Domain-Name Wars, Rise of the Cybersquatters 183
CWmike writes "When FreeLegoPorn.com began publishing pornographic images created with Lego toys, Lego acted quickly. "The content available on the site consisted of animated mini-figures doing very explicit things. We were not amused," says Peter Kjaer, an attorney for Denmark-based Lego. Lego didn't go to court. Instead it filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, which ruled in its favor. The domain registrar for FreeLegoPorn.com, GoDaddy.com, eventually shut down the site and transferred the domain name to Lego under ICANN rules. But it's not just Lego and Verizon that are suffering. Green energy is a hot topic, so cybersquatters have been targeting wind and solar energy start-ups. And malicious sites can create havoc with a brand's reputation. Cybersquatting activity rose by 18% last year, with a documented 440,584 cybersquatting sites in the fourth quarter of last year alone, according to MarkMonitor's annual Brandjacking Index report. And WIPO cited an 8% jump in dispute filings in 2008, to 2,329 complaints — a new record. Now, ICANN is preparing to open a potentially unlimited number of new top-level domains as early as the first quarter of 2010."
freelegoporn.com is not cybersquatting (Score:5, Insightful)
freelegoporn.com is not cybersquatting. It's parody. The difference is crucial.
Just because a rights-holder says otherwise doesn't make it so.
They should've fought for it (Score:2, Informative)
As someone pointed out, courts are inconsistent.
Unless FreeLegoPorn knew they judges they would face would rule against them due to locally-binding precedent, they should have sued to regain the name.
This is parody.
If the local judges were likely to rule against them they should have relocated their corporate headquarters to a more judicially friendly venue, picked a new similar equally-"infringing" name, and pre-emptively sued to declare that their use was not a trademark infringement. Then once they won
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Seconded. In fact, I remember another case where the court—wrongly—grabbed a domain name simply because of its resemblance to another site: etoy.com [etoy.com] vs. etoys.com [etoys.com]. etoy came first, but somehow eToys managed to suck up to a judge and lay claim to etoy.com, however temporarily. It may have had something to do with the fact that eToys thought i
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Personally, I set up an etoy.com zone in my DNS server pointing to the rightful owners. Hardly a deadly counterattack, just my private protest of that very bad decision.
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Most definitely correct. This issue may become more and more relevant as soon as ICANN-has-more-domains.
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Trademark infringement should definitely be protected by fair use. Parody is fair use. The courts have not been consistent on this issue, however.
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Trademarks are certainly not protected by fair use. Fair use is an affirmative defense in copyright infringement cases, not trademark infringement cases. A company that registers a trademark must, by law, defend that trademark in court against all infringers it has knowledge of.
Re:freelegoporn.com is not cybersquatting (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Fair use is also a defense in trademark infringement cases. Fair use of a trademark includes things such as descriptive use, e.g. "Similar to Kleenex", use in advertising by resellers, and a whole host of other things.
The article Fair Use of Trademarks [publaw.com] is a good read on the subject.
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FREE
LEG
OF
PORN
(.com)
lalalalala...
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Yet that "similar to" or "compare to" or some other phrase is critical... if the generic maker doesn't make it clear they're not the brand name then they're trademark infringers.
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But trademark law doesn't prevent any use of the word at all - this isn't like patent or copyright law. It only affects commercial usage. After all, I can say Lego Lego Lego here all I like, without being in violation of trademark law - it's only when I sell something called "Lego" that I risk a lawsuit.
In this case, it's unclear that there website was commercial - given the "free", I'm guessing not.
Trademark does not - or should not - allow companies to shut someone down merely for using a word. Trademark
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it's unclear that there website was commercial - given the "free", I'm guessing not.
Not necessarily correct.
(Also "their", sorry, couldn't help myself.)
Try searching for "free [term]" and you'll find dozens of sites with the word "free" in their domain, with the word "free" plastered all over their page and with absolutely nothing being provided for free except the ability to look at the price list.
Let's get a quick example, googling "free ringtone" shows these guys on result page #1:
http://www.free-rington [uk.com]
Trademark rights do not exclude parody. (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, but trademark rights do not protect against parody in the first place. You wouldn't even need to use a fair use defense, if you aren't using the trademark as a trademark on similar products then you aren't infringing the trademark rights.
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It doesn't necessarily matter if it is on similar products or not. There is such a thing as "trademark dilution" and featuring the Lego products in the porn pictures certainly qualifies.
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In fact, the domain name was perfectly descriptive. Free, Lego, Porn.
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This [blogspot.com] is criticism, not parody, but certainly suggests the concept of "fair use" can be applied to trademarks, as well as copyright.
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Fair use in trademarks most certainly does exist. See Nominative fair use [wikipedia.org].
