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website flaming a business with a similar name...legality?

M

MIDIman

Diamond Member
I have a friend who works for a business. Someone posted a website that flames this company, and their dot.com is only three letters in difference from the real business (i.e. three letters at the beginning just after "www." were simply moved to the end of the text just before ".com").

For example - lets say there exists a website called bmvspringfield.com and someone made a springfieldbmv.com flaming the company. It would be very easy for a user to type in the wrong address and get the flaming site rather than the real one.

Are there any legalities behind this? Stuff like murderking.com come to mind as a legal site, but the difference is the extreme closeness of the word choice.

Opinions anyone? 😉
 
Originally posted by: minendo
bestbuysux.org

I don't see what the big deal is.
Click to expand...

As long as they're not identifying themselves as being of or affiliated with the business in question, I don't see much of a problem.

::shrug::
 
I phoned a company today and got the answering machine:

The message was like:

Hi. Thanks for calling ******. We are not available right now, we are probably ripping someone off or practicing our questionable business policies. It is best to go elsewhere as we are being shut down because of all our shady dealings. If you insist on leaving a message, be forewarned that we will likely take advantage of you.

I phoned the company a little later and the person that answered the phone said that they were still in business and that a customer broke into their voice mail system. It is more likely it was an ex-employee in my mind, but....
 
Originally posted by: notfred
Do I need to quote the 1st amendment for you?
Click to expand...

totally agreed - was just curious if anyone has actually won a court case or something in this kind of a situation...there is no hack involved, no misrepresenation, and no physical damage done, so I'm assuming its totally legal.

thx for the replies...
 
My last employer (a dot com) had something similar happen. Guy went on all the major sites and posted links to his mocking/derrogatory website. All because he destroyed the core on his Duron CPU and we bounced it back to him.
 
Originally posted by: MIDIman
Originally posted by: notfred
Do I need to quote the 1st amendment for you?
Click to expand...

totally agreed - was just curious if anyone has actually won a court case or something in this kind of a situation...there is no hack involved, no misrepresenation, and no physical damage done, so I'm assuming its totally legal.

thx for the replies...
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. In certain cases, this can be illegal. URLs, especially, fall in a strange black hole. Nowadays, when you purchase a domain name, you agree to abide by the http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm which is managed my ICANN.

Under the UDRP, if the claimant can prove the following three conditions about you:
(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and

(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and

(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

Because this is private domain names and they are being managed by private registrars and the UDRP Board and ICANN are private organizations, there is no free speech. There still is some intelligent leeway - parody can be considered a "legitimate interest," and the UDRP arbitrators may deny a claim if it is legitimate.

However, because all registrars and registrants agree to be bound by UDRP, generally if a registrant loses a UDRP claim, aside from appealing, there is not much recourse.
 
Originally posted by: Encryptic
Originally posted by: minendo
bestbuysux.org

I don't see what the big deal is.
Click to expand...

As long as they're not identifying themselves as being of or affiliated with the business in question, I don't see much of a problem.

::shrug::
Click to expand...

Hell, you can sue anybody for anything nowadays. You can even sue somebody for looking at you crossly.... this world is so going to Hell in a handbasket.
 
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