2600 v. Ford Motors

lizrd writes: "The New York Times is reporting in their cyber law section that Eric Corley is in trouble in the courts again. This time he's being sued by Ford Motor Company for pointing a domain name that the New York Times won't mention to Ford's website. It will be interesting to see how this comes out in the courts, both sides seem to have some fairly strong arguments."

What kind of "pointing" is going on?

As we all know, there are a number of types of "pointing" you can do with a domain, and I'm wondering how the eyes of the law would view the differences.

1. A hyperlink. At issue in the DeCSS case. Not the case here. Strong free-speech arguments.
2. Setting a DNS A or CNAME record to point to their server. The intent of this would be for people to be able to browse Ford.com in its entirety with the name "www.fsckgeneralmotors.com" in their "Location" box. This could be dangerous legal ground (misrepresentation, impersonation), however it is technologically trivial (and is in fact the correct behavior, should be the default) for Ford to prevent this on its own servers (who should NOT recognize that Host: field). But again, this is not the case.
3. A redirect. This is in fact the case here - a 302 Object Moved message (served by IIS/5.0). This falls in the squishy middle ground - a link can be explicitly connected with a comment and a speaker (which "substantiates" the speech), and DNS aliasing has the effect of providing for a persistent comment and misrepresentation while using another's resources, but redirection does neither.

Like I said, I'll be curious to see if the courts have the savvy to differentiate, and what their interpretation of the differences is.

Oh yeah, IANAL, UAYOR, IMHO, TINSTAAFL, etc.

Like a billboard?

Weird lawyers.
It's quoted in the article that pointing the fuckgeneralmotors.com domain at ford is like putting a billboard by a highway saying "Fuck General Motors" and saying it's sponsored by Ford.
Doh!
Last I checked, if you want to look who's 'sponsoring' the site, you use "whois".
And doing:
whois -h whois.geektools.com fuckgeneralmotors.com
Query: fuckgeneralmotors.com
Registry: whois.corenic.net
Results:
- 2600 Enterprises (template COCO-12817)
[e-mail]
PO Box 99
Middle Island, NY 11953 US

Domain Name: fuckgeneralmotors.com
Status: production

Admin Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Emmanuel Goldstein (COCO-12818) [e-mail]
[phone] (FAX) [phone]

CORE Registrar: CORE-20

Record created: 1999-09-26 23:21:21 UTC by CORE-20
Record expires: 2001-09-25 00:00:00 UTC

Domain servers in listed order:

phalse.2600.com 216.66.24.2
ns2.icsnet.net 204.194.104.4

Database last updated on 2001-05-18 15:46:51 UTC
That kinda tells me EXACTLY who sponsored that billboard.
Poof, that's this excuse out the window.
In effect, what's happend is that the sponsored by is in the style and colours of Ford ads, (can you remember the nice little 'Fuct' logo done in Ford colours and style that nobody's complaining about??).
Urrr... Next case???

Cheers,

Malk

Glad it wasn't me

I used to own the domain malfunction.com, and I always meant to point it at Microsoft's Web site. I suppose it's a good thing I never did.

Ford has strong arguments?

They are basically saying that you do not have the right to link to their site through "indicent" phrases or words. The linking issue has been resolved already in the Ticketmaster case and I'm sure that it will be upheld yet again.

Ford is just harassing small people. They have a huge team of lawyers and they need some 'exercise' by filing frivolous lawsuits against those who can't defend themselves properly. Why didn't Ford contact them and ask them not to point there or even rejected the headers from the domain name that they didn't like?

Re:just re-redirect it

It has been said that all PR, is good PR.

I think Firestone would beg to differ.

Do some research

[A]m I the only who relizes that general motors is not ford at all. GM makes chevy, pontiac, cadalliac, etc... Again GM is not Ford. DOH!

No way! Really?!?

Obviously, you haven't read the background on the story at all. Emmanuel Goldstein was protesting against GM with the website "fuckgeneralmotors.com" originally. He pointed it to a variety of critical websites to GM, including a place called "lemons.com." When the webmaster of that small site complained that the extra traffic was hurting him in bandwidth costs, he moved it to point to "ford.com" as a joke. Without warning, and without asking nicely for him to move the URL, Ford decided to sue 2600 for everything they're worth.

Ford is suing Emmanuel Goldstein for pointing the URL at them because it makes it look like they are the ones responsible for the somewhat immature prank. As the man himself says, they are trying to use the court system to create for themselves the right to demand that people ask before pointing URLs to their website. They are also seeking excessive damages in an attempt to financially ruin 2600. Basically, they're taking advantage of the system to tweak the legal system the way they want and to punish a known ally of hackers.

