Techdirt. Stories filed under "cybersquatting" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "cybersquatting"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 15 Mar 2011 05:12:00 PDT Newly Formed Pac-12 Conference Claims Cybersquatting On 5-Year-Old Domain Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110226/12355013266/newly-formed-pac-12-conference-claims-cybersquatting-5-year-old-domain.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110226/12355013266/newly-formed-pac-12-conference-claims-cybersquatting-5-year-old-domain.shtml business man in Utah already owned it, and had owned it for five years -- long before there was any idea of a Pac-12 conference. Yet that didn't stop the conference from sending a cease-and-desist letter, demanding the domain and accusing him of cybersquatting. The guy, Austin Linford, isn't directly using the domain right now, but bought it for a specific project that has been put on hold due to the economy, but which he intends to do something with in the future. Linford has filed for declaratory judgment that his domain does not infringe, and notes that the conference has been changing its name and number quite a bit lately. Apparently the Pac-10 has gone from that designation to the Pac-16, then to the Pac-11 and back to the Pac-10 in just the time since Linford purchased the URL. It seems we see situations like this all too frequently. Where some large entity seems to think it has the right to a particular domain name, just because they're big, even if someone else had registered it years before.

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]]> prescient-domaining? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110226/12355013266 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:12:00 PDT Why Did One NBA Player Get 800 Domain Names From A Cybersquatter? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091015/0213546543.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091015/0213546543.shtml given control over 800 domain names related to NBA basketball players that had been cybersquatted. I'm not sure what it is with professional basketball players and domain name speculation -- as this is the second such story involving that combination -- but what struck me as odd about this is why Bosh was given all the domain names. Bosh had sued over the registration and use of chrisbosh.com -- so you could understand a ruling that gave him control over that domain name. But why give him the other 799 domain names involving other players as well? Bosh has said he'll hand over the rights to the other players for free, but it still doesn't make sense why he got control over them in the first place.

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]]> huh?.com http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091015/0213546543 Mon, 6 Jul 2009 17:45:00 PDT Tony La Russa Twitter Lawsuit Ended For Real Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090706/0136015450.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090706/0136015450.shtml sued Twitter over an obviously fake profile pretending to be him (the profile bio even said it was fake). Even if there was any sort of claim here, it would be against the person who created the account, not Twitter itself. Oddly, a few days later, La Russa announced that Twitter had settled the case, and was donating money to La Russa's charity. That seemed like it would set a bad precedent in that it would just give others incentive to sue Twitter. Except... it turned out it wasn't true. Even though La Russa said it happened, Twitter said there was no truth at all to the settlement or the charitable donation (quick question: would that make La Russa guilty of defamation?)

However, as Michael Scott alerts us, the lawsuit has now ended for real, with La Russa dismissing the charges after a "settlement" was reached, with no money exchanging hands either way. Hopefully, others quickly realize that suing Twitter for the actions of its users is a dead end, but I get the feeling this is not the last of these sorts of lawsuits.

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]]> let's-try-this-again http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090706/0136015450 Mon, 8 Jun 2009 07:55:00 PDT La Russa & The AP Claims Twitter Settled Lawsuit... Twitter Sets The Record Straight Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090605/2120045144.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090605/2120045144.shtml sued Twitter over a fake account made in his name. La Russa had no case. Multiple lawyers chimed in, and I've yet to hear from any who thought he had even a remote chance to win this case. However, the AP reported that Twitter settled, deleted the account and agreed to donate an undisclosed sum to a La Russa-backed charity. This seemed like a really bad idea, because it would just encourage others who had fake accounts opened up to sue. Hell, if someone were really sneaky, they could get a friend to open up a fake account, and then go and sue Twitter to get some settlement money. Giving in to bullies with no legal basis can come back to haunt you.

But... Twitter is claiming the story is not true. It does say that it deleted the account, but that's because of the terms of service violation -- not because of any settlement. Instead:
Reports this week that Twitter has settled a law suit and officially agreed to pay legal fees for an impersonation complaint that was taken care of by our support staff in accordance with our Terms are erroneous. Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay.

With due respect to the man and his notable work, Mr. La Russa's lawsuit was an unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous. Twitter's Terms of Service are fair and we believe will be upheld in a court that will ultimately dismiss Mr. La Russa's lawsuit.
Now that is a lot more like it. In the meantime, it's worth noting that La Russa still doesn't seem to recognize the case still has no chance:
"There is a law against improperly using a person's name without authorization and it wasn't authorized."
I'm curious (a) which law he's talking about specifically and (b) how this was "improper use." The account was clearly a parody (and said so in the bio). There was no implied endorsement of anything or other misuse of La Russa's name. And, even if La Russa's statement was true, the liability would certainly be on whoever created the account -- not Twitter. While the details of what actually happened still aren't clear... I'm guessing that after Twitter deleted the account, La Russa simply assumed they "settled." Most likely, his lawyers will drop the lawsuit, but it would be interesting to see if Twitter pushes to keep the lawsuit in place in order to try to get a favorable ruling and use it to prevent other, similar, frivolous lawsuits.

