Gripe sites have been established in recent years quite often

Gripe sites have been established in recent years quite often

Gripe sites have been established in recent years quite often. Gripe sites have become the weapon of choice for frustrated companies. Because the effects of the use of gripe sites on another company are very devastating, dissatisfied companies are not allowed to use gripe sites. For this reason, offending companies will seek to protect their names and trademarks on the Internet from these cyber gripers. Freeman, E. H. (2001). Internet Gripe Sites: Bally v. Faber. Information Systems Security, 9(6), 1-5.

Sometimes, a gripe site operator may distort a company’s logo and make it to convey a message reflecting negatively on the other company. This negativity posed by the dissatisfied company will be a blow to the other company hence it can’t allow its name to be tarnished. For example, a gripe site targeting Starbucks altered the company’s logo so that the language in the logo said “Starbucks Sucks” as opposed to “Starbucks Coffee.” More often, the complaint site displays the company’s trademark logo with the word “Sucks” or some other critical word displayed across the logo. (Freeman, 2001)

Consumers will be confused indeed because for instance the use of different domain names or an irritating one apart from the o (Placeholder1)one they were used to. With this Most circuits look to a list of factors to determine the likelihood of consumer confusion. Three cases can be used to determine the likelihood of confusion. These are Planned Parenthood, Jews for Jesus, and PETA. For example in PETA, the defendant registered the domain name peta.org and created a website called “People Eating Tasty Animals.” Falk, L. K., & Sockel, H. (2002). Gripe websites: Using the Internet as a forum for attack and change. Journal of Promotion Management, 9(1-2), 81-91. The plaintiff is an animal rights organization whose mission is to promote and heighten public awareness of animal protection issues.155 The organization opposes the use of animals for food, clothing, testing, or entertainment. Given the nature of the plaintiff organization, it appears that no one who accesses a website entitled “People Eating Tasty Animals” would reasonably believe that the website was sponsored by an animal rights organization. Nevertheless, the court found that confusion is likely.

In that manner of confusion brought about by the use of gripe sites, corporations targeted by consumer gripe sites have not been as successful. Unless most of the targeted companies shut down their websites and their original domain nameless can be achieved (Falk, 2002)or they end up operating on a loss. This is the reason why the gripe site should not be considered to tarnish the targeted company trademark because it can make a company to collapse or non-functioning. Enacted in 1996, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA) creates a federal cause of action to protect famous marks from unauthorized use; to prevent others from trading upon the goodwill and established renown of such marks; and to prevent dilution of the distinctive quality of such marks. The FTDA is intended to prevent both actual dilution and likely dilution. Companies trademarks should, therefore, be protected as per the Federal Trademark Dilution Act.

There are various extents in which copyright law seems to have wrapped behind technology advancement, in areas such as fan fiction, web videos, songs that sample from earlier copyrighted recordings, as well as online user-generated content. All these types of “gray works” have been the topic of scholarship. Nevertheless, one class of gray works that have received much less scrutiny is forwarded emails. Email forwarding is common all over but at a greater significance constitutes copyright infringement.

Like a written letter and email, a message displays the same level of copyright protection, since the copyrighting procedure is involuntary at the time a writer is fixed in a tangible form. Copying or distributing a copyrighted work, absent an applicable defense, constitutes infringement. Just as copying and distributing a letter violates the author’s copyright in the letter, forwarding an email or copying its contents to a web page appears to make out the prima facie case for copyright infringement. Planning, P. T. (1994). copyright 2002–2014 NPAIHB All rights reserved. Mural by Robilyn Robins. Is there a defense or exception under which email forwarding is not copyright infringement or is the law merely ignored by email authors and forwarders alike? (Robins, 2002)

Although the Copyright Act has been construed to preempt common law rights of expression and thereby deprive authors of privacy, there is no such preemption. Under the Constitution, private expression falls outside the scope of expression that is subject to federal regulation. The routine practice of e-mail forwarding violates principles of common-law copyright regardless of what the Federal Copyright Act says.” since forwarding an e-mail message is as simple as clicking a button, sharing an e-mail with a third party inhibits free expression because senders feel they cannot be candid.

Accordingly, because e-mail forwarding deprives the sender of privacy, it violates common-law copyright. However, if an author carbon-copies a third party, the author relinquishes this control and forfeits privacy. One of the purported rights that the act is supposed to preempt is that of first publication, which is the key to protecting privacy interests under the common law.

A possible defense to email forwarding constituting copyright infringement is the fair use doctrine under which actions that would otherwise constitute copyright infringement may be deemed permissible. Doherty, W. (2006). Copyright theft. Industrial and Commercial Training. The remedies that a successful plaintiff can obtain are very diverse, for example Rather than waiting for this question to be tested in litigation, Congress should act to clarify whether and when forwarding an email infringes the author’s reproduction right in the work. One approach would be to offer full copyright protection to emails that explicitly state that they are confidential or not to be forwarded but to allow forwarding of emails in other cases. Such a bright-line rule would put the authors of emails in charge of the fate of their writings, an outcome that would be consistent with the core principles of intellectual property protection.