Also, please cite the law that says a company must defend the trademark in all cases.
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I firmly believe that what you say is not true -- you don't have to litigate every trivial instance of your trademark being violated. AFAICS, this is an urban myth that developed from the potential (but usually unlikely) threat of genericisation through overuse, and the utility of claiming it to be the case by IP lawyers.
I really don't, for instance, believe the Lego porn is going to lead to people using "lego" to refer to any other kind of brick. This is because I don't believe any of Lego's competitors ar
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"Fair use" is one of those things you can't really determine until you go to court. Granted - that's sort of the way it is with anything that involves a court. But fair use is nebulous and tends to shift from court case to court case.
Parody has been held as fair use. But even parody has limits. Ask the Penny Arcade guys about their infamous Strawberry Shortcake [the-trukstop.com] strip. American Greetings came after them for use of the Strawberry Shortcake character. Their intent, if I remember right, was to use a popul
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I think that FreeLEgoPorn would have a better chance arguing that the word "Lego" is sufficiently generic as to not warrant trademark protection anymore. Considering the number of off-brand or generic blocks on the market that are commonly referred to as "legos" this would have a much better chance than arguing parody, im (decidedly non-lawyer) o.
Also just another case of why you should never use GoDaddy as a domain registrar, they are known for bowing to the slightest bit of legal pressure and handing ove
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Not trying to troll, I'm actually quite interested in any suggestions.
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I'm just hoping the potential for communication and jurisdiction problems will cause the assholes to give up before Gandi surrenders
FWIW, Gandi's T&C are better than most, and I wouldn't use godaddy.
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If you're willing to pay a one-off $95 reseller signup fee then OpenSRS [opensrs.com] is a very good choice.
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Yes it does.
Provided people are aware that it is porn made by a third party with lego bricks, and not something that Lego is doing themselves, there is no infringement.
[link not safe for work] (Score:2)
Why not? [screaming-penguin.com] [link not safe for work]
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Are you seriously suggesting that freelegoporn.com was NOT intended to be a money-making venture?
Wait - what?
(Yes, I know that companies can offer things for free in order to make money selling extra, but I fail to see why you're pulling the "seriously?" when there is no evidence to suggest that this was a money making venture. If you know otherwise, provide your reference.)
Trademark is not copyright (Score:3, Informative)
Are you seriously suggesting that freelegoporn.com was NOT intended to be a money-making venture?
Eh? Who cares? Was Lego planning on getting into the porn business? No? Then I could market my 'Lego' brand of porn without infringing. Just like Apple Records and Apple Computers can coexist.
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I'm not sure one should conclude they thought they were going to lose. It seems just as likely to me that they had no inkling that the music and PC industries would intersect a couple decades down the road. If they didn't have any plans to start recording albums, there wouldn't be much incentive to incur the expense of actually pressing for a ruling.
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I'll assert that unless they were selling the blocks themselves, the Lego trademark didn't apply. Trademark exists to prevent consumer confusion, not specifically for the protection of IP (though it has to defend IP in order to prevent confusion). If a person going to that web site thinks that it's an official Lego site selling Lego brand building blocks, then yes, there is an issue. If it's a site showing
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In which case, if the blocks were actually Lego brand interlocking plastic blocks, sounds like nominative fair use. It's permitted to use a trademark to describe the item the trademark referred to.
IMHO (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like LEGO are being IP bullies. If they can do that to FreeLegoPorn.com, they can probably do it to LEGOSucks.com.
Re:IMHO (Score:5, Funny)
penismightier.com? Who will think of the pen companies?
analbumcover.com? Who will think of the RIAA?
therapists.com? Who will think if the US Therapy association?
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If you read the first one as a five letter word + eight letter word, it has nothing to do with pens.
A bit like the Italian division of a company called Powergen.
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an-album-cover => anal-bum-cover
therapists => the-rapists
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I do think "LEGO" should be allowed in any address, because "Free-You-know-what-plastic-figures-Porn" is silly.
But they won't stop you from dedicating a site to animations of LEGO figures humping, as long as you don't have "LEGO" in the adress, right?
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If you owned a company that had spent decades building a reputation for quality children's toys would you sit idly by while someone appropriated the name for a site dedicated to using your building blocks to create pornographic images and stop-motion animation movies for people with a Lego fetish?
Yes, but then I have a sense of humour. I didn't think the site was for people with a "Lego fetish" though - I just thought it was meant to be amusing.
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I don't see a problem with it.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/reubens_incest/gn35_22a.html [thebricktestament.com]
Down with Domain Resellers! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Down with Domain Resellers! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just sick of how cybersquatters have stolen my name! I, a famous and dead Ukrainian novelist, wanted to set up my own blog using my own domain! I'm heartsick that my name is being squatted because of its passing similarity to some search engine! The injustice!