Re:Wouldn't it be cool to Beowulf cluster these?

So the fucking euro-pee'ins won't do it first, while rubbing their glistening dick heads aginst the front screens of their fucking iMacs?

Read my sig.

Good old Slashdot

First of all, this was posted a few days ago as part of a Slashback [slashdot.org]. Why the hell don't the editors remember anything? I read Slashdot every day, and I can tell when I've seen a story before. One would assume that the editors read it, too (although there seems to be plenty of evidence to the contrary), and since they also wrote the goddamn stories, they have that much more reason to remember them. You don't see the New York Times doing this kind of crap. Of course, somebody's already mentioned all this...

The point I really wanted to make is that yes, 2600 is probably legally in the right here, but that doesn't make their actions any less stupid. Last time around, somebody mentioned that Ford could just block all requests originating from www.fuckgeneralmotors.com. True, but that wouldn't stop 2600 from buying new stupid domains and pointing them at www.ford.com. Ford doesn't want to have to worry about this constantly, so they're just suing 2600 to stop them from doing it any more.

Could Ford have asked first? Yes, but Corley is just being a jackass. I'm sure he knew Ford didn't want that domain pointed at their site, and he did it just to piss them off. It's like if I came up to you, smacked you in the back of the head, then complained to the judge that you never told me not to.

Considering that, as a member of the EFF, I am paying for 2600's legal defence, I really wish they would act more responsibly. Fight for what's important, Corley, and stop making such an ass of yourself. DMCA, DeCSS, and UCITA are all worthy causes; fuckgeneralmotors.com is not. I sincerely hope the EFF does not pay Corley's bill this time. If they do, I'll find a more intelligent charity...

Re:What kind of "pointing" is going on?

$ nc fuckgeneralmotors.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 16:23:04 GMT
Set-Cookie: dialogue_id=3e42052c20010518411f690a; path=/; expires=Mon, 16-May-11 16:23:04 GMT; domain=.ford.com
Location: http://www.ford.com/servlet/ecmcs/ford/index.jsp
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 169
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGGGQGCDK=DILNHCGCPMNABIDCGOGLKBIB; path=/
Cache-control: private

<head><title>Object moved</title></head>
<body><h1>Object Moved</h1>This object may be found <a HREF="http://www.ford.com/servlet/ecmcs/ford/index .jsp">here</a>.</body>

There. I said it.

Eric Corley can publicly say "Fuck General Motors". That by itself is allowed in the US by the 1st amendmant.
The fact that the phrase "does something" by way of pointing to ford is entirely too abstract for archaic law to moderate.

Re:One more thing

If Ford is so serious about 'protecting' their properties wtf don't they sue Microsoft over the Explorer trademark? MS is using Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer and Ford has trademarked long time ago Ford Explorer. Sure they are competing in different industris but Ford could bring it up under the trademark dilution clause.

It's usually not dilution if they're in different industries. Locally, there's a company called "Best Buy Furniture" that is in the furniture retail business. They even have a yellow-tag logo that bears a certain amount of resemblance to the logo of a certain consumer-electronics retailer [bestbuy.com]. AFAIK, there's never been any litigation between the two companies...and there probably never will be any. If I'm in the market for a big-screen TV, I'm not likely to go looking in a furniture store for it.

And I quote

We all know that in theory we should have the right to express ourselves as we feel, as it is amended, but one thing 2600 won't point out is that by creating the "FuckGeneralMotors.com" site and pointing it to Ford.com's website, they are using Ford's resources via way of bandwidth which I'm sure is unauthorized. Why not just make a virtual directory with pictures, and or information of a competitor instead of trying to reverse engineer killing two birds with one packet.

Well hopefully their AOL followers don't attempt to h4x0r me for writing this, but enough is enough, time to grow up guys. We do agree with any arguments anyone from there would care to give for the right to register the domain, however there is no one from 2600 that can realistically justify using Ford's bandwidth against Ford's will.

2600 is run by Peter Pan [antioffline.com]

One of the guys from my site did a semi humorous article on the whole 2600 deal. Some people may find it informative, others will find it funny, others will call it name calling etc. Personally, I think anyone who runs around doing things to get sued for attention is a moron.

Notes from the courtroom

I just got back from watching the case unfold in the courtroom (and stopping off for a Slurpee on the way back). Here are some observations:

About 20 of the 25 or so people in the gallery were obviously on the 2600 side of the debate (white male twentysomethings with a penchant for wearing t-shirts (one in a 2600 T-shirt) -- some with O'Reilly books (XML and Apache)).

