May I be the first to say
HA-HA!!!
The Oscars has lost a five-year cybersquatting lawsuit against the world's biggest domain registrar, GoDaddy. In a decision [PDF] handed down by Judge Andre Birotte in a Los Angeles district court this week, a claim by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' (AMPAS) that GoDaddy had infringed on its trademarks by …
There is a subculture of injury, victimhood, indignation and emotional extortion that has pretzeled our sense of justice into a form of hypochondria on the part of narcissists and egomaniacs that basically defines the "progressive" outlook. This rampant and demented hypersensitivity is the engine of single issue politics and is being used by tyrants, post modern structuralists and closet exhibitionists to polarize and disintegrate modern society in a grand romanticist, conservative initiative to bomb humanity back into the Stone Age. That's my rant and I'm sticking to it.
post modern structuralists
Perhaps you meant this as a joke, but if not: this phrase is nonsense. There are postmodernists, and there are structuralists, and there are post-structuralists; but since all structuralists are modern, "modern structuralists" is redundant, and so "post modern structuralists" would have to mean either "post-structuralists" (so just write that) or "postmodern structuralists" (of which there are vanishingly few, if any).
And as structuralists are the very antithesis of "hypersensitive", it's hard to see how structuralists of any sort could be guilty of the despicable crimes you describe.
And "closet exhibitionist" is a bit of an oxymoron.
So maybe this was a joke after all? Or just a beautiful plume of ignorance? Poe's Law wins again.
Whilst sometimes these cases are relevant, if you use an everyday name in your company name, expect people called "Oscar" to register theirs too
It's nicknamed "Oscar", it was never produced as an Oscar, it's an "Academy Award", any Academy can call it's awards "Academy Award", my kid's school is an Academy, it gives out "Academy Awards"
long as they don't call them a "Motion Picture Association Academy Awards"
Get over it, hopefully that Mouse Inc company gets a few knockbacks too, but as they line ICANN members pockets we may have a bit of a wait
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Probably not - most courts these days insist that efforts to reconcile parties be made public so that they can see how unreasonable either or both sides are. There may well be other legal reasons to be forced to disclose the amounts.
There was a classic case a few years ago involving Wembley Stadium in which both sides spent a million pounds just on photocopying (possibly half each, but still a ridiculous amount) - the Court of Appeal did point out to them that it would have been cheaper to use the specialist technology courts.
When this whole case amounts to $348 that someone else made you can see that the only winners are the lawyers.
After this sudden outburst of sense, can all those London folk who were stopped form using the word 'Olympic' in their businesses a few years ago perhaps start to claim against the IOC? All those taxi firms and pizza shops and other small businesses whom the IOC banned from using names they had been using for years?
Demonstrating a loss of business because someone has a domain name that might, if you squint at it, be mistaken for yours is always going to be tricky, but GoDaddy's efforts have shown that even for something as high profile as the Academy Awards any loss is insignificant.
Obviously deliberately passing off a website, for whatever reason, is a different kettle of fish, but perhaps this ruling opens a possibility to see some conversations along the lines of:
Bigcompany.com: "Hey, littlecompany, are you using our trademarks?"
Littlecompany.com: "No, I'm using my name, the same as my family has for the last seven generations."
Bigcompany.com: "Rightho, that's fair enough, perhaps you be so kind as to stick a little 'not associated with' label up on your site to avoid any confusion?"
Littlecompany.com: "Yeah, no problem, you'll do the same of course? A pleasure to do business with you."
Instead of:
BC.com: "Oi, cease and desist, here's my legal bill."
LC.com: "Wtf?"
BC.com: "It just doubled..."
Olympics....Think it was enacted circa 1995 or so. A lot longer ago you than you would think, and that probably applies in most countries too.
2012 stuff was enacted about 1/2 a second after the Olympics were awarded.
Can't remember specifically now but as we are in the promotional mechandise business it cost us a fortune in orders that customers wanted but we could not process/accept. People just didn't order anything at all..... a huge loss to the economy (leave aside what you think of promo products !!)
Queenie was much better doing an open licence for the Diamond Jubilee. Just a shame it could not be combined with games.
Olympics was a scam of the highest degree and still makes my blood boil.
All international sports events seems to have taken a leaf out of the Olympics' book.
New Zealand hosted the Rugby World Cup in 2011 and were forced to pass a whole host of incredibly draconian laws mostly to do with who could display what in public.
The other annoying thing about that was the amount of public money pissed up against a wall invested for illusory benefits.
We spent about $100 million on Eden Park alone, and now have the worst rugby stadium in the world, and not enough space to play cricket. Awesome.
Earlier this year I contacted GoDaddy to point out to them that one of their domains was set up as a fake company and trying to place fake orders with my company for goods to be shipped to Harverd University (sic, yes really) - the fake site was done well enough to pass the initial checks but when someone orders 100k of gear out of the blue with no prior contact it does raise a few flags.
GoDaddy's response:
"Thank you for contacting GoDaddy's Domain Name Abuse department.
Unfortunately we cannot assist with this issue through this department.
GoDaddy does not allow illegal content on our customer's websites. However, as a Registrar/Hosting provider, it is not our place to determine if the site you have mentioned is actually engaging in illegal activities."
I would hope that GoDaddy had initially filed a counterclaim for legal fees and expenses in the event AMPAS lost.
Now, it would be time to send them (AMPAS) the bill, and, in true Hollywood fashion, inflate the damages, just like the movie studios do when they sue pirates.
What is good for the goose, .....
This case is a brilliant landmark in how much MPAA/RIAA etc are pushing the envelope to claim horrifying damages due to piracy, whereas the real figures have nothing to do with their hysterical claims.
Good on GoDaddy to have had the balls not to bend over and settle. That is the kind of behavior which encourages those bastards to go ahead with the hype. Now we finally have a proper case where the claims have been laid bare and found lacking. This will hopefully throw some water on the whole process, and it is not a bad thing either to demonstrate that just because you're Hollywood doesn't mean that you can parade around the courts and pocket millions by extorting your victims out of the judge's view.
... FIVE years to figure this out - Academy lawyer smells blood in the water, talks decision makers(sic) into it - five years of sending paperwork back and forth, lawyers win. Both sides. They sit around, making shit up, then they go into politics, making more shit up to let the next generation of bloodsuckers argue more shit about in the courts.
Unless you're a little guy who gains the attention of some Kardassian-type (it's spelled correctly, actual Cardassians use less makeup) on a whim, those making under $100k/year ain't got a chance in hell against these people - not enough time & money to survive the encounter.
I fucking hate lawyers...
I drink AMPAS tears. The most delicious part of this is the realisation that seems to come across AMPAS: "But, we are really important, the centre of all, the special snowflake! We can't conceive of anything outside of our little sphere. How dare these upstarts exist and, and, they've successfully defied us!" Queue temper tantrums...
jira.domain.com
, now offers something.jira.domain.com