Fire Alarm Companies

There are a ton of so called "sucks sites" out there, set up to criticism or just plain ridiculous for a particular company. Early on, companies often tried to sue the existence of such sites with questionable trademark claims. These efforts usually (though not always) failed. But more importantly, the process really thanks to the Streisand effect backfires. Every time a company went to a legal site sucks, the website and its contents, only a lot more attention. Two years ago, it was alleged that the lawyers for corporate law had finally wised and realized that on such sites is legal only gave these pages a lot more attention.

But since we have yet to hear about such legal threats all the time. Apparently there are still a lot of lawyers there who haven 't get the message. The latest is apparently Demand Media, the content of giant yard. His lawyers sent a cease and to desist and a takedown to Studio Sucks Demand.

Rather than a full legal threat against the site, it was on the fact that some users of the site was apparently on a presentation to the boards, the focus needs to be uploaded as proprietary. Thus the basis of the takedown that the company 's copyright and trademark rights are violated. It appears that DSS 's ISP overreacted and, instead of the actual contents, took the whole forum . Will, of course, this has done everything a lot more attention to driving on the content demand away: a presentation slide shows how the demand is trying to increase the quality (now that Google changed its algorithm to crappy quality of the content that demand with in was associated punished the past).

The demand 's lawyers say:

Demand Media has not granted any licenses to use the trademark of Demand Media, publish or copy Demand Media Demand Media or copyrighted content to publish confidential and proprietary business information. Accordingly, in addition to violating Demand Media Rights to intellectual property in the said materials, the postings are disruptive, dangerous and harmful to our business practices and reputation.

The intellectual property claims seem entirely unfounded. It 's not a brand to be asserted. It 's no consumer confusion or dilution at all here. No one believes that DSS is "confirm" of Demand Media. The copyright claim is dubious. Looking to the blog post in question, I can see, t, as it \ \ is' s fair use. It 's, which is a single slide from a presentation that' s certainly relevant, and offers significant comment on this picture.

The "harmful and detrimental to our business practices and reputation" claims are also quite questionable, if I could think of some random law of the land claims that they 're, they could use to guess here. But, I see only don 't it. Can be critical of someone reporting on your business is disturbing and harmful, but not illegal. And, frankly, is the presentation in question hardly some huge corporate secret. The film is so bland and meaningless and corporatey, it doesn 't really give away anything.

Frankly, \ it 's hard to believe that someone thought it was a wise move by DSS to go that route. It is easy to demand more attention and makes look petty and silly. It 's no surprise that Forbes emphasizes reporting on this story (the original link above) shows that this happens at the same time as demand' s rating fell below $ 1 billion for the first time ....

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