Centerfield

Right on!

Has anyone looked at Blogger's terms of service to see whether they address impersonation?

Perhaps you, Rick, could email the right-leaning blogs on the blogroll and ask them to comment on this. If we get the right-leaning blogs to condemn the imposter, perhaps other, more right-leaning blogs will pick up on it.

Finally, without looking at the imposter site to see whether it enables comments or not, perhaps we can initiate a drive to ensure that every post on the fake blog has at least one comment discussing this attempt at adverse possession of an already used blog. (On the other hand, we may not want to inflate his site stats by visiting his site to comment on each of his posts.)

Don't you have, like, real things to worry about.

Its inevitable that similar or identically named blogs will occur, especially with generic phrases like "New Democrat."

Also, don't forget about this bastard as well:

http://www.newdemocrat.org/

Not to mention these folks:

http://www.ndnblog.org/

How ever will people be able to keep these folks straight?

This seems perfectly normal for those associated with the "phony" Swift Boat people, and Karl Rove. Succinctly summed up, the Republican and Rove's strategy is, "Lie, cheat, steal, deny".

I am a Special Forces veteran who was in the Delta long before these Navy bus drivers showed up. Their own Navy Seals say that this bunch illegally fired into protected areas they were not supposed to, fired into sampans without even challenging them, and so on, and so on. A lot of them are real "sickies".

I don't see how "right" and "left" wing politics has much to do with this, or shouldn't anyway.

Questions: 1) Does anybody rely on NAMES of blogs, or do they use ADDRESSES. If someone imitates an intentional mispell or other creative feature of a name, that could be a violation of someone's right to their own intellectual work, but "The New Democrat," while dignified and classy, is just a combo of fairly ordinary elements. Not meant as criticism, but what's new about it? (Compare to Technorati, or Del.icio.us.)

2) So what? I mean what's bad about this? Is this claim jumping in the gold fields of the World Wide Web, or the Internet? Without even referring to the other side, I'd give you that some dirty rat is pulling a trick. If so, so what? What's the real damage? I don't mean to sound cold, I'm quite honestly asking.

3) What body, or which individuals, should monitor these names? How? For how long? How many names should they monitor? So far there are organizations that keep the internet numbers right, the internet names right, and within the various blog makers, I'm sure they don't allow any trespassing. Is it possible that you're too sensitive on this issue? Is this anything like my mom's experience? She used to be called "ML" after her first and middle initial. She told me that after a while, she learned in new offices to wait until someone would tell her, "Oh, what a coincidence, I'm 'ML,' too," and she would quickly say, "Great, then I'm ML One." Nasty, but effective.

4) (silly) Why not just add "The Original" and let everybody know that you (or whoever it is that you're arguing for) can prove it. Then prove it. That'd be a lot of free publicity, and a great credential without an expiration date.

Please post on this again. I'm interested.

I am the general counsel of the new Media Bloggers Association, whose leadership has asked me to "weigh in" on this. This is not legal advice, nor have we researched the question, but because we're on Internet time the MBA has asked me to shoot from the hip from a legal / intellectual property point of view and get it out there.

My take is that under certain circumstances there could be a claim of (common law) trademark infringement under state and federal law for "blog name impersonation." A blog is a service; it is may be (depending on the facts) provided "in commerce." And "infringement" probably causes likelihood of confusion. The complaining blogger would have to prove that his blog has "secondary meaning" -- that the public (not necessarily the whole world, but the relevant "public") identifies the blog name in question with a particular source (i.e., his blog).

Doubtless the brand names in this field are worth a considerable amount of money, and I would not want to be the one to rip off "Instapundit" or "Daily Kos" with a similar blog name. Note that it need not be identical; even if it is similar, readers could well be confused by the implication of sponsorship, affiliation or origin. It is not necessary to have a gold-plated blog to make such a claim but, again, the less well-known the blog, the harder it will be to prove secondary meaning. Certain blog names may also be too descriptive to qualify for trademark protection. The question of whether personal names used as blogs may be trademarks is less clear.

The presumed goal of a court action would be to seek an injunction requiring that the name not be infringed. Few blogs would be able to prove monetary damages. Attorneys' fees are theoretically available in certain cases of purposeful trademark infringement, but are seldom awarded and even less seldom collectable.