Ford had 4 lawyers, led by Thomas Lee. Corley had one lawyer, Eric Grimm.

The Ford case seemed to be:
- the web site (referred to as www.fgeneralmotors.com so as to save everyone the embarrassment) appears to the casual web surfer to be owned by Ford. Since it associates an obscene, caustic word referring to a close competitor of Ford with Ford's trademarked website, it was causing damage to Ford's intellectual property.

- this confusion couldn't be remedied by most users.

- If this is parody, then it isn't funny, and nobody gets it.

- Free speech rights aren't relevant in this case because this is about commerce and the sullying of trademarks.

- They made Corley re-sign his statement because it was originally signed with his pseudonym Emanual Goldstein - the judge thought that his re-signed signature was the same as the first, and Corley had to print his name next to the signature just to make it clear...

They presented printouts from a web site that allows you to query a database of domain names and provide links and whois info to them. They showed that if you queried "generalmotors" you'd get a bunch of stuff including "fgeneralmotors.com" which would link to whois info and the ford site. The whois info that it linked to either didn't include contact info or, as the defense claimed, had the contact info whited out.

The defense claimed that it was highly unlikely that someone would go to the web site without typing in www.fgeneralmotors.com, something that they would have heard via 2600 magazine or wired or something, and thus wouldn't be confused, and that the search engine the plaintiffs were referring to was designed specifically for searching for domain names, and would thus not be used by the consumers who would allegedly be confused. And that it wasn't Corley's responsibility to police other people's databases.

More importantly, they claimed that what they were doing wasn't commercial in nature, and that it was a free speech issue.

The judge tried to construct a few what-if scenarios involving situations where users could actually click on links rather than be forwarded to the site automatically.

My biggest concern stems from the apparent inept skills of Ford's programmers. The Ford lawyer repeatedly stated that Corley could remedy this situation with "a few computer keystrokes," while Ford's programmers would have to write complex software and test it on their hundreds of web sites in order to block traffic from fgeneralmotors.com. Ford cars have tons of computers in them, I hope those were programmed by people who are at least capable of doing some simple referrerd checking!

Corely's lawyer appeared a bit more nervous than Ford's lawyer, and he kept forgetting that you are supposed to stand up when addressing the court. He obviously knows his technology, but didn't appear as strong on the legal aspects as Ford's lawyers (who didn't bowl me over with their tech knowledge). The judge commented that he was a little flustered by receiving CD-ROMs from Corley's lawyer.

My prediction is that they'll get the injunction, and the ultimate outcome of the case will swing on Corley's lawyer dealing with Ford's reference to trademark law, and not relying strictly on the first amendment arguments.

Corporations were declared persons in 1886 !

> Since when do companies enjoy the rights of individuals?

In 1886, the US Supreme Court ruled a railbed dispute titled Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad. The ruling held that a private corporation was a "natural person" entitled to all the rights and privileges of a human being.

You can read how the history of how corporations acquired their ill-gotten rights here:

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/corporate/index .html [adbusters.org]

NOW you know why certain "informed" (rich) people become a "Corporate Sole" (A Corporate Sole exists for perpuitity. Read Black's Law dictionary for more goodies. i.e. The Queen is one.)

Re:Ford has strong arguments?

But they didn't 'link' to it. There is no page on their web-server that has a link to Ford's site.

What they did do was define a DNS entry that points directly to Fords site. There is no linking. It is a DNS ENTRY. To assume it is a 'link' is to assume that the only protocol on the internet is HTTP.

just re-redirect it

Sheesh. Just look at the HTTP headers, and put up a page that tells you what happened (ie this is not an official GM page, obviously) and gives you the choice of clicking-through to the real page. It'll give you a chance to make the pranker seem juvenile, and it wil increase hits to your web site. What more do you want?

Re:Do the editors read their own site?

I knew someone was going to say this, and be called "insightful" over it. Thing is, there were new developments (I think an article in a major media source, the NYTimes, counts), and so they were keeping track of the story. What a horrible editorial technique it is to be persistent.

Advance warning: there might even be Another story when this goes to trial. Beware.

---

Re:just re-redirect it

> Does anybody still have an HTTP 1.0 browser? I suppose there might be some green-screen luddite using an ancient copy of Lynx, but...

> I don't think that would be a problem.

So, in your eyes, any blind person is a "green-screen luddite"? Blind people often surf the web using lynx (or other text browsers) connected to a text-to-speech engine or to a braille line. Any content browseable only through Internet Explorer 5 is thus inaccessible to them...

