Two years ago, Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men decided to get into the violence prevention business, in its own backwards way, by getting up in the business of the White Ribbon Campaign, a longstanding international initiative to encourage men and boys to fight against violence against women and girls.
AVFM didn’t organize any workshops or Walks Against Family Violence or anything of the sort. Instead, it launched its own ersatz White Ribbon website, using a domain name (WhiteRibbon.org) that the real White Ribbon organization had neglected to register for itself. With a design similar to White Ribbon Australia’s site, it featured a “donate” button that sent donations straight to AVFM itself.
Though the donate button was later removed, AVFM’s “White Ribbon” site seemed pretty clearly to be a bad faith effort “designed to undermine and co-opt the real White Ribbon campaign,” as I put it at the time.
Shortly after the site’s launch, AVFM head cheese Paul Elam responded to my criticism, and similar criticism from Salon and ThinkProgress, with a thoughtful blog post inviting us all to
Go right straight to Hell you gang of bigoted, lying scumbags. That is, if Hell will even have you pieces of shit.
He also challenged the White Ribbon Campaign to
Send your lawyers. We will be happy to ride them for a while just for the fun of watching you pay the f**king bill.
Well, it turns out that White Ribbon Australia did send lawyers, taking the case to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations entity tasked with resolving these sorts of disputes.
And guess what? In a ruling last week, WIPO declared that, yep, the fake WhiteRibbon.org site set up by AVFM was indeed fake, a bad-faith infringement of the real White Ribbon Campaign’s trademarks intended to confuse anyone who visited the site.
Below, some relevant passages from the WIPO’s ruling which you can read in its entirely here. “The Complainant” is the real White Ribbon Australia; “the Respondent” is Whois Privacy Protection Service/woman-blaming domestic violence “expert” and longtime AVFM ally Erin Pizzey. (While AVFM still hosts the site, it handed the official ownership of WhiteRibbon.org over to Pizzey some time ago, presumably for legal reasons.)
The Disputed Domain Name incorporates the Complainant’s WHITE RIBBON trade mark in its entirety, and is therefore identical to the Complainant’s trade mark. …
[T]he Panel also finds that the Disputed Domain Name is confusingly similar to the Complainant’s WHITE RIBBON CAMPAIGN trade mark, WHITE RIBBON DAY trade mark, WHITE RIBBON design trade mark and WHITE RIBBON NIGHT trade mark, which were all registered prior to the Respondent’s registration of the Disputed Domain Name. …
The Respondent’s Website also features a white looped ribbon against a black background, which is similar to the Complainant’s WHITE RIBBON design trade mark, and the looped white ribbon on the Complainant’s website. Both the Respondent’s Website and the Complainant’s website have a similar black and white design. Therefore, the Panel finds that the Disputed Domain Name has been used in a manner that misleads Internet users into believing that the Disputed Domain Name is associated with the Complainant … For this reason, the Panel is of the view that while the Respondent’s use of the Disputed Domain Name may be a noncommercial use, it is not a legitimate or fair use. …
The Panel accepts that the Respondent registered and has been using the Disputed Domain Name in bad faith … with the intention of confusing Internet users into believing that the Disputed Domain Name is associated with the Complainant.
Three strikes, and Pizzey is out!
WIPO ordered Pizzey to transfer the domain name over to White Ribbon Australia.
AVFM reported the news in a post on Tuesday that is notably more subdued and sober than Elam’s original response to critics. It sounds a lot like it was written by a lawyer, or at least run past one.
But never fear! Elam managed to inject some of that old Elam magic into the otherwise pretty dry post:
AVFM CEO Paul Elam stated that, “WIPO’s panel investigated this case the same way the FBI investigated Hillary Clinton,” and added, “White Ribbon Australia are bullies with deep pockets beating an old woman in a wheelchair into submission and silence so they can continue a corrupt enterprise without dissent.”
#NotYourShield? More like #TotallyYourShield
Needless to say, old women in wheelchairs are no more entitled than young women not in wheelchairs to infringe upon the trademarks of legitimate anti-violence campaigns in a bad-faith effort to confuse Internet users and push their own line of propaganda.
The “old woman in a wheelchair,” who has clearly not been “beat[en] … into submission and silence,” had a few choice words to say about the ruling as well:
When contacted for comment, Pizzey said she was considering her legal options and viewed the ruling as a temporary setback. “I am not going to stop,” she told AVFM. “I have dedicated over 50 years of my life to educating people about family violence and I won’t be stopped now by these hoodlums.”
