Man Sues Former Employer For Not Updating Whois... And Then Acting Stupid
from the blame-game dept
Eric Goldman has the details on a fascinating case involving a guy suing his former employer for failing to update the whois info on their domain names (which used his names as the contact) and then pulling a bogus astroturfing marketing stunt that people started blaming him for organizing. Greg Meyerkord worked for Zipatoni, a "promotional marketing company." While there, he was the contact name on their domain registrations. He stopped working for Zipatoni in 2003. However, in 2006 Zipatoni was the company behind the disastrously stupid "fake" viral marketing campaign known as All I Want For Xmas is a PSP. After that was exposed, blogs went to town making fun of Sony... and Zipatoni. As part of that, people went to the whois and "outed" Meyerkord, including calling him a "douchebag."Because of this, Meyerkord is suing Zipatoni, claiming a privacy violation. A lower court rejected this argument, but an appeals court has sent it back, saying there could be an issue if Zipatoni acted with "malice." That's probably going to be difficult, so the case may not be going anywhere. Goldman notes that it's pretty ridiculous that Zipatoni left the incorrect whois on the domain for so long, but it's not that surprising to me. With many registrars, it's pretty much a "set it and forget it" type of operation, where there's little need to ever review or change the info.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: privacy, viral marketing, whois
Companies: zipatoni
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
6-month updates
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: 6-month updates
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: 6-month updates
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: 6-month updates
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Zipatoni or Meyerkord
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Zipatoni or Meyerkord
Working from the reasonable assumption that the email address of record for Meyerkord would have been through Zipatoni, how could Meyerkord have received said email? Those emails have been going to a Zipatoni.com address (which, as an ex-employee, Meyerkord probably doesn't have access to anymore).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Zipatoni or Meyerkord
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Zipatoni or Meyerkord
You seem to making 2 major assumptions in this thread, none of which are necessarily true:
1. That the registrar is abiding by ICANN rules, and contacting the owner of the domain to confirm details (rather than, say, confirming themselves without customer contact).
2. That the email address supplied is one still accessible by this guy and only this guy. It's quite feasible that the address was a webmaster@ type of deal, and the person now receiving this info ignored it and/or confirmed incorrect infomation.
Given that neither of these are necessarily true, and it's possible that a domain could continue for years with incorrect information, what's your problem? Most of your comments so far seem to be suggesting that the guy must be lying - I don't think that's the case at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Zipatoni or Meyerkord
Yeah, to his zipatroni.com address, which of course he would not have access to because it was his *former* employer, but thanks for playing. You win a consolation prize.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Can be annoying
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Libel suit would be better
As a previous commenter mentioned ICANN requires notification to keep WHOIS data updated... so they DID know to check it. They failed.
IMHO a former employer shouldn't have rights to someones name or the ability to do business under their name once they leave the company. That's absolutely unethical.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Libel suit would be better
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Libel suit would be better
In my opinion, it was all Meyerkord's fault for not making sure the WHOIS information was changed and out of his name.
And Registrars will not do anything with a domain name if they don't get an email response back for an update. They assume that if no response is made, the information is correct. The only way a registrar will pull a domain, is when the paid registration has expired and no renew is in the works. A registrar does not want to be sued for taking down a site just because an email was not returned for verifying contact info.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Have to Disagree
With the internet and all the technology involved, all of that has changed. Put one sentence up on a web page or "twitter" it and within an hour the entire free world could know about it. The damage done could be extensive and pervasive, since web pages are cached by all the search engines.
Businesses that use the new technology to conduct their business can no longer just overlook this stuff. A business needs one or two people to be the contact point for such listings and data and they must stand prepared to make the changes within a very short time frame, depending on the situation.
Why should the new technology users get a pass? A click of the mouse can undo a lot of erroneous data. In my opinion, Zipatoni bears a liability here, and if I were the judge, I'd find in favor of the plaintiff.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Have to Disagree
I mean, come on! Meyerkord was the company's IT admin or web page admin when he worked for them. He set it up, he should have made sure it was changed when he left. But like I mentioned earlier, it's a fill out and forget about issue for the majority of companies out there.
That is why when I used to create and maintain web pages for clients, I made sure to have the registrar information in the company owners name, not an employee, and then made sure that person had all the information they needed to update or make changes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Contact info
There's no excuse for this from both sides.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Contact info
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Blogging was the least of his issues
The guy had subscribed to a maillist I administrated, then claimed that the 80+ emails per day were SPAM, and instead of following very simple instructions to remove his email, he decided that following those instructions would only make the emails worse so instead he set out on a campaign to create as much grief as he could for me.
After threatening to sue my employer for the "SPAM" and getting called into the office manager's office, I was a little inclined to shut down that maillist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Make the contacts generic
My company holds several domain names, but we don't get pinged every 6 months or even 6 years. The only time we get any communication is if the registration is about to expire and the registrar wants another payment.
Hail Xenu!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ha!
Having been named on whois documents I can assure you it is up to you to take care of updates. The company will NEVER in a million years think of it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
lack of common sense
What motivation does this guy have to contact his successor and work to get the registrar info changed? None, if like me, he has better things to do, like go to work at his current job. If the next IT admin was qualified and knew how to do his job, he'd have Meyerkord's email forwarded to his account and have the passwords for obvious things like the account for the registrar and change the information. Otherwise, what happens when IT admin #3 joins? Does he still leave Meyerkords mailbox open??
Zipatoni just seems to be employing an extremely lazy IT admin.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]