2600 Magazine Defeats Ford

narftrek cut-and-pastes the text from 2600's announcement that Ford has conceded the case they brought against 2600 over a certain domain. Our earlier story has some background. A Volvo repair shop near me is named "Island Vo Vo"; the L is silent, you see, because Ford really sucks.

Outdated facts....

[Dios]

Its interesting that the links info is a bit outdated.
(http://www.fordreallysucks.com/more_in fo.html)

The page hasn't been updated in some time. Nasser is no longer president/ceo of ford. In fact, a Ford family member (William Clay Ford) is now running things again (which hasn't happened in a while).

Check out http://money.cnn.com/2001/10/30/ceos/ford/ for info.

Freedom of speech?

[kafka93]

I'm afraid I'm going to post without having too great an understanding of the entire situation - nothing new to /., of course, but still.. at any rate, the site in question isn't too immediately informative as to what all of this is about, but as far as I can tell, Ford took 2600 to court for pointing www.fuckgeneralmotors.com to Ford's website.

Now, whilst I'm all for freedom of speech, isn't it perhaps understandable that Ford should have been upset, or concerned, by this? Whilst the link was presumably set up as a kind of compliment to Ford (at GM's expense), it's easy to see that Ford would be upset by such a move - the page might well, to the non-tech-savvy, look as though it had been set up *by* Ford themselves; hardly a professional image to betray.

In cases like this where it's not immediately clear *who* is doing the "speaking", isn't the concept of "freedom of speech" clouded? Wouldn't this stray into libel territory, where words are being essentially "put into the mouth" of Ford? Certainly, anyone with the technical knowhow could determine who the page *was* owned by - but many people don't have that technical knowledge, and will go with their gut reactions.

Of course, legal action is a typically heavy-handed response. Nonetheless, if I'm reading the situation correctly then I can feel a certain empathy for Ford's initial reaction..

erm...

[oPless]

I think one of the major points here is that Ford didn't even have to decency of saying "Hey guys, thats funny, now can you point it elsewhere"

They sued, and lost. Good.

Usually you would think it is just plain old good manners to say "look, stop that, I don't like it" ... oddly enough 2600 are adults, and I'm sure they would have pointed the domain elsewhere.

Also if they had a competent sysadmin, they could have just blocked that url by tweaking IIS. Maybe their MSCEs couldn't work it out perhaps...

Anyhow this smacks of plain ignorance (on Fords part) rather than anything else.

The article is wrong!

[www.sorehands.com]

The article say there is precidential value to this case, there is not (unfortunately). Courts can look at this case, but the courts are free to ignore this since this is trial court level decisions, not appeals court level.

They claim it is improbable to get attorney fees. If they look at some of the cases on Rule 68 and cases that provide for attorney fees, there is precident that says when there is a fee shifting provision with a requirement for the other side to pay costs, the costs do include fees.

Since the case was dismissed for failure to state a claim and they appealed it, but dropped it, I would argue that ford's lawyers should be sanctioned under rule 11 (filing a frivilous action).

I did something like this a few years ago...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

With whitearyanresistance.com, org and net. I just wrote a Perl script that would randomly throw people to other sites like algore2000.com, blacksonblondes.com, Southern Poverty Law Center and other places.

It did get me a few death threats and a mention on the weekly radio program of white supremacist and uber sister smoocher Tom Metzger's.

So to Emmanuel Goldstein, CONGRATULATIONS! You have certainly taken your ideas to lengths that would stop other men cold. Most people would give up after the first lawsuit.

To others, if you want to do some nifty activism, hijack urls of organizations you can't stand. If it isn't a registered trademark (which "white aryan resistance" wasn't) you can have fun and get death threats (mostly from illiterates).

It's fun, try it.

Slapp Suits are a terrible menace.

[uncoveror]

Slapp suits, that is suits meant to silence someone by falsely accusing them of libel or copyright infringement, knowing they don't have the resources to defend themselves, are a terrible menace to free speech. There should be greater consequences for wasting the courts' time with these. In some societies, anyone who came to court with a false accusation would recieve the same penalty the falsely accused would have recieved if convicted. If Ford were ordered to pay the amounts they sought from 2600, to 2600, then Slapp suits might go away. Trying them would be way to risky.

*sucks Domains

[waldoj]

Does this set any sort of precedent (legal or practical) in favor of *sucks.* domain names? Is the owner of ClearChannelSucks.org [clearchannelsucks.org] on better footing now than he was a week ago? (I hope so. :)

-Waldo Jaquith

Re:Freedom of speech?

[CurtisRWC]

You raise a very interesting point here.

I wonder if the same laws covering impersonations would apply here - in some way or another. For example, if I registered a domain name and pointed it to the website of a local police station or the FBI or somesuch, could I be charged with impersonating law enforcement?

Re:I did something like this a few years ago...

[smallpaul]

More complete account for the history books. http://isomorphisms.addr.com/blogger/2000_06_18_ar chive.html#381702 [addr.com]

2600 is in the Wrong

[Pooua]

No one likes having words put into their mouths. In essence, this is what 2600 is doing by pointing their registered domain name at unsuspecting sites. They may think it's funny, but what would Ford think if GM sued them?

2600 argues that "no one in their right mind" would simply assume that Ford would put up such a domain name. They argue that "anyone in their right mind" would do a "whois" search to find out if Ford really put up the domain. Well, that's great that 2600 feels that comfortable with network technology. It's horrid that they have spent so much time in a small room together that they have forgotten that some people in this world have never heard of a "whois" search.

2600 has proven once again that they are a bunch of arogant punks. <p. BTW, don't ever buy a copy of their magazine; you would taint their philosophy. If you are a true 2600 sort of person, you have to find some way to make illegal copies of 2600 magazine. It's up to you if your solution is economically feasible.