. he works closely with other law firms when special issues arise and her expertise is needed. She travels extensively and is involved in policy issues globally, especially in Asia and the EU."

Notice how Parry changes sex in the middle of this paragragh..

BTW, What a lovely creature "it" is. HAHAHA

Grammar on katie.com

[kkovach]

Is it just me, or is the grammar on katie.com horrific?

- Kevin

Wrong, cretin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Caring about your customer is hippy dippy?

Oh, you poor imbecile. Kinda funny, though.

I'll say it again, real slowly. I know you've got time to listen, because you've been unemployed and living in your mother's basement ever since Amazon fired you for downloading pr0n all day and never doing your job:

A business is not a fucking charity. Giving the customers their money's worth is good business as long as you can make a profit that way. Any "morality" other than that, any belief in any "responsibility" beyond increasing earnings per share, is exceedingly BAD business. If your company is publicly held, it's also a felony.

Your incoherent shrieking about Halliburton is a wild non sequitur even by Slashdot standards, but it does serve to illustrate further your dim, animalistic incomprehension of how business works. You're just another scared, half-bright, unemployable, overgrown undergraduate pseudo-radical, looking for a scapegoat to blame all his shortcomings on. Well, get used to it. Critters like you get ground under the wheels in this society because you're worth nothing to anybody. Sorry about that, but it's the way of nature. You're a hopeless failure not because the world is unfair, but because you're a loser. No skills, no work ethic, no education. A born burger-flipper. Back during the tech bubble you got a Barbie Dream Job at Amazon for a while, but that's over now and you'll never again be paid more than you're worth. Deal.

Re:Wrong, cretin.

[Foofoobar]

Wow. That single brain cell is cranking overtime. I'll bet it gets lonely in the grand canyon of a skull you've managed to excavate.

I like the way you think balance is an extreme. I'll try not to use big words so you don't get confused, ok? If you have any problems, ask your mommy to help :)

You see there is charity where you give away things for free and there is business where you sell things. In business, you make money by supplying people with stuff (whether it be goods or services). In charity, you give it away for free... like your mother on the corner.

But for a business to really succeed it has to have happy customers. Happy customers are listened to and not ignored. Ignoring your customer makes them unhappy. Are you still with me? I know this is confusing but try to stay with me. I'm almost finished.

Does this mean you give the customer everything they want? No. Does this mean you supply them with a good consumer experience making them want to come back and making them want to tell others about their good experience? YES! See? That's wasn't so hard to understand now was it? :)

Amazon used to do this. In order to build a solid customer base, they offered to replace books for free that were damaged. They offered free shipping. You used to be able to call their customer support. They offered alot of things for free. Now THAT was a charity.:)

Then they went to the other extreme and cut almost all of that. Finding their customer support line is impossible. They take down negative reviews to sell more books and even encourage fabrication of reviews to sell books they have overstocked.

Now I know that this is going to be hard for your mind to wrap around (especially since it's so one dimensional) but do you see how both of those are extremes? Shouldn't someone at least be able to phone your customer support easily? I doubt that you'd understand but maybe one day you will evolve and get it. By the way, put some bandaids on those knuckles... they're bleeding.

Did you call Jenny?

[Ohreally_factor]

I must have missed the part where anyone was intentionally sent to Katie Jones's site, other than the links that have appeared regarding this story.

Did you actually try to call Jenny?

Funny quote from Parry Aftab's site

[Anonymous Coward]

The challenge of describing Parry

Parry often says that trying to describe her is like the parable of the six blind men trying to describe an elephant.

http://www.aftab.com/about_parry_aftab.htm

Yep.

http://www.aftab.com/_borders/pawork.jpg

http://www.aftab.com/_borders/parry2.jpg

http://www.aftab.com/_borders/revisedcnn319.jpg

but, but .. they can't DO that!

[aggiefalcon01]

How dare they unfuck their data! What gall, to put right what we made wrong! The nerve of those people ...

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep :) I saw the end name and thought you were Katie Jones as well - until I looked at your slashdot id, and realised it was highly unlikely Katie Jones has been a /.er for the last three or four years :)

I'm Not going to visit Katie.Com

[Boricle]

Because from just reading the articles, I have no desire to add to a slashdotting of the victim of this problem, and the (probable) slashdotting and bandwidth bill it is likely to result in.

Give some thought to it also, or use the internet archive (wayback) - its not quite so up to date, but the pictures are cached too - http://web.archive.org/web/20030621113550/http://w ww.katie.com/

No reply?

[Foofoobar]

Hmmm ... all silent on the moron front. The zookeeper must have locked up the monkeys for the night. :)

Stop with the fucking Bzzt already.

[Anonymous Coward]

You obnoxious little motherfucking pissant cunt.

It's fucking bad enough that you fucking said "bzzt wrong thanks for playing", but then you fucking compounded your fucking reprehensible crime by fucking adding "here's a home version of the game". Do you fucking know how fucking annoying that fucking is? Fucking assholes like you should be fucking taped to a fucking table and fucking made to watch fucking reruns of the fucking "Brady Bunch" until your fucking eyes drop out of your fucking heads and your fucking brains turn into fucking ant colonies.

The above is meant as constructive criticism, and no insult was intended, dickwad.

Re:UPDATE: It's all over - Penguin changes book ti

[Anonymous Coward]

Rushes to book http://www.agirlslifeonline.com/

But's that's cybersquatting!!!!! You can't do that!!!!!!!!!