Hoodlums, really? Pizzey once declared that, to her,
the definition of domestic violence is quite clear: if you are not in fear of your life, you are not suffering it.
But neither she nor Elam have any problem talking about White Ribbon Australia with the same language one might use to describe a domestic abuser.
To Elam, White Ribbon Australia’s defense of its trademarks against a deliberately deceptive web site trying to undermine it is basically the same as “beating an old woman in a wheelchair into submission and silence.” To Pizzey, the real White Ribbon campaign is a bunch of “hoodlums.”
As of today, more than a week after the WIPO ruling, it doesn’t look as though Pizzey has handed over the domain name. Clicking on WhiteRibbon.org doesn’t send you to White Ribbon Australia or to any of the other other legitimate White Ribbon organizations around the world; it sends you to Pizzey’s fake site, now calling itself Honest-Ribbon.org — but still sporting the same black-and-white WhiteRibbon.org logo as before.
So I guess the lawyers aren’t quite done yet.
@Diptych
Why do I feel to hesitant to say he’s not dumb/delusional enough to think that?
I mean, it would be a massive oversight, but the very essence of these pricks’ worldview is that the world should be set up to meet their needs and their needs alone, and that any action to the contrary is the result of terrible corruption… I suspect that, at least in the back of his mind, Elam went into this situation expecting to win.
It’s not just a fraud. It’s pure evil. The White Ribbon campaign was started by some Canadian men from London, Ontario as a response to the École Polytechnique massacre in which fourteen women were murdered for being engineering students while female. Any money that Elam & Co. made was blood money.
A weird coincidence. Just this morning, I read a Twitter exchange about an elder woman (I think) throwing a tantrum over UNICEF daring to ask for donations (a non-profit organization asking for support? What has the world come to?) to help children in war-torn countries. The reason for this outburst was quite clearly racism, as the woman used many of the factually untrue claims and misconceptions that are rampant in our national immigration discussion.
The Facebook reply from UNICEF was really something to behold in all its sarcastic glory, but of course, there were ones who jumped to the woman’s defense on the grounds that she was (supposedly) retired, and… somehow above all criticism because of that? Elam’s outburst really reminds me of that fuckery.
Bigots of all branches tend to go full SJW the second one of their own is criticized. Then it’s all about how age or disability or ethnic background or womanhood or whatever apparently makes someone impervious to criticism. It’s really dishonest, considering they never even consider intersectionality otherwise. #yesmysubjectserrrimeanshields
Justice level:
http://i.makeagif.com/media/7-23-2015/bm34LF.gif
Wow…such ethics!
Nothing like watching karma bite them in the ass…I too hope that they get all their money taken away and donated to *real* charities
Pizzey disgusts me, and I say that as someone who would have met her ‘definition’ for a survivor of domestic violence (those of us who have experienced domestic abuse and are still alive deserve to reclaim the word “survivor” even if the situation is ongoing. The victims are those killed by their abuser, the ones judged or ignored, not helped before it was too late).
Maybe some people just don’t have the capacity to keep themselves connected in a way to the abused individual they were and use that to strengthen their compassion for others being abused (or recently escaped from), or their ability to act with compassion keeps throwing out an error message because they’ve never experienced abuse they just don’t ‘get’ it?
avoiceforman.com is available…. just saying….
One of the many things I can’t get over about this story is how crappy Pizzey’s site is. I mean, it hurts my brain to look at it, even without reading any of the content.
What a shame that Paul Elam is in trouble!
And Erin Pizzey — so sad that she is also in a bit of a scrape!
Both of them are so spunky that I know they’ll overcome this adversity.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
@msexceptiontotherule
I’m so glad that you were able to exit that dangerous situation.
@latsot
Intriguing.
Fruitloopsie-
So do I, Fruitloopsie, so do I. At the very least the fake site should be shut down and the money goes to the shelters.
Weirwoodtreehugger
That’s a shame. 🙁 I hope the real White Ribbon will do just that.