Oh, and in the meantime, isn't the Associated Press supposed to fact check things like "Tony La Russa and Twitter have reached a settlement in his lawsuit against the social networking site" and "Twitter has agreed to pay legal fees and make a donation to his Animal Rescue Foundation" both of which appear not to be true? The AP keeps telling us that only its "professional" journalists get things right -- whereas those "amateur" bloggers out there screw up the news all the time. Or did the AP figure that it could get away with not fact checking, since it could just threaten to sue any blogger who quoted its erroneous report?

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]]> that's-not-quite-right http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090605/2120045144 Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:27:41 PDT Tony La Russa Sues Twitter Over Fake Profile Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090603/1258535113.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090603/1258535113.shtml St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa is suing Twitter, claiming that the company is guilty of trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of likeness and name, because someone set up a fake Tony La Russa profile. He claims that he tried to contact the service and was unable to get them to take down the fake profile (which seems odd, since the company has apparently been pretty good about taking down fake accounts upon request). However, when he was unable to do that, he filed the lawsuit. Either way, it's difficult to see the lawsuit going very far. While (tragically) there is no section 230 or DMCA-type safe harbors for trademark, common sense should make it clear that it's not Twitter that's the liable party here (if there's any liability), but whoever created the account. Even then, it's difficult to see this getting very far. The use wasn't "in commerce" which should preclude most trademark claims, and the nature of the fake La Russa tweets suggests that anyone who read them would likely realize that it was a parody of the real La Russa. Still, there was a similar issue recently with Kanye West getting angry over fake users on Twitter -- but it hardly seems like something worth suing about. If the person is so famous, then it's not hard for them to (as West did) point out that the profile is fake, and it shouldn't much matter any more.

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]]> let's-try-this-again... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090603/1258535113 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:15:00 PDT Cybersquatting Cases On The Rise, And Will Only Get Worse Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090316/1057084132.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090316/1057084132.shtml more cybersquatting cases than ever before -- 2,329. Michael Geist makes the case that things aren't as bad on this front as they might seem, but the head of WIPO says the issue will only get worse as ICANN prepares to throw open the top-level domain system, which will undoubtedly lead to even more disputes. For instance, something like ".apple" will certainly be a magnet for disputes. Who should get to claim it? Apple Computer, Apple Corps, a trade group of apple farmers, or somebody else with a legitimate tie to the word apple? ICANN's plans to throw things open on the TLD front could be better than it getting to determine which TLDs people can use, but it certainly looks like it's going to come at the cost of a ridiculous amount of arguments over who gets to own specific TLDs. It's easy to say that ICANN and WIPO should try to get out ahead of the issue, and for what it's worth, the WIPO exec says they're working to create "pre- and post-delegation procedures". But it's hard to imagine that they're going to be able to really do much to limit the number of disputes when the new TLDs open up, given how many parties could have legitimate claims to the same ones.

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]]> get-with-the-system http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090316/1057084132 Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:52:05 PST School Wins Cybersquatting Case, But Was It Worth It? Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090114/0844293411.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090114/0844293411.shtml won a three-year domain-squatting case against some Canadian domain parkers. The school, called Framlingham College, wanted to set up shop at framlinghamcollege.co.uk, but the domain parkers beat them to the punch, and put up a page with links to, among other things, online dating sites. Apparently these sites then had links to "mature porn," which upset the administrators of the Christian school, and gave the BBC justification for the tasty headline "School's links to porn site end." It seems right that the school was able to wrest control of the site back from domain parkers, illustrating that in this instance, the dispute and resolution system worked. That said, was it such an important battle? The head of the school notes "I have no doubt that people who were seriously interested in the college will have found this site and then run a mile" -- so it's not as if people were being fooled into thinking it was the school's actual site. And there are these things these days called search engines that many people use to locate sites they're looking for, rather than just trying random URLs. Perhaps the College would have been better off using some of the resources it devoted to this battle on search-engine optimization, since its real site doesn't seem to appear in the first five pages of Google results for a search on its name. Isn't people being able to find the school's site more important than the URL it uses?

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]]> no-this-isn't-a-school-site-.com http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090114/0844293411