Signed,
Nikolai Gogol [wikipedia.org]
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The way it should be (Score:4, Interesting)
They should make it where the price of a domain doubles for each domain you have registered.
1. $35 ...etc.
2. $70
3. $105
That would raise the annual price of owning two domains to $105 and $210 for three, $420 for four, $840 for five and so on. That keeps the price relatively cheap for people who just want a personal domain or small businesses, but the domain squaters will be rendered out of business for the most part.
I want to see someone squat 1,000 domains at those prices.
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It would be worth it for Ford to pay for fifty domains.
It would not be worth it for domain squatters to pay for hundreds, or even dozens.
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It would be utterly unaffordable for Ford to pay for fifty domains.
FTFT. http://www.google.com/search?q=2%5E50*35 [google.com]
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Wow your math sucks. But don't worry, I will teach you math.. and it will only cost you a penny today, and then we will just double the cost every day after that for a month or so.
Re:The way it should be (Score:5, Insightful)
One could argue that this is abusing the domain name system's original intent. To continue your example, why does Ford need taurus.com, fusion.com, mustang.com, etc? They should be using subdomains: taurus.ford.com. mustang.ford.com. The make and model are both instantly more recognizable, as is the Ford brand in general.
The Internet would be a better place if the marketing people would focus on marketing problems and let the technology people implement solutions.
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The biggest problem with the proposed solution is that even if a company like Ford sticks with only a plain "ford" domain, it probably makes sense for them to own that domain in every country's top-level since they have an international presence.
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$70 * 2 = $105? Maybe for extremely small values of $70 :)
I think yoyu mean that the cost for all your domains doubles each time you add another domain. This formula would be:
Cost = $35*2^(n-1) where n = the number of domains registered.
The problem with this is that legitimate companies' costs would skyrocket for no reason. Consider a small US firm with three brands. Just based
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Naw.. He was doing a Fibonacci sequence.
1) $35 .....
2) $70
3) $35 + $70 = $105
4) $70 + $105 = $170
5)
Re:The way it should be (Score:5, Insightful)
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Let's hope all 10,000 of your similarly named friends have their own credit card then. :)
Not that I endorse the original idea. I'd hate for the eight domain names I own (for various mostly non-business reasons) to suddenly skyrocket in price.
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Right, cause faking multiple users for that would be somehow harder than faking multiple users for every other service that has some retarded per-user limit that I use.
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They should make it where the price of a domain doubles for each domain you have registered.
Who are they? There are many companies which provide domain name registration service. If one of them implemented the scheme you describe, business would simply go elsewhere. Why would any registrar want to do this? It would only cost them business.
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Yeah because it's totally impossible for people to fake their whois information. ICANN is shitty enough already, we don't need to make it worse.
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2) Shell companies.
Fail -- even at those prices big oil could afford it.
WIPO sucks ass crackers. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why would you even send a legal team to Sweden? Wouldn't it be kind of expensive and kind of long to have your lawyers learn a new language and be retrained in a new set of laws. Hiring a lawyer in the jurisdiction that you're being sued in, without going there yo
Re:WIPO sucks ass crackers. (Score:4, Interesting)
I went through WIPO arbitration. Someone wanted to take one of my domains away from me. I replied with a proper reply and ended up keeping my domain.
The arbitration goes to an individual or multiple individuals. It really depends on the individual you get. Looking through prior arbitration, I saw how mine could have gone either way.
I'm not a violent person (Score:2)
RS
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Re:I'm not a violent person (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
"And malicious sites can create havoc with a brand's reputation."
Apparently, proving this statement is left as an exercise for the reader.
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PHP.COM
Back in the 90's ppl would hear about the language, see it was some other kind of site and would use perl or some other cgi language. Not sure how or why you would want to cite 2+2=4, as if that would give it more credibility.
It's sad. ICANN not allowing satire. (Score:2)
Cybersquatting should be costly (Score:2)
I think cybersquatting should become increasingly costly over time, with crowd ratings as the determining factor as to whether someone is in fact squatting. If, say, 85% of people say a domain is being squatted, then the squatter's registration fee should double each successive year.
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Not FreeLegoPorn, but real cybersquatting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether Lego -- which I generally perceive as far too litigious -- was right or wrong in its action against FreeLegoPorn.com, at least that was being used to host legitimate content. What really bugs me is domain owners who buy up a bunch of domain names to extort money out of those with a legitimate interest in them, or those who buy up a bunch of domain names for no other reason than to host advertising pages (which I consider a form of DNS spam).
