Glenn Beck files cybersquatting complaint against Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com
Memes strike back: Gerbils, gay blood elves, and Glenn Beck - Ars Technica
Why has Beck never addressed the rumors that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? I'm not saying he did it. I just think a lot of Americans would feel better if he could address the rumors.
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?
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The basic charge here is that Beck and his lawyers are using a WIPO proceeding to shut down a website that they could not shutter under US law (thanks to the First Amendment). Whether this is true or not is debatable—lawyers we spoke to were divided, on the subject, as the factual nature of the domain name and the site's initially small disclaimer might be found defamatory in court.
In any event, the WIPO battle promises to be entertaining, and there's even a bit of serious purpose mixed in with the frivolity. Just how far can WIPO go in using its domain dispute system to address Internet spats? Because WIPO is not a court system (it can use "any rules and principles of law that it deems applicable" to a particular complaint), it is not bound by its own precedent and it sometimes has a reputation for favoring big trademark holders. But WIPO has ruled on thousands of these disputes before and does have a track record of rejecting claims in which companies or individuals use the process as a way to shut down criticism or satire.
Eiland-Hall certainly hopes to prevail at WIPO, though of course the issue there is a minor one; who controls a particular domain (Eiland-Hall has already registered several similar but less inflammatory domains to deal with the situation). The bigger problem could be that now, after unveiling himself, Beck's lawyers decide to send a message and drag the whole case into a US court, where big monetary damages could be on the line.