Premier of Alberta threatens to sue blogging uni student for registering a domain with his name in it
Ryan sez, "Dave Cournoyer, a University of Alberta student and popular Alberta blogger, is being threatened with a lawsuit by Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach regarding the registration of the domain edstelmach.ca. The Premier had failed to register the domain even four months after taking office."
The letter requests that I:Link (Thanks, Ryan!)(a) make arrangements with my service provider by December 21, 2007, to ensure that the Website no longer forwards to the blog; and
(b) make arrangements to with my service provider and/or registrar to have the Website registered in their client's name.
(c) govern myself accordingly (I added this one).If I chose not comply by their imposed deadline, the letter states that they “have been instructed by our client to commence litigation.”
As someone who has never shied away from criticizing the 36-year old Progressive Conservative government, I have always faced harsh criticism from those who don’t appreciate the views espoused on this blog or agree with my political beliefs. I accept this reality.
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It's kinda funny, I read about this in the paper news before reading about it here.
One thing I read was that edstelmach.ca just points to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_E._Strom. I don't know enough about Alberta politics to get the joke but this is basically just a lazy Google Bomb.
I remember reading that some Polish politician was going to sue a kid to made a Google Bomb of his name to the word 'penis'.... How did that all turn out? Have any events like this been resolved in Canada?
Well, this isn't quite so simple as one would wish. It brings up the question of whether a person has a trademark interest in their own name and if they have a preemptive right to that domain. But, perhaps there is another Ed Stelmach in Canada... Can they all sue Dave Cournoyer? Or does only the most famous person get to do that? And does Ed Stelmach plan on buying all the second level Ed Stelmach domains or does he merely think he is entitled to the .ca domain?
The link edstelmach.ca currently re-directs to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_E._Strom. The domain is still registered to Dave, though, so good for him.
Sounds like cybersquatting to me.
I think most people would feel violated finding out that someone has used their identity to address a website, politician or no.
Quoth the wikipedia article on Ed Stelmach:
Ed Stelmach's rise to power in the long standing Progressive Conservative government, and recent troubles have led to comparisons with historical political leaders. Stelmach has often been compared to Harry Strom due to common rural background, isolation from urban voters and the ability to decline the popularity of a long term ruling party despite record revenue and spending.
Hence the redirect. Though someone should tell Dave that he should be redirecting to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Strom
I think it's cybersquatting. Forget for a moment about alleged property rights in domain names: what best serves the public? Someone visiting ProminentCanadianPol.ca expects to see the canonical site for that politician, and the public is better served if that's what it is. A critic can always register ProminentCanadianPolSucks.ca or something similar, and no one should be able to interfere with that.
You have to be a bit of a jerk to register a domain of someone else's name, unless it's a gift.
I agree. He's a jerk, and his puerile joke isn't even set up correctly.
Joe: What if the student was also called Ed Stelmach? Does public interest trump his right to the domain he registered in his own name?
Hello - is this the Web site for Ed's Telephone Machines? (EdsTelMach.ca?) I bought a phone from you guys and now it's busted. I was told this is where to fix it. Give me a refund or I'll sue!!
It's cybersquatting, unless his name is also Ed Stelmach, then I think it should be first come, first serve.
My sister and brother-in-law tried this with NWAirlines.com, a long time back. They put up a homepage that suggested it was for scuba divers in the northwest, but since they hadn't ever updated the page since they registered the domain, they didn't have a leg to stand on and eventually gave it up to them. Actually, they had been pissed at NW Airlines' service and were squatting, yep.
It strikes me that Mr. Stelmach is not having a hissy because he wants to use the domain himself, but because he doesn't want someone else to use it. Aesop wrote a fable involving a dog and a bone that covered this territory a while back. That would actually imply that Mr. Stelmach is the one who's trying to cybersquat his own name. If that's true, maybe Mr. Cournoyer can employ the doctrine of adverse possession to claim it. That would be entertaining to watch.
Not sure what the cybersquatting laws are here in Canada, but if I were this guy I'd go looking up any other Ed Stelmach in Canada and offering the domain to him, or, offering him a deal whereby this other Ed Stelmach becomes the legal registrar of the domain, but work out a deal where I rent control from him for some nominal fee $1. Ed Stelmach then therefore has registered the domain, and if he chooses to have it link to my blog, that's my right.
Then again, if I was this guy, I wouldn't have been jerk enough to cybersquat on somebody else's name to begin with, since it's kind of a jerkish thing to do... but if I was such a jerk, the above is how I'd continue to be jerky.
Well played registrado, well played...
but if politico Ed Stelmach happened to be an evil person and oppressive tyrant - how would you all feel then?
I'm buying fuckedstelmach.ca RIGHT NOW.
Aside from the legal or moral issues in this case, it did provide for one of the funnier quips I've heard in a while....
