That's Quite the Midterm "Grade Report" There Son...

Quick update before the story gets too old, the BBC1 was kind enough to post this story about a school in Suffolk winning the battle against a cybersquatter.2 I can only imagine what the parents of the students of Framlingham College thought when they visited what was supposed to be the school website. People talk about bad faith when it comes to cybersquatting,3 and I am personally of the opinion that any pornographic site that purposefully chooses a college name for its web address is likely doing so with something other than an above-the-table intent. The article talks about the “pernicious” and “misleading” effect of the squatting,4 I can only imagine. It would certainly make a parent rethink where the tuition money was going....

Happy Tuesday.

1: See “School’s links to porn site end,” BBC News, Jan. 14, 2009, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7826794.stm.
2: See The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d) (2006) (hereinafter ACPA) (according to the ACPA, cybersquatting is the registering, trafficking in, or the use of a domain name in bad faith with the intent to profit from another’s trademark); see also Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, ICANN (hereinafter UDNDRP) (listing that a complainant to a cybersquatting charge must establish that the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; the registrant does not have any rights or legitimate interests in the domain name; and the registrant registered the domain name and is using it in "bad faith").
3: UDNDRP, supra note 2.
4: See BBC News, supra note 1.

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