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Sen. Clinton Wins Rights to HillaryClinton.com
SteveBlink writes "The National Arbitration Forum announced today that a ruling has been issued in favor of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding rights to the Internet domain name hillaryclinton.com. A quick search of the Yahoo! phone book reveals at least 3 other people sharing the name Hillary Clinton living Ohio, California, and Delaware, respectively. It's curious to note that Sen. Clinton's full legal name isn't "Hillary Clinton," and the website itself is a generic link farm that makes no overt reference to the senator."
This isn't such a "generic" site...it references "Hillary Rodham Clinton", "Senators", and even "Monica Lewinsky." It's intended to make money off of her popularity. (I'm not sure of the wisdom of adding the latter...it's pretty much guaranteed to anger Sen. Clinton.)
A little piece of advice for people out there who may have a domain name that makes reference to someone considered famous..
* If you point the thing to any content that makes reference to this famous entity, and it's not parody or some other protected form of copyright referencing, you can basically forget about being able to claim you're an innocent party.
I had a friend who had americaonline.com. He probably could have kept the domain or legitimately sold it to AOL had he not made the foolish mistake of making the domain go to AOL.COM when it was idle. Bad move. You can't claim the use of a generic or famous name if history shows that you were aware of the implications.
That's what a cybersquatter is. You don't have to be named George Bush to claim legal ownership of the domain GEORGEBUSH.COM, but if you point it to a site selling t-shirts with pictures of the President, you're a squatter.
Granted, GW Bush is probably a bad example, since he has several Internets to check for these kinds of things and there's no telling when or if he'll come across the "internet" that contains your incursion.
IAAL. The dispute was brought to the right venue, the National Arbitration Forum (which is one of the domain name dispute fora available to alleged victims of cybersqatting--this keeps most stuff like this out of US courts and keeps taxpayer dollars from being spent on it). According to the decision, the arbitrators took statements and evidence, and, wonder of wonders, the initial registrant of HillaryClinton.com didn't even bother to respond to the complaint. In that case, all they have to go on is the statements of the complainant, which is what they used to make their findings. Finally, the arbitrators used the correct criteria to make the decision. Cut and dry and correct.
Anyone need a lawyer?
What does that have to do with the price of Tea in Washington?
It means that Senator Hillary Clinton has no exclusive claim on the name hillaryclinton.
The one who HAD and was USING the domain WAS NOT a "Hillary Clinton", it was a "Michele Dinoia" who was using it to redirect traffic to search (*cough*)SPAM(*cough) engines.
So, is there somewhere I can download the list of Officially Approved Website Uses? Better yet, is there somewhere I can vote to have entries added to or removed from that list?
Good riddance to a bit more sleezy domain profiteering.
Does this logic work even if you're not rich and famous? I don't own a house, and I hear there are real estate speculators who buy and sell homes without even letting anyone live there in the meantime. There are cities named "Roy" in several states; I'll bet I can find someone profiteering in one of them.
Like it or not domain names are a commodity. They have value like real estate. Location, location, location. First come first served is the only way to be fair to everyone. Taking away a domain name is like imposing emminent domain on your house and then have the county sell the land to Walmart. If Walmart wants your land they should pay YOUR price and leave the government out of it.
>>>The site is www.kipmckean.com isn't run by the Kip McKean who's featured on the site, but is actually a thinly veiled rebuttal of the church/alleged "cult" he used to head.>>>>>
Interesting that you would bring up an obscure religious figure such as Kip. Have you been a member current or past? Not only did he used to head this cult, he currently still leads a church and has plans to run the whole thing again.
I was in his church/cult for 14 years and I am the owner of kipmckean.com. I thought that I had an obligation to expose and reveal Kip's recent teachings and compare these to his old dogma.
As for your reference of my being subtle...I'll work on that. Kip refers to anything that exposes him or educates people about the ICOC as 'spiritual pornography'. My intention with the website, for as long as I have it, is to make it the SPIRITUAL PORNOGRAPHY CENTERFOLD, for all to see using Kip's own words!
Howz that for subtle or thinly veiled?
So while I am not making nor taking any money for running this website, I do hope to educate people to the danger of following Kip and his brand of legalistic Christianity. I followed it for far too long, much to my shame.
Jen Chambers
webmaster@kipmckean.com