"Cournoyer, a 24-year-old university student, has been accused in a letter from a Calgary law firm representing Stelmach of misappropriating the premier's personality for his own gain.
"If Ed Stelmach is missing a personality, then I don't know where it is, but I sure don't have it," Cournoyer joked. "
Full article here:
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2008/01/09/4760108-sun.html
What happened when Rick Mercer did this to Jason Kenney?
Also, though this would be the only time I would ever read Ezra Levant, he posted an interesting blog here:
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/01/ed-stelmach-vs.html
He says Dave's blog falls under CIRA section 3.6(d): "the Registrant used the domain name in Canada in good faith in association with a non-commercial activity including, without limitation, criticism, review or news reporting."
Workaround: Find someone whose name is Ed Stelmach, or something like it (Edwina Stelmach, Eric Daniel Stelmach, etc). Sell the domain to them, then buy it back. Presumably Mr Stelmach would like to have that much control over the domain so it stands to reason that anyone whose name naturally reduces to 'edstelmach' should also have that right.
Fix: Here in Ireland the local TLD is controlled to the extent that one can only register something significantly resembling a business name (with a registered business ID number) or one's own name (with suitable ID).
As an Albertan, I'd have to say that this is actually a reasonably funny criticism of Ed Stelmach and, given the mutability of the internet, could continue to be a criticism of it (or could lapse into something else altogether). I think that calling it puerile or stupid, or accusing the accused of being a jerk is pretty shallow.
I have a red corn snake that I called 'stelmach' back in the summer. I should threaten Ron Glen (a senior advisor to the premier) with litigation for having misappropriated my snake's identity. If premier Stelmach is nice, I'll give him the subdomain: ed.stelmach.ca
I wonder if anyone is named Google... Does this work if I change my name to Microsoft? Wait -- does this mean that if I *do* change my name to Microsoft, then they can sue me? If I name a company Jeff, then, can I head off all Jeffing? On that note, I am going to use my name as a gerund more often...
I'd like to point out that cdoctorow.com/org/net are all available for interested parties....
If its cyber-squatting, how long to you have to wait for 'them' to register it before you 'can'. Stelmach waited 4 months. Arguably, for politicians, he should have been given more time to complete a 10 second task but still.
It doesn't even appear as if Stelmach wanted the address...only the money collected from the advertisements. My guess is that ANY money that is generated will be far less than what the taxpayers are footing for his lawyers. Surprisingly similar to the RIAA and MPAA not getting near enough return for their litigation.
What about the basic right of satirists? For a while I remember the domain holder of newyorktimes.com refused to give it over to the paper, stating his right to parody the paper. I see it now directs to the real site of nytimes.com, though, I wonder what happened with that. Couldn't be powerful interests, bloating their chests when they realize their own stupidity, could it?
I'm not really sure what the Canadian Government would say about this, but slightly South it might be considered an imminent domain issue. If things are exactly as Mr. Cournoyer states, then he should keep telling his story, and maybe set his own price for the site, on an open market. That way, he has some hope of getting a decent price for it. I personally thought that the internet was the last (accessible) frontier, but I'd be wrong. Then again, governmental agencies have never had to be bothered with silly little real estate concerns, why continue to do so with virtual estate?
Do these lawyers seriously not understand the difference between a website and a domain name?
Unfortunately, most of the other frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives I love to hate seem to have already registered their domains.
Where's the 'cybersquatting' tag? Come on, people: Since when is a cybersquatting story anything other than not-news? The kid's had his 15 clicks of fame; enough already.
Refer to the ongoing battle between Nissan Motor and Uzi Nissan of Nissan Computer.
http://www.nissan.com/
Nissan Motor has fought Uzi Nissan for this website for over a decade. In 1999 Nissan Motor sued poor Uzi for $10 million and he lost this domain (which he registered in 1994) temporarily because a judge decided Nissan Motor was more entitled to it than a man who founded an eponymous company. Later this decision was reversed and the domain went back into the hands of Uzi Nissan with the caveat that he may not use the domain commercially. This jeopardized his 15-year-old computer business.
For more info see Uzi's site:
http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php
Gack, I neglected this opportunity to plug!!
I recently blogged about the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry who let their ifpi.com domain name lapse and our good friends at The Pirate Bay scooped it up. TPB made their own site for their newly formed Internation Federation of Pirates Interests and, as was their right, redirected all @ifpi.com email to a catchall address.
The "real" IFPI bitched and moaned and had this perfectly legal purchase overturned due to copyright infringement, despite the ICANN's insistence that a domain name is not copyrightable.
In a nutshell, this antipiracy group circumvented the law to get their way. In this vein I purposefully opt not to credit the original artist when I say to the IFPI "I see your true colours shining through..."