@ WWTH et al
I’ve only dealt with nominet cases here in the UK, but I know that WIPO uses a similar procedure (but unlike nominet there’s a big fee ($1500), which is why my clients tend to just use nominet)
WIPO can only deal with the ‘abusive registration’ of the domain name aspect. The only remedy they can provide is an order that the abusing party give up the domain name to the complainant (or just stop using it). If the guilty party doesn’t comply there’s a mechanism for enforcing that involving something called the ‘DNS host’. Someone more tech literate than me will know more about what that entails.
You can recover damages from abusive registrations, but you have to do that through the courts (courts will accept WIPO adjudications as prime facie evidence that there’s been a breach). You have options as to where to bring the case, but it’s generally best to do it in the abuser’s jurisdiction as its then easier to enforce any judgment.
There are various causes of action that may be available depending on locale (fraud, unjust enrichment etc.) but most countries are parties to the various international IP protection treaties and they provide some common causes of action under international law. This incident would best fall under ‘passing off’. That’s where you rely on someone confusing you for someone else to take advantage of the other party’s reputation or ‘goodwill’ (to use the legal terminology).
You can a claim damages equating to the money the abuser received (on the ground that people intended it for you). You can also claim damages for money you may have lost if you can show that the abusive registration stopped people contributing where they might otherwise have done. Say for instance I abusively register something similar to the Cat Protection League but then do a lot of publicity about how I’ll spend the money on executing cats. That could of course affect donations to the real campaign. Damages under the first head are pretty easy to calculate (usually just whatever they actually received), for the second head they have to make a guess.
@ ktoryx
Enforcement of foreign judgments is a complex area in law. That’s why it’s usually best to sue in the jurisdiction where the defendant resides.
There are ways though of enforcing domestic judgments in foreign jurisdictions. A lot of countries have bi-lateral agreements to enforce each other’s judgments. The UK for instance is part of someone called the Locarno Convention that a lot of countries have signed up to. All the countries agree to regard each other’s judgments as binding in their own territory so you can use local enforcement procedures (bailiffs, garnishee orders etc). There are other ways too.
Perhaps unsurprisingly big corporations have ensured that there are laws to protect their own interests, so international IP law is one area where there are treaties in place that make it relatively easy to enforce abroad. It’s usually a condition of international trade agreements that people sign up to them.
There are some interesting exceptions though. New York won’t enforce English defamation judgments. The Act dealing with that is called “The Libel Terrorism Act”. What’s funny is that the problem that needed addressing was that Americans were suing in England because it’s the most Claimant friendly law. We call that problem “Libel Tourism“. I love the fact that someone misheard that.
For a general overview this is the doc I use as a starting point.
http://www.dentons.com/en/~/media/EAC0739035414934A52621938A9F2700.ashx
No, they just didn’t do it AVFM brand properly. Had they, White Ribbon Australia would have been found guilty of obstruction of wonderfulness for their claim and banished to the phantom zone, and the FBI would have found all those totally real selfies of Hilary Clinton eating the hearts of children that wikileaks will find any day now.
So, one time, I read a post in a forum thread where someone thought Paul Elam was a MRA false flag because his last name is “male” backwards. I don’t know if the universe where that’s true is worse or better.
OT: Pepe the frog
It turns out that the creator of Pepe the frog didn’t know what white nationalism or the alt-right was until the day before he was interviewed by the Guardian.
Artist Matt Furie was a Bernie guy until Bernie dropped out. Now he says he’ll vote for Hillary.
And Pepe, according to his creator, isn’t into Nazis or Klansman; he’s more likely to belong to the Greens.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/14/pepe-the-frog-artist-supports-hillary-clinton?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Bookmarks+base&utm_term=190479&subid=13208813&CMP=EMCBKSEML3964
Happy to oblige!
DNS means nothing more than “Domain Name System”, which is basically all the databases where domain names are registered.
Each type of domain is determined by the suffix after the website name. There are international organisms dedicated to the administration of global domains like .com, .org and .net. Geographic domains are administered by the corresponding country (.us .es .ar .au).
That’s pretty much it. If anyone is more curious abou how DNS work at a tech level here are some useful graphic descriptions (both are images I couldn’t embed ¬¬ ):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/DNS_in_the_real_world.svg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/An_example_of_theoretical_DNS_recursion.svg
I dont know, but I’m on AVFM’s side on this one. I had a similar experience where jack booted thugs forced me to take down my completely innocent website for matchmaking psychic meetups.