Having said all this, I am not aware of any such claim that has been made in a court. The UDRP deals with domain names and registered trademarks only, so there is no recourse there. Most bloggers are, it appears, lawyers or law professors (this is a humorous aside), but those who aren't may have trouble affording counsel -- which is one of the reason the MBA was founded. Whether this or some other bloggers' group would want to be involved in adjudicating such disputes or representing offended bloggers remains to be seen.

Again, this is not legal advice for any particular person nor is it the position of the MBA, but it is our first take on the question.

Rick would not have posted this (twice) here if the situation was reversed, and Max's blog had come out second.

His passion is fueled by open adoration of "prodigy" Max, and disagreement with the opinions of the other site linked by Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit.

Passion leads to lapses of judgement. Rick sullies this website by linking to attack rumors about a fellow blogger. What would Rick think about the integrity of blogs that stooped to doing this to him?

The "republican operative" rumors spread by Rick here, are based around the notion that Democrats cannot strongly advocate the forceful confrontation of islamic terrorism, question Kerry's Vietnam behavior, or question hollywood liberal treatment of minority issues and voters.

The attacked blog author never claimed to be a liberal, he claims to be a conservative "zell miller" democrat. Millions of them once granted Democrats control of congress for decades. If only "right wingers" had concerns about Kerry in Vietnam, the swift boat ads wouldn't have been the most influential ads in the election.

More than anyone, centrists should grasp the diversity of opinion among Democrats. Typical conservative Democrats in Tallahassee (North Florida), do not think anything like the party leadership, hollywood leftists, or protesters holding "no blood for oil" signs. They might be shouted down at party functions, and people may pretend that the only ones that exist are frauds. But they can find respite on the internet, with sites like this one, or even their own blogs.

So who is the real centrist? Rick enthusiastically introduced Ringmaster here as a centrist, whose two articles consisted of senseless comparisons of Bush to Hitler. When the centrist tent is made so large, it's hard to then credibly make a case for excluding anyone at all.

Ultimately this name conflict will be resolved as everything else on the internet, as people go where the content is most interesting. No one sincerely believes one of these blogs is falsely pretending to be the other.

Since the linked book is only available on the internet, it is a very good thing it was made available to voters this way during the election. If Bush had written a shocking book, and copies were not available in any bookstore, would the same people object to it being made available on the internet? I think voters knowing the truth about the person running for the most important position in the world, is a more important principle than the right of a candidate to supress information they have previously written with intellectual property laws. Yes, sometimes doing the right thing means breaking the law.

As has been mentioned here before in a post by Rick, I started my own personal blog in November. I did Google searches and Truth Laid Bear searches to make sure that I wasn't copying anyone else. Originally, I was thinking of something like "Common Sense" but I soon discovered that name or something confusingly similar was already taken by several people. I ultimately settled on the unlikely to infringe name of Pearson's Perspectives.

I changed my blog's name early this month (again, after Google and Truth Laid Bear searches) to Reasonable Prudence. Concerned that someone might come along and take that name, I also set up a separate (and dormant) blog at http://reasonableprudence.blogspot.com.

Based on my experiences and after reading this post and the comments, links and trackbacks, my view is (1) a new blogger has an ethical duty to determine whether someone is already using a blog name, (2) at least among the small fries, this is not going to be settled through legal action, (3) once you adopt a name, stake out your territory by peeing on every tree that you can find, and (4) new bloggers who take-on a name that is already being used and then refuse to change it when they learn of the existing blog should be ridiculed by the blogging community.

Who gives a rats a**, Both these sites are way too far to the right to be anything close to "Democrat" new, old or otherwise. A pox on them both.

The blatant amorality and dishonesty of so called right-wing politics and its "Christian" supporters is well illustrated by the questionable antics of "Swift Boater" types and ner-do-wells in the blogosphere like Ricky. All America loves a winner and that's all that seems to matter.

Well "get a life"!! The behaviour of the Rickys and other self serving politicians like Condi Rice sicken me and lead me to believe that Americans have lost their way while focusing so much on winning at all costs, however many Iraqi citizens they kill on the way to victory however it can be claimed for "freedom et al".

A Canadian living in China

See? :-)

Susan,

Advocating law-breaking? Is that conservative? You seem to be advocating a type of "property is theft" communism.

