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Dude, I’m totally going to use this thing to measure out a gram of the good stuff. Damn, how many ounces is that?
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on a new money/financial/experiment blog. I’m not going to list the name here, but it has a descriptive title, kind of like “TheSimpleMilkshake.com.” I was having fun until last Sunday when I received an email from a guy saying that he had “SimpleMilkshake.com” and wanted me to cease and desist by midnight on November 2nd or he was going to “go to the next level.”
I checked out his site and it appears to be nothing more than a static page that’s part of a link farm. He slapped some Adsense on it to make it look legit. He seems like a smart guy in his email. Then I Googled him. He has an MBA and he’s a Senior Data and Systems Analyst, so I guess he really isn’t that smart after all.
I did some research and spoke to some legal people. They laughed at him. I was so concerned that I ignored him.
A day later he sent another email.
This time I responded with some of the points making sure that he understood that buying a domain name doesn’t mean you “own” the words. If that were the case than the owners of “simple.com” and “milkshake.com” could sue him. I mentioned that a link farm is not the same as a blog and I even tried to be nice. I offered to give his ring of static pages and some traffic by linking to them, I offered to let him write articles and I even offered to put “Not affiliated with SimpleMilkshake.com” on my blog. Then he wrote back telling me how he had sold domain names in the past and how his site “simplemilkshake” was a trademarked business name. He boasted that he even had a magazine sent to “simplemilkshake.com.”
That’s when I started to suspect this guy was a little unhinged. I’ve had magazines sent to my cat, but that doesn’t make my cat a business owner or force him to pay taxes. The key is this guy has never really had a business run under that name. He just has a domain name. And having a domain name is not the same as running a business.
And that’s when I spoke to a lawyer. And my lawyer laughed at him. So I’m going to ignore him. I’m going to hold off writing any more articles on this financial blog until next week, just to let him think I’m concerned and then I’m going to start writing, ignoring his threatening email.
These sort of things are usually resolved by the ICANN-Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy and it should cost him a pretty penny to file the complaint.
To respond I could use a lawyer but I don’t have to. Both the lawyers I spoke to figure I have a pretty good case, so I’m going to call his bluff and see what happens.
On a personal note, this whole situation makes me kind of sad. I remember when the Internet was the great Wild West of freedom and liberty and self-expression, but now it’s just like every other frontier we’ve ever discovered: filled with jerks and lawyers who want to be given something for doing nothing and making life less savory for the rest of us.
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3 Responses to “I Must Have A Good Blog Because I’m Being Sued”
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Try Chnage says:
Keep up the good fight. Your right it is sad these days everyone’s after a buck.
Try Change
November 6th, 2007 at 10:12 pm -
natural says:
he needs a cup of coffee and a chill pill
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CaffiNation Paul says:
you need a cup of coffee… he needs a foot in the ass