Like, just because it was slightly poorly designed and people couldn’t find the psychic meetups section, only the account information and payment options (which OF COURSE they needed to be updated, you have to always update those so they’re up to date), is no reason to bully me and call me mean names like fraudster, and close down psypal.com
And dont even get me started on its sister site for awarding psychics the Outstanding Abilities of the Year award…oaypal.com. (and sure, it looked just like the other site, but I was in a hurry when setting it up and had to use my template, plus blue and white is a real nice color scheme, I guess those tyrants just dont appreciate good design.)
Wait, I’m confused. Didn’t Elam leave AVFM at the end of March? Did he come back or something?
I would be in favour of this provided that as soon as AVFM complained about it, whoever was running it said “ok, we’ve made our point; hopefully now you can understand what the problem was with your whiteribbon.org site” and took it down (or moved it to a less similar domain and/or included a giant disclaimer explaining that this is not A Voice For Men, the real bigots are that way). Otherwise it’s just hypocritical.
Although I’m not sure it would achieve what was intended; I can easily see AVFM thinking it’s not the same thing at all cos when they did it they were fighting an egregious wrong and only doing what the White Ribbon Campaign claimed it was for anyway, and when we do it we’re attacking the free speech of an organisation with noble ideals or being meanies or something.
That is hilarious!
ETA @Taffer: LOL!
Now that WIPO have issued their ruling, it goes to the registrar for the name, which in this case is name.com. The registrar is required* to transfer ownership of the domain to the complainant ten working days after receiving this notice, unless the existing owner notifies them within those ten working days that they intend to contest this decision via a lawsuit.
Once the registrar transfers ownership of the domain, the new registrant (the real White Ribbon Australia) will be able to change the “DNS delegation” of the domain, which points to the “nameservers” which the rest of the Internet use to convert whiteribbon.org (and names under it) to IP addresses. Once that is done, anyone pointing their browser at whiteribbon.org will end up at a server controlled by the real White Ribbon, not the scammers.
If you do a “whois” lookup of the domain, you’ll see that it’s currently registered to Erin Pizzey. It’s now ten working days since the ruling, so presumably we can expect that whois record to change imminently, unless Pizzey and co intend to fight. Which is entirely possible, because Marc Randazza doesn’t give up easily.
* A registrar for names within .org will have signed an agreement with Public Interest Registry, the organisation with overall control of the .org domain. Part of this registry-registrar agreement will say that the registrar must submit to proceedings conducted via the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), such as this one. A rogue registrar which refused to comply would presumably be in breach of contract, and PIR could just override them anyway.
I have sent this to the MRAs :
Pay Attention! Achtung!
1. Feminist academic ‘math’ cannot understand Quaternions or anything related to Euler’s Formula.
2. Feynman’s Invisible Angels is a scientific/philosophical dilemma that they can’t handle, either.
Stop your pseudo-intellectual musings about space aliens and/or the matrix. Using these Weapons, the Enemy can actually be defeated.
There are technical issues that prevent Victory so if you’re actually interested in defeating the Enemy, you have to listen to Me and do exactly as I tell you.
Otherwise, you’re no better than the Bitches.
Warrior Lord of the Sun
“the definition of domestic violence is quite clear: if you are not in fear of your life, you are not suffering it.”
Just gonna go out on a limb here and guess that they have their own definitions of who is and isn’t allowed to fear for their lives, and that it has little to do with, you know, whether you actually fear for your life.
Been learning a bit these last couple weeks about people who police your fear.
incidentally:
Dear David,
Thank you for contacting Skenzo’s Brokerage Team. We have received your inquiry for the domain VoiceForMen.com.
The owner of this domain is willing to sell the same at a “Buy Now” price of $1,499 USD.
Please let us know if you are interested in purchasing this domain at the above price and we will send you the next steps accordingly. If this price does not suit you, do send us your counter-offer.
Thanks & Regards,
Skenzo Brokerage Team
Schadenfreude is sweet!
Great too how quick they are to invoke victimhood and claim it’s an attack on “an elderly women in a wheelchair”, when we’ve never seen them give a stuff about elders, women, or wheelchair users.
I get that MRAs keep jumping headfirst into the shallow end of legal battles no remotely rational person could expect to win so that they can beef up their victim narrative… But this can’t possibly be sustainable. I mean, even with all the money they have to waste (as victims of the matriarchy, of course) they’ve got to run out of money sooner or later, right?