Well, you may have a point though: as blind people don't drive, they'd probably not be interested anyways by the petty quibbles between Ford, GM and 2600...

I just called Ford

I just called Ford's customer service line (an 800 number) and told the representative that I was extremely disturbed that they would go after 2600 this way. I told them that I started buying Ford products because I was so sick of the constant quality problems I had with GM products. I also told them that my wife and I just purchased a 2000 Taurus, we've owned our '96 Escort Wagon since 1997, and that we are buying my wife a 2002 Mustang this fall. In short, I informed them that I am perfectly happy with Ford's products.

But I expressed my dismay at the legal tack they have chosen to take. I told them that if I had typed "fuckgeneralmotors" into a search engine, or directed my browser to go to fuckgeneralmotors.com, it wouldn't have bothered me a bit. I would have been laughing at the joke, and would have appreciated being directed to a company who produce a product that I have been happy with for 5 years running.

I told the customer rep to send a note to legal that they shouldn't have been so heavy handed in dealing with Corley and 2600. They could have expressed their displeasure with being associated with the domain name without having to resort to lawsuits.

Gee, maybe they could have even talked to Corely and explained their position. What a novel concept that would have been.

In short, shame on Ford for being so odious. Call their customer reps and let them know that you got the joke, that you would buy Ford products based on your impression of their quality (not on a domain name), and that by basing 2600 they have shown themselves to be nothing but corporate bullies.

They did take my comments seriously.

Unauthorized bandwidth usage? Nope!

That argument makes no sense, when you realize that Ford made their site public. That's the whole point of running most advertising-type web sites. You want a public presence on the Internet.

Claiming that linking to them from a site they don't approve of is equal to unauthorized use of their bandwidth makes as little sense as trying to control who can and can't view billboards on the side of the highway.

In my opinion, if Ford can't handle the heat from people slandering their web site, they should reconsider running one at all. There's no legal battle to be fought here, though.

Re:Ford has strong arguments?

What, you mean like...

Penis [gm.com]
Ass Raped Monkey [gm.com]
Rhenquest [gm.com]

Uh oh. They're going to sue me now! Oh no! Well I guess they'll just have to blow me! [gm.com]

By the way, they're getting off lightly with a simple taunting given how atrocious their web page is.

Re:fuckfuckgeneralmotors.com

Or Ford have a fuck2600.com going to GM and then have GM have a fuckford.com goto 2600

fuckfuckgeneralmotors.com

GM should have fuckfuckgeneralmotors.com pointing to fuckgeneralmotors.com...

Re:And I quote

Because creating a virtual directory with images from Fords' website, or cut n' pastes, could actually get you for Copyright violation.

Linking to their site violates no copyrights, as far as I am aware. The bandwidth excuse is bullshit though.

If that's a valid excuse, then companies can start suing slashdot for being linked to by us.
--------------------------------------------- -----

Related sites

There's already Sucks.com [sucks.com], which is pointed to by gmsucks.com. [gmsucks.com] (They also have intelsucks.com [intelsucks.com], microsoftsucks.com [microsoftsucks.com], and a number of others, all of which point to sucks.com. Nobody seems overly excited about that.

The wierd thing here is that Ford is sueing, not GM. GM may have a case, because something using their trademark is being redirected to a competitor. It's hard to see how Ford can show injury. What's the legal theory?

So this guy wants to be taken serious?

Wait... lemme try to get it. This is the same guy claiming that 2600 isn't an illegal cracker's hangout, and that linking to DeCSS is legal due to first amendment thingies and stuff? Then I really have to say that this was a stupid action from him, regardless what ANY amendment has to say about it.

It's... It's...

Re:Bah

If GM were the ones suing then speech aspects like this would certainly be involved; however its Ford suing, on the really quite reasonable grounds that to the average person the site would appear to be owned by them, and therefore imply that Ford had that opinion of their competitors.

If I were to post news that made people believe that you claimed torturing cute puppies was fun then you'd have grounds for claiming I was defaming you; speech isn't completely free of limitations.

Do the editors read their own site?

Didn't we already see this in a recent Slashback [slashdot.org]?

--

Responsible Rebellion

2600 has been an outspoken anti-capitalist voice, and I wonder if we might not be screwed in the DeCSS fight because of their outlaw image. I'm a Linux user first and foremost, and I see these guys irresponsible behavior hurting something I believe in. I should be able to watch a DVD anywhere I please if I paid for the DVD. 2600's fight with the MPAA is important and impacts us as a community. I wish someone other than 2600 were fighting that battle instead.

