The back-breaker for Harvilla was a domain name dispute settled by the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization in November, when the domain VivendiUniversalSucks.com was taken away from Massachusetts resident Jay David Sallen.
“The voice of dissent is essential to be heard on the Internet,” Harvilla said. “If action is not taken right now, dissent is going to be eliminated.”
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which controls the World Wide Web’s naming system, set up the domain name dispute resolution system three years ago to deal with trademark controversies. Complainers can take their case to one of three organizations, but the WIPO has been the most popular so far.
Sallen, a free-lance writer, maintained he planned to use the domain to complain about Vivendi’s purchase of book publisher Houghton Mifflin.
HISTORY OF REMOVED DOMAINS
It’s hardly the first time the domain resolution process took a “sucks” Web site away from a protestor. The long list of forfeited sites include: salvationarmysucks.com,guinness-really-sucks.com, wal-martsucks.com, freeservesucks.com, and natwestsucks.com.
In each case, WIPO argued that the domain names infringed on corporate trademarks because they were “confusingly similar” to the company’s actual name; and that the original owner wasn’t using the site for a legitimate free speech complaint. Often the rulings include evidence that the domain holder was really just holding out for a payoff from the target company, what some feel is a domain name flavor of cyber-extortion.
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But Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in Internet law, completed a study on domain disputes last year and concluded that companies that bring cases before the dispute board win over 80 percent of the time.
“I actually think that the ... process has been very inconsistent when it comes to the issue of cyber-griper sites,” he said. “With regard to sucks sites, there have been a number of decisions that have clearly stated that protest sites have a right to be heard and that the (process) should not be used to remove that speech from the Web. Unfortunately, there are plenty of decisions that go the other way — the recent case involving vivendiuniversalsucks.com is a great example of a panel employing some tortured reasoning in order to arrive at the conclusion that the name should be transferred.”
Part of that tortured reasoning included a passage explaining that VivendiUniversalSucks.com was a trademark infringement because a surfer might think it was company sponsored. It’s possible, WIPO said, that a company would post a site suggesting it “sucked” — such as a vacuum cleaner retailer. That’s ridiculous, Harvilla said, and just a rationalization to support big business over free speech rights.
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In its rulings, WIPO’s ruling boards generally reiterate Web users’ rights to criticize companies, and often indicate that use of the term “sucks” should be permitted “If such a domain name is genuinely registered and used for the purposes of criticism of the brand ... The Policy is directed against abusive registration of domain names; not free speech.”
Still, the practical result of many WIPOs rulings has been the loss of sucks sites from the Web, a trend that worries Geist.
SUPPRESSING FREE SPEECH
So in response, Harvilla and a group of silent partners are this week launching the “Free Speech Center.” Harvilla has hoarded dozens of .com, .net, .org, and .info domain names than can be appended with a prefix — known to technologists as the hostname of a URL — to make a logical protest site destination. On the list: bizsucks.net, comsucks.net, edusucks.net, and orgprotest.org. So any company that didn’t like Harvilla’s site could create a site called “FreeSpeechCenter.orgprotest.org.”
Some of the names aren’t quite so obvious, but Harvilla hopes the idea will catch on.
“So if you are looking for a protest site, you know to just add ‘protest.org’ to the end, and you will find it,” he said.
FREEDOM TO VENT
The domain names are essentially placeholders that will redirect visitors to the “real” protest site. Harvilla pledges to give them out for free to anyone. A search engine that will help registrants find unused names will soon follow, he said.
And if companies claim the new, Free Speech Center-backed Web address is a trademark infringement, Harvilla promises to fight the owner’s case in court.
“We feel that in the U.S. this is Constitutionally protected activity, and we have the resources to fight a case, where (site owners) don’t,” he said. “We want to allow the development of a counterpoint Web site to any Web site the world.”