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ICANN needs to be released of their duties (Score:2)
ICANN needs to be replaced with something more non-for-profit and preferably international, because they're just taking the piss.
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a) The site hosts content about that product
b) Does not mislead visitors
c) Has an alternative meaning (such as Apple.com being a site about different types of Apples)
d) If the actual business has at least three "high profile" domain names of the same thing (such as
I missed out on FreeLegoPorn?!?! (Score:2)
Crap! Why didn't someone tell me!? Is this site now operating under a different name? I expect this is a very funny thing to see. Is there a mirror or cache or wayback or anything of this site?
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New TLDs without regard to existing alt roots... (Score:2)
Now, ICANN is preparing to open a potentially unlimited number of new top-level domains as early as the first quarter of 2010.
Well, this should prove interesting, since the alt root I'm associated with (OpenNIC [opennicproject.org]) hasn't received notification from ICANN as to how colliding TLDs will be handled. And I don't know of any other alternate roots that have been contacted either.
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Separate namespaces, but the alt roots try to be good citizens. Most alt roots (including OpenNIC) mirror the ICANN root as well. Several years ago, ICANN railroaded .biz through, even though OpenNIC had clear "first dibs" on the TLD. I assume more of the same is coming down the road.
Domain Names Are So Ten Years Ago... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really increasing compared to domain names (Score:4, Informative)
According to netcraft in the last year there has been about 40% increase in fully qualified domain names out there (includes subdomains not just top level so not a perfect stat but a good indication)
June 2008 172,338,726 FQDNs (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/06/index.html)
June 2009 238,027,855 FQDNs (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/06/17/june_2009_web_server_survey.html)
So really you could say that cyber squatting is decreasing relative to the increase in domain names........
Not really increasing compared to domain names
Evil cybersquatters (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, they may not be making as good a use as you might, but why should that be the determination of who gets to take it away.
Now, if it is a site that is fraudulent, I can understand that, but that is a different allegation then cybersquatting. I can also understand trademark infringement (to some extent) but this whole "my brand is x so anyone with an x in their domain name should belong to me" seems a little over the top.
Re:Evil cybersquatters (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine you come up with the name for a business you'd like to start or a product you'd like to sell. It's the perfect name! So clever and unique! And you go to register the domain..and find it's taken. And so are the 18 variations of it you can think of that might work, too. And they're not being used, at all. It's not like somebody else just "got to it first" and is using it to sell their product. No, they're just hoping to extort some money out of someone who actually wants to do something with it. And they want an obscene amount of money. Like $20,000 for a return on their $10 investment. Can you understand how that experience might make you want to break their legs?
These people aren't doing anything useful, they're not providing any service, they're just dicks.
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They profit without contributing anything to society. They're parasites. Society does not like parasites.
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They are playing the role of the glazier in The Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. In this way they are economic leeches which cause a net harm to both the economy and society.
Oh please (Score:2)
people see a market and grabbed up something they believed would be of value later. Big deal.
And ICANN shutting down that brick based porn cite is a shame. Completly outside the point of trademark and copyright. It was a blow to free speech.
I bunch of companies whining that they didn't have the foresight to get a domain and they get to just shut people down for the sole reason that they are a big company.
It's a shame.
Lego is the cybersquatter here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Cybersquatters are people/companies who grab domain names and then fail to use them for legitimate sites that match the domain name. If the Lego corporation grabs freelegoporn.com and fails to use it to host free Lego porn, then the Lego corporation is guilty of cybersquatting.
suffering? (Score:2)
Unless Lego has gone into the porn business themselves (have they?), Lego is clearly in the wrong here; they had no right to shut down FreeLegoPorn.com What they should be "suffering" from is a serious lawsuit for abuse of trademark law.
MarkMonitor (Score:2)
MarkMonitor should elicit the same kind of response in your brain as "Media Sentry".
Cybersquatting won't even seem like an issue... (Score:2)
the "World Intellectual Property Organization" (Score:2)
the World Intellectual Property Organization, which ruled in its favor
No shit? Who would have thought, that an organization, who names itself after something that does not exist, is 100% biased? ^^
On the other hand: Who are they, and how can they "rule" anything? Sure, they can all sit down, play important, and sing a scrap of paper. So what?
My answer would be, what the composer Brahms responded to a review of his latest symphony: "Dear sir: I am seated in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me, and very soon it will be behind me."
Free Typosquatting Scan Tool With Screenshots (Score:5, Interesting)
Full disclosure: I am Graham MacRobie, the CEO of Alias Encore, Inc. We help companies recover cybersquatting domain names, but we focus solely on "slam-dunk" typosquatting cases, not questionable cybersquatting cases such as the one mentioned in this article.
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Wow, on-topic spam!
What's next, on-topic goatse links?
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