2600 could be a very important voice if they would learn to pick their fights. You can't be anti-everything. I wish they would think about what they are FOR, and how they jeopardize those things when they act like children.

So just why are we supposed to be angry with GM? Is someone pissed because my Camaro is faster than their Honda CRX? Or is it the same reason we're supposed to be mad at Verison? They're a big company. And all big companies are evil. All of them. Bull.

If someone is abusing their customers or workforce (ala Nike [slashdot.org]) shine a light on them. But if someone is just trying to make a buck, hey, so am I. We all have to put bread on the table.

Re:I just called Ford

They did take my comments seriously.

you sure about that? i've learned from my experience dealing with customer representatives is that these underpaid, under-appreciated employees usually don't give much of a hoot about the company. They have no stake in the company, therefore they feel no ownership, therefore they really don't care that much. They get paid to man the front line, and part of their job is absorbing the occasional bullet.

hopefully i'm wrong, but i'm skeptical with your approach.

Used to be IRIX

I remember www.ford.com being IRIX about two years ago. www.whitehouse.gov too... I can just see the auctions on eBay: "SGI Challenge L, former FORD webserver!!"

If you don't want to click through 2600 ...

read here [fordreallysucks.com].

Re:What kind of "pointing" is going on?

That's actually a reply from Ford's web server. Try this instead:

$ nslookup www.fuckgeneralmotors.com
Server: localhost.mit.edu
Address: 127.0.0.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: WWW.Ford.com
Address: 164.109.71.245
Aliases: www.fuckgeneralmotors.com

It's a DNS alias, not an HTTP redirect.

Re:just re-redirect it

Does anybody still have an HTTP 1.0 browser?

Doing an fgrep on the webserver logs (going back to July 2000) at work (not an especially high traffic site by Internet standards, nothing geek related) turns up:
841920 HTTP/1.0 requests
1076070 HTTP/1.1 requests

For just the past few months, the numbers are 254055 (1.0) versus 369703 (1.1).

Re:Lets look at another angle here shall we

Buut linking is the _foundation_ of the Internet :)

And that somehow makes it immune to regulation? Words and pictures are the foundation of printed communication, but that doesn't mean I can string together "General Motors sucks. Sincerely, Ford Motors.", print up a bunch of flyers, and start handing them out.

Similarly, if I were to take a random phone number from the phone book (for the sake of argument, let's say "Jenny 867-5309") and start publishing this already publically available information ("Hey, everyone, I saw this in the phone book -- Jenny 867-5309"), it's still a form of harassment.

Bah

Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but it seems to me that "fuckgeneralmotors" is a statement of opinion, and someone at fuckgeneralmotors.com would not confuse it with the real GM. Routing it to Ford I'd say is a bastard thing to do, but this is free speech, IMHO.

Companies are on a kick of saying that "Hey! That domain has our company name in it, so it's OURS!" Well, no. No it isn't. It's speech about your company.

--

2600 sued for publication of DeGMC source

HUMOUR TYPE=SARCASM
In a related story, General Motors Corp. said they would be launching a second independant lawsuite against 2600 for their publishing of DeGMC source code.

This software potentially allows users to break the digital encryption on General Motors cars and trucks. A spokesman for the car manufacturer said: "This clearly infringes upon our intellectual property rights, and can seriously damage our business. What would happen if instead of paying us for the millions it costs us to manufacture and develop new cars, people were just downloading "cracked" versions from the internet?"

Emmanuel Goldstein, of the 2600 "hacker" magazine, defended the software on the grounds of fair-use laws: "This software is purely for the private use of individuals wishing to make full use of their GMC vehicles under existing fair use laws. It is simply impractical for most individuals to pirate whole automobiles, especially given the extensive cost of the bandwidth necessary to download a working GMC car or truck."

He also pointed out that the auto manufacturing giant is unable to show any real cases of this software being used to create stolen cars.

GMC lawyers said that the arguments of 2600 would be unlikely to stand up in court, and in a press release yesterday described the software as a "digital coat-hanger", and as a tool to aid car thieves.
/HUMOUR

Ford isn't stupid. They know what they're doing...

They know by making a big stink out of this they end up in a series of headlines and articles. They also get a ton of people who feel compelled to try out the page and... surprise... they end up on Ford's website.

Ever wonder why why Marilyn Manson gets so excited about church groups fighting to stop his concerts? There is no such thing as bad publicity... it still helps for name recognition.