The Film Academy is suing GoDaddy.com under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act over domain names that abuse the Oscars’ trademark. The Academy stresses that domains in question might be monetized by users by using a “CashParking” program provided by GoDaddy; users along with GoDaddy profit from advertising revenue on parked domains.
Benefiting from the trademark of another in such a way is a sketchy practice that shouldn’t be valid with a capitalistic and free market ethos. Frankly, I’d like to see the Academy win this lawsuit.
Source: (Hollywood Reporter)
GoDaddy has also been hit with a class action lawsuit by their own employees, basically claiming that GoDaddy steals bonuses that have been validly earned by the employees. Read about this case here:
http://forums.nodaddy.com/index.php?topic=831
No amount of advertising and charitable donations can erase how this company treats their customers, and, their employees.
Do not patronize GoDaddy, and, if you’re thinking about working for this firm, please, please, please do your homework first.
What there doing is not wrong. If I somehow came to own the domain thebatman.tld I as the owner, would have the rite to do with it as I pleased (porn involving a flying mammal, what else?). If the academy wants them to stop they can buy the domain. Besides, if they cant own a domain similar to whatever intellectual property (which dose not exist by the way) and use it for advertising, where do you draw the line? Maybe im no longer allowed to sell spider eggs at spiders-man.com because it to similar to spider-man, maybe your blog gets shut down when Paramount release their new action comedy Incoherent Thieves (staring Seth Green as a stoner who is forced to steal things to support his addiction)?
Its a slippery slope and we are close to the edge.
But your examples have their own content to offer and are not parked domains used solely to misdirect traffic. That’s the issue that I have and why I side with the Academy on this one. I agree that this issue is a slippery slope, but with the protection act I mentioned above — if GoDaddy and the domain squatters are proven to be in “bad faith” — the Academy will legally be in the right. A lot of it comes down to the intentions of the domains similar to the trademarks.
(Your Seth Green movie pitch made me laugh. It’d have to take place in the 90s. Make it a stoner/slacker comedy 90s satire? This could get really meta. Meta enough to pave the way for a proper Deadpool film. And what a tangent I just went on.)
Its not important weather or not you and I deem the content of the site worth while or in “bad faith”. The law can not be used to stop people from doing that we just dont like. If you going to take action against GoDaddy you have to determine weather the sites content has value, and that is completely subjective. If you were going to say that they need to have there own content, they would only need to say that they are providing relevant adds free of charge. If they are successful in suing GoDaddy, how long until they use that as a president for taking down other domains (or making us give them our domain for fear of being sued)? So when they are marketing Incoherent Thieves (in which Jack Black plays an over zealous security guard hell bent on bringing Seth to justice) they can say you are using there “intellectual property” to generate traffic for your adds. Maybe down the road they can just sue anyone with a higher google ranking then they have for certain search terms?
As soon as we let the court decide what our intentions are, we are inviting a whole world of hurt. Maybe you intended to sell those drugs to children or maybe you just wanted to get really high? Maybe you copied that movie intending to sell pirate DVDs for profit? Rest assured that this will be abused in order to commit further injustices against more vulnerable entities.