Published: February 4th 2010 - at 11:07 amUS giant sues Tory blogger over domain
This one comes firmly from the the files marked ‘you couldn’t make this up if you tried’, ‘WTF?’ and ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding!’
British Tory blogger, Tory Politico, has received a cease and decist nastygram from lawyers acting for a major US Political news site, Politico.com, which gives them ten days to shut down their blog and turn over the domain name to Politico on the utterly spurious grounds that it claims that the use of the term ‘politico’ will create ‘consumer confusion’ and ‘injure the image and valuable goodwill’ associated with the Politico name.
Seriously, the company behind the US site, Capitol News, genuinely seems to think that its audience is so thick that it won’t be able to tell the difference between a big fuck-off American political news site ranked 246th in the United States in terms of web traffic and a tiny and relatively inconsequential British political blog (no offence intended, BTW, scale is a relative thing).
And this is all seemingly based on ‘evidence’ taken from Alexa’s somewhat dodgy webstats which shows that our Tory Politco gets about 30% of their webtraffic from outside the UK, which Capitol News presumes to mean America.
In that limited sense, they’re probably right – I don’t know how long Tory Politico has been going but 30% foreign traffic is about right for the amount you’d expect to be driven to your site via random Google search, most of which will bounce straight off because the site doesn’t have what they’re looking for.
However, when you consider that Alexa ranks Tory Politico at 1,755,000 or so compared to Politico.com’s overall ranking of 1,221, then I’m guessing that that net impact of Tory Politico scoring a bit of US traffic off Google search could reasonably be classed as ‘the next best thing to fuck all!’
To compound the epic fail that’s already well in progress, it all appears that the President and CEO of Politico.com is Frederick J. Ryan Jr., former Assistant to Ronald Reagan during his time as US President, who also happens to be current chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation.
Jeez, I thought you guys were supposed to be on the same side?
Needless to say, if its the image and goodwill associated with the Politico brand that Capitol News are so concerned about then we should make sure that as many people as possible get to know just how much they care, shouldn’t we?
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Couple of pointers for anyone using Twitter.
The short URL for Tory Politico’s own post is http://bit.ly/9D2916 and the #politico hashtag is being used for this issue, so please use it and let’s see if we can get this story trending.
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'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
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Story Filed Under: Media ,News
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Reader comments
The typo in your headline is actualy pretty appropriate!
“‘injure the image and valuable goodwill’ associated with the Politico name.”
To be fair, they probably have justified concerns.
I’d be annoyed if some tory blog was a hononym for my business too.
Politico is word, and cannot be compyrighted.
Tory-politico only gets 5% of it’s traffic from the US.
Tory-politico should and will fight this.
I keep trying to compare Meercats online but I keep getting some lousy insurance company instead.
Cybersquatting bastards.
“To compound the epic fail that’s already well in progress, it all appears that the President and CEO of Politico.com is Frederick J. Ryan Jr., former Assistant to Ronald Reagan during his time as US President, who also happens to be current chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation.
Jeez, I thought you guys were supposed to be on the same side?”
Well, they won the cold war a while back so which side would that be? Can I repeat one of my favourite maxims: Conservative does not equal Republican (nor does conservative – there are liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats) any more than Democrat equals Labour.
In this case there are clearly different sides: arrogant big business interests (shorthand of standard point number 8: right-wing does not mean pro-big-business) against individuals. This is basically an abuse (and not a very good one) of copyright. I would have thought it was difficult to prove exclusive ownership of a word in reasonably common usage though.
I posted this link on Iain Dale as well.
They have been succesful moving against other American companies before.They do own some naming rights in the US. I think its outrageous and we should organize across party lines to shame them into submission.
I hope they grease the Tory fucker for whatever little he has.
John Booth you hypocrite. Is that what you’ll say when they go after soho politico next.
Watchman is right about Fred Ryan and conservative v liberal.
Ironic, coming from Matt Drudge’s leech.
John,
“I hope they grease the Tory fucker for whatever little he has.”
Nice to see partisanship overrides free speech and opposing the interests of corporations as opposed to individuals. Clearly thinking of the implications of your lines is a bit beyond you. Despite his slightly mischevious ending implying Republicans and Conservatives are the same, Unity at least admits this is a problem.
I suppose if you approve of the move, your wonderfully eloquent and well-thought out position can reassure Sunny that he has nothing to worry about from the Liberal Party (still apparently around) or the Liberal Democrats (also still apparently around – I saw one at the weekend) claiming misuse of their copyright domain. After all, having people claim ownership of bits of our common language is in no way a threat to individual freedom, in no way a call for the dominance of party and corporation over the common man, and in no way opening the gates for ownership of common space, common land or common law by private individuals and companies. But for you, the important thing is none of these; it’s getting one over on the rival tribe – would you agree with someone saying that they would happily sacrifice [I]habeus corpus [/I]in return for Celtic beating Rangers, because it is the equivalent of what you said.
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
- Unity
RT @libcon: US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/d00Jgf #politico – TP's post – http://bit.ly/9D2916
- Lucy Openshaw
RT @libcon US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/d00Jgf << Unbelieveable. Hope he fights them off!
- Domains J
Liberal Conspiracy » US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger … http://bit.ly/bw5nEN
- Rascal
RT @ggreenwald As long as they endlessly quote anon srces announcing a GOP resurgence, I cnt imagine the market confusion http://is.gd/7H80r
- Matt Zemek
RT @ggreenwald: As long as they endlessly quote anonymous sources announcing a GOP resurgence, I can't imagine the market confusion http://is.gd/7H80r
- Liberal Conspiracy
US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/d00Jgf
- Lawrence Mills
RT @libcon: US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/d00Jgf
- James Cowley
RT @LawrenceMills: RT @libcon: US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/d00Jgf
- Louise Johnson
It's "defending people I don't like" day! http://bit.ly/d00Jgf and http://bit.ly/aqBQsV and @jackofkent says the Booth story's shit too.
- uberVU - social comments
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by LawrenceMills: RT @libcon: US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/d00Jgf...
- Glenn Greenwald
As long as they endlessly quote anonymous sources announcing a GOP resurgence, I can't imagine the market confusion http://is.gd/7H80r
- billiegirltoo
RT @ggreenwald: As long as they endlessly quote anonymous sources announcing a GOP resurgence, I can't imagine the market confusion http://is.gd/7H80r
- Glenn Greenwald
As long as they don't endlessly quote anonymous sources announcing a GOP resurgence, I can't imagine the market confusion http://is.gd/7H80r
- Tim Dungate
RT @libcon US Media giant sicks lawyers on Tory Blogger over domain name http://bit.ly/cfoybz
- Robert Cowling
As long as they endlessly quote anonymous sources announcing a GOP resurgence, I can't imagine the market confusion http://is.gd/7H80r
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