Newspaper creates domain war over nothing?

what could happen when you register city name.org

[techrealm]

I thought this was funny then I looked over my portfolio - hmm how many places of "generic" names can sue me for my sites because they can't get ranking with their .gov tld's?

said he received a two-page letter from a law firm representing the township asking him to "cease and desist" using his site, claiming it's "confusingly similar to the township's.

The letter also indicates that VanderMolen's "use of the site is intended to (and actually does) confuse and mislead the public," which is "actionable under federal law and causes you to be liable to the township."

Newspaper Article:[mlive.com ]

Referenced "Dueling" Site with reply: [fruitporttownship.org ]

Townships site: [fruitporttownship-mi.gov ]

Funny thing, the "hobbyist" domainer has his website robots.txt blocking:User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*. So waybackmachine doesn't work...

[Webwork]

It's going to be awhile before there is a well established body of "law of the Web" and it's going to be an even longer while before people become better acquainted with that body of law.

Until then . . messiness, ignorance, missteps, bad decisions, aggravation, money wasted on litigation . . . Oh, the joy! (For the poorly educated, but soon smarter and richer, lawyers.)

[piatkow]

What confuses me is government sites registered with .com or .or TLDs

[Samizdata]

Township officials had said VanderMolen's site was a problem because those searching online for "Fruitport Township" were automatically directed to his site rather than the township's.

One assumes those people were "Feeling Lucky".

...

[Shaddows]

One further assumes the township has a fairly shakey grasp of the internet.

Either that, or the squatter has learnt a nifty trick

[engine]

That's so sad they had to take action that way. $50 seems way too little considering they involved lawyers.

[techrealm]

He updated his site with an apology letter from the township. <laughter>$50 bucks? Amicable?</laughter>

[mvander]

It appears that said township hired an very novice web developer who couldn't answer officials questions as to why their new site was not being found by visitors.

were automatically directed to his site rather than the township's

Wow, if only such a thing were that easy! Very laughable...to quote the earlier post, this is very "...shaky grasp of the internet"...

[techrealm]

The "offending" site now displays an error:
"Oops. There may be an issue with the URL Forwarding service for this domain"

Seems the whois hasn't changed yet, got to wonder if the townships web people are still the same.