Max is one of the Centerfield bloggers, so yes, as the editor of this blog, I am particularly protective of his intellectual property rights. I would be whether he were center-left or center-right.

I honor the principle of prior art, by which the first person to pick a name gets that name. Centerfield will not link to an imposter blog that takes the name of a conservative blog like Evangelical Outpost or a liberal blog like Atrios. Yes, I would let someone else do the heavy lifting if the injured blog was not centrist, but I would still shun the offender.

I can't understand how you can endorse such blatantly unethical behavior, suggesting that the marketplace (i.e. who gets the Instapundit link) will decide which blog is the real one.

In my initial post, I offered to blogroll Ricky if he changed the name of the blog. In that post, I granted that a Zell Miller Democrat could conceivably be a Democrat. However, Ricky's lack of ethics is such that it would be inappropriate to blogroll him, even if he were a centrist.

Ricky has collaborated with Republican operatives in the anti-Kerry campaign. Does that make him a Republican operative? I don't know, because I don't know his real name, whether he is registered to vote, or whether he is even old enough to vote. Given that his ethical standards are similar to those who steal music, my guess is that Ricky is a troubled teenager who is confused about what he believes, but wants to get a lot of attention.

"I honor the principle of prior art, by which the first person to pick a name gets that name."

The New Democrat Network has been publishing on the Web since at least 1998.

The New Democrat newspaper in Africa has been publishing since 2001.

Max Burns began his weblog in November 2004.

Four sites rank higher for the term "New Democrat" in Google.

If there's an ethical standard at work here, I think Burns should consider moving off the name as well.

More importantly - who cares?

B

Susan -

Passion leads to lapses of judgement. Rick sullies this website by linking to attack rumors about a fellow blogger. What would Rick think about the integrity of blogs that stooped to doing this to him?

The "republican operative" rumors spread by Rick here, are based around the notion that Democrats cannot strongly advocate the forceful confrontation of islamic terrorism, question Kerry's Vietnam behavior, or question hollywood liberal treatment of minority issues and voters.

I resent these comments. Rick has not spread "rumors", what he has done is merely linked to the facts dug about about Ricky Vandal, the author of the fraudulent "New Democrat" blog, dug up mainly by Ron and myself. It's a fact that Ricky Vandal also ran johnkerrythenewsoldier.blogspot.com, a pro-Bush website. It's a fact that Ricky Vandal has also gone to almost every leftwing blog under the sun and posted anti-Kerry and anti-Democrat comments there. It's also a fact that Ricky is a regular on Free Republic.

The fact is that Ricky just isn't a Democrat, period. If you have proof to the contrary, then please spill it. Otherwise, if you don't, then please don't call these fact "rumors" because they most certainly are not.

Rogers,

In my email to Ricky, I suggested he change the name of his blog to "The Newer Democrat" That would be very close to the original, close enough than few people would even notice the change in name to a 10 day old blog. Ricky did not respond. While Max's The New Democrat is similar to the NDN blog, it's not identical. Nor is it identical to the DLC's New Democrats Online.

Your point about that African paper, which I'd never heard of, has some validity. If it were a blog, then Max would have to cede priority to it. However, since it's a newspaper, and since Max's blog and that newspaper discuss news in different countries, I don't see any likelihood of confusion between the two brands.

An African newspaper not sold in the U.S. would have no effect on U.S. trademark rights, though some recent cases have suggested that if a mark used abroad only is sufficiently famous -- such that it would be known in the U.S. even if it is not used "in commerce" here -- such a mark may have U.S. trademark rights.

As i recall, titles are not subject to copyright, as they are generally short phrases. Thus it is very possible for two works to have the same title without there being any question of copyright or ethical wrongdoing.

Now, if you want to argue that there is an intent to deceive via impersonation, you might have another issue.

And by the way -- the decision of the Swift Vets to highlight Kerry's acts of treason was heroic. Much like Benedict Arnold, Kerry might have served his country well earlier in the war, only to betray it later.

