This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Geek / Sports Chris Bosh Just Saved the Internet
Posted by Ezra Caraeff on Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 8:51 AM
This might be my favorite sports story in years:
The Toronto Raptors' Chris Bosh was bummed that some jerkass cybersquatters reserved the domain name chrisbosh.com before he could purchase it. Instead of getting some alternate name—chrisbosh.geocities.com—or prying open his wallet and buying it from the squatters, Bosh sued. And won. And won. And won...
CHICAGO, October 14, 2009 — In a landmark legal case, Toronto Raptors forward Chris Bosh has won custody of nearly 800 domain names wrongfully appropriated from professional athletes and celebrities. Through his social media firm, Max Deal, Bosh is offering to return the domain names for free to their rightful owners. The offer was announced by Bosh's agent, Henry Thomas, Co-President of Max Deal, Hadi Teherany, and Bosh's law firm, Winston & Strawn LLP, which secured the victory.
The list—you can download it here, it's pretty entertaining to flip through—includes countless athletes of various degrees of fame, and more than a few current, and former, Portland Trail Blazers, including andremiller.com, martellwebster.com, and (of course), joelprzybilla.com. Now that Darius Miles has his domain name back, the internet is a better place.
Link: Washington Times
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Dude had a bit of a man crush on JJ Redick, eh?
Also, if you're going to try and steal a domain name (like one for Arron Afflalo), you might want to make sure you spell the person's name right.
I don't get what the successful legal argument was—so his lawyers argued that Bosh's rights were being violated because people with no affiliation to him used his name to make a website? So is it illegal to use the domain name of a famous person to run a website about things that aren't that person?
FOR EXAMPLE, could I buy PatrickAlanColeman.com and then turn it into a website of cats eating Philly cheese steaks? Would that be legal? This is a very important question.
Also there's some things on that list that aren't people, but domains like december9.com that are days important things happened. What gives?
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