Talk show host Glenn Beck is pursuing the owner of the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, charging trademark violations and claiming rights to the domain. Now, the anonymous owner responds, telling an arbiter that “only an abject imbecile” could mistake the site for one of Beck’s own.
From http://tinyurl.com/yehqhab
(Had to change the URL. This was blacklisted)
Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com turns out to be run by one Isaac Eiland-Hall. Eiland-Hall had discovered a Fark thread in which commenters picked up on a Gilbert Gottfried routine about Bob Saget raping and murdering a teenaged girl (it’s, er, a bit funnier in context than it sounds [NSFW]). They adapted it for Beck to highlight what they perceived as his habit of forcing people to explain away completely baseless charges—as when Beck interviewed Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and opened with this gem: “And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy. But that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.”
How better to give Beck a taste of his own medicine than by wondering publicly why he has never addressed the rumor that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? No one’s saying that Beck really did it… but if he has nothing to hide, why won’t he deny the tale?
You get the idea. Eiland-Hall thought this was genius (“It just felt right,” he told Ars a couple weeks ago) and set up his own website to give the burgeoning meme its own homepage. The site went up on September 1 and had a huge spike of initial interest—it served more than 120,000 page loads in the first 24 hours. By September 3, lawyers for Beck’s media company, Mercury Radio Arts, tried to have the domain name deleted by the registrar (they failed) and also took their case to WIPO, which mediates domain name disputes.
When we spoke to Eiland-Hall earlier, he was unsure about unmasking himself by replying to the WIPO complaint, which meant that he would soon lose the domain name. In the three weeks since, however, he changed his mind and found himself a lawyer named Marc Randazza. Randazza dropped us a line today with a copy of his response to Beck’s complaint, and boy, is it something… unique.
The reply opens by pointing out that domain name disputes aren’t designed to “resolve all Internet-related grievances.” Beck might be unhappy about the domain name and the site content, but he can’t use WIPO to prove defamation. The domain name dispute process is generally used to prevent cybersquatters from sitting on trademarked terms, and it generally applies only when there is both commercial intent and the real possibility of consumer confusion.