4 Comments to 4 Commenters:

1). Rick, peace.
2). David Glenn, I'm am lib as they come, and I think you are acting...ummm...undemocratic. Rick (and his posse) are indeed Democrats, and while we may have differences of opinions, our party should be one that remains inclusive to all viewpoints (I just draw the line at them running things...I'm talking to you, Simon).
3). Tas, excellent return on the right wing serve.
4). Susan (or whoever you are...ricky? solarian? original deep throat?), I heard a rumour that once a week Paul Wolfowitz comes to your house and spits in your hair, Alberto Gonzales brings over his S&M gear, and Bill O'Reilly stops by for dessert with, of course, falafels. But I'll keep all that to myself and continue gathering facts about Ricky.

Two Points -

1) It's my laymans understanding (I'm not lawyer) that there are 2 qualifications for staking out a name as ones own private turf. Firstly that no one else has prior use of that name in that field. Second that it's not just simply descriptive. Thus Apple inc, can stake out a name if it's selling computers... it can't if it's selling fruit. Nor can it prevent a fruit seller from using the word "apple" in his marketing.
How far away from being simply descriptive is the name "New Democrat" for a political blog?

Anyway I have a bit of a personal pet peeve when people try to stake out portions of the english language as thier own exclusive private property. I'm not trying to say that Max shouldn't choose to call his blog whatever he wants. Nor do I think Rick is wrong for not wanting to link to a blog that is using the same name as Max's (nor is he wrong in trying to convince other to refrain from doing so). But given the number of blogs out there.... I don't think it's any more ethicaly challanged for another blog to call itself by the same name then it is for some other person out there to use the first name "Chris" . Just as long as they are not trying to decieve or confuse anyone about which Chris they actualy are.

2) What exactly does it take to qualify one as a "real democrat". Is it impossible for a "real democrat" to be anti-Kerry or even support some portions of the Conservative agenda? By that same token, is it impossible for a "real republican" to be anti-Bush or support some portions of the Liberal agenda?

To be blunt, some people around here have attutudes that are more appropriate in a 13th century trial for religious heresy then a 21st century political discussion on what is supposed to be a centrist site.

To be blunt, some people around here have attutudes that are more appropriate in a 13th century trial for religious heresy then a 21st century political discussion on what is supposed to be a centrist site.

What, didn't you know that partisanship is all about proselytizing the True Faith, and the burning and stoning of heretics and infidels?

:-)

I'm glad I checked back on this.

If somebody were talking about www.sabadash.com or the numbers that the name www.sabadash.com points at, well, that would be wrong, because when people steal names and numbers on the internet, it doesn't work.

It seems that those that are discussing this issue are looking for something else to be "wrong," without really thinking about what the wrong is.

No, I read the comments and sure, they're trying to define something, but there is no body to discover here, no corpus.

Which doesn't mean it isn't interesting and (maybe) important. Just to head off silly remarks, everying is important to someone, but the internet is new.

Look, I sign as "-" a lot, nearly all the time. What can I do to make sure that NOBODY ELSE EVER SIGNS LIKE THAT? Good luck.

I have a (small) site called "4megclassicmac" at Buzzword (thanks, Rogers). What if somebody at Blogspot were to use the same name? Okay, now let's pretend I invested a lot of time and effort into publicizing and commoditizing "4megclassicmac" and didn't bother to make it real clear that I'm doing this at Rogers' place: Buzzword.com? I'd lose everything. Why? Because I wasn't working within the rules of the IANA.

I guess the idea here is that is not enough. I don't think I agree. I think we've got coverage enugh for the names of sites, pages, and (dreaded word) blogs. Because if the name and the address aren't the same, then you're doing something other than the internet. And why would you keep trying to one up everyone like that? Just think about what you're doing, eh?

(I love some of the clever names like Technorati, or Del.icio.us. I've said that before on this page, but apparently no one wants to just think a little harder.

"-"

ps-I read this back and don't really like the tone, but I can't seem to express the ideas better, so that'll have to do. But thanks for the discussion to all. -

It seems that the Democrat blogs I read all fail to take into account the reason for the demise of the party. We have sold out to the lowlifes and dregs. Harry Truman and even Jack Kennedy would be ashamed of what we have become. I was raiseda Democrat, have served as a City Chairman,County Chairman and State offical. However I am ashamed of my party today

Kerry lost a lot his democratic support when he went ga-ga over his Hollywood supporters. Some of us do not believe that the Hollywood crowd has the answers for world problems