Chinese Search Engine Suit Proceeds Against Register.com

A federal court will permit Baidu, Inc., a leading Chinese search engine company, to sue Register.com for gross negligence, recklessness, and breach of contract.

The lawsuit arose after a hacker took over Baidu’s Register.com account and interrupted its service for two days in January 2010. Among other things, the hacker redirected Baidu’s users to the Web site of the Iranian Cyber Army. Baidu claimed the hacker wrested control of Baidu’s account as a result of errors made by Register.com’s tech support Internet “chat” staff. According to the complaint: ”Although the Intruder gave the Rep an incorrect response to [a] security question, the Rep nonetheless proceeded with processing the Intruder’s request to change Baidu’s email address; [and] [w]hen the Intruder sent the Rep a bogus security code, the Rep did not notice that it was the wrong code, apparently because the Rep didn’t even bother to check it against the original security code.” The Intruder then allegedly changed the password and hacked into Baidu’s account. Baidu claimed injury to its reputation and business totaling “millions” of dollars. Read more »

WIPO: Anti-Glenn Beck Domain Name Was Not Defamatory

Legal disputes over allegedly defamatory statements on blogs and social media sites are fairly common.  But what happens when an individual claims that the domain name itself is defamatory?

On September 1, Isaac Eiland-Hall registered the domain name — glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlinthe1990s.com. The Web site found at this domain name contained the following notice: “This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven’t yet seen proof that he didn’t. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.”

Within 24 hours, the site received over 120,000 page hits. Beck’s lawyers asked the domain name registrar to take the site down. The registrar refused.  Read more »