What's The Guinness World Record For Morons In A Hurry Sending Bogus Takedowns?

from the just-wondering... dept

Tue, Jul 14th 2009 9:00am — Mike Masnick

I think we've set a new world record for any particular story being submitted to us here at Techdirt. I'd actually ask the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records to verify that... but I don't think they really want to have much to do with this story. You see, there's a wonderful blog out there called the Fail Blog. If you don't read it regularly, it's like you're not really online at all. It's quite amusing. It usually involves pictures of random (hilarious) "failures" of some kind or another. Last week, it had a great one. It involved the website of the Guinness World Record book, where it had an entry on the "most individuals killed in a terrorist attack." What was the failure? Well... it appears that the Guinness records' web template includes a link on each record for "break this record." Not quite the sort of thing you would think that GWR folks wanted to encourage when it comes to the most people killed in a terrorist attack.

So how does Guinness respond? Certainly not by fixing the screwed up template. And, apparently not by taking some time to think it over while drinking a tall glass of Guinness. Instead, it released the legal hounds on the Fail Blog and threatened the site with a totally bogus trademark infringement claim, saying that because the screenshot included the Guinness World Record logo, it was a trademark violation. Of course, that's preposterous. Still, Fail Blog complied, took down the original, but posted Guinness' letter, its own rather direct response, and a new version of the screenshot with the Guinness World Record logo pixelated. Nobody will ever figure it out now:

Oh, and it looks like the Guinness folks have finally taken down the original world record page...

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: blogs, screenshots, trademark, world records
Companies: guinness

34 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Poster, 14 Jul 2009 @ 9:38am

What a bunch of mooks. FailBlog wins this fight.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RD, 14 Jul 2009 @ 9:48am

Um...
Just because someone says or does something you dont like about you, doesnt make it ILLEGAL.

Needless to say, FAIL.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RD, 14 Jul 2009 @ 9:54am

AND
Oh AND, I love the line in the letter that say "use of the GBW trademark without permission constitutes trademark infringement" without ANY qualifiers....as if ANY use of ANY kind IS IN FACT infringement, period, across the board. This is not always the case, trademark is NOT a blanket all-encompassing protection against ANY non-permission use.

Greedy Corporations + Soulless Bloodsucking Lawyers = Corruption of Law
[ link to this | view in thread ]
TheStupidOne, 14 Jul 2009 @ 9:55am

FAIL FAIL WIN
Original website = small automated fail

Letter = EPIC FAIL

Response = WIN
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:01am

I'll tell you what's fail. The comment section of that page on fail blog.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kamokazi, 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:30am

Additional WIN
Also notice the link for the 'full legal response' is a Rick Roll. Epic to the end.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:31am

Legal Response
Check out the full legal response, too:
http://icanhaz.com/legalresponse
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:33am

Well thank you Guinness World Record, without your ham fisted attempt to censor the internet from exposing your own carelessness I would never have learned about your mistake, the Fail Blog, or your misconstrued interpretation of trademark law.

I hope your lawyers charged you a bunch for their shrewd legal insight.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:50am

Troof?
If you have no case under liable laws, on account of it actually happened, just go to the new standby of trademarks! They can't identify you using the identification you use!

OK, it's complete bullshit, but they'll have to spend thousands of dollars to actually call you on it. Everybody wins! (where "everybody"==you and your lawyers.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
B's Opinion Only (profile), 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:53am

I still don't understand why people continue to accept emails as legal and proper communications from corporate lawyers. Reply with a bounce message. Make them do some actual WORK if they want to be idiots!

Although I did like failblog's response!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Yakko Warner, 14 Jul 2009 @ 11:12am

Not "finally"
Oh, and it looks like the Guinness folks have finally taken down the original world record page...

Actually, when the fail was first posted (a week prior to this), there was a note that said the record had already been removed from the Guinness site.

This line from FailBlog's response, though, is EPIC WIN:

I hope that this is the outcome you have expected as now NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS LIMITED HAS FAILED.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I Can Has Photoshop?, 14 Jul 2009 @ 11:57am

Uninteresting because fake
This would be much more interesting if the record was an actual fail by GBWR. Instead somebody just photoshopped a scrape of the GBWR site. A fake fail that includes a real trademark will get a legal response every time. Ho hum how boring.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dorpass, 14 Jul 2009 @ 12:21pm

Re: Uninteresting because fake
Your response is photoshopped. Yay, I can claim everything is photoshopped too!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Norm (profile), 14 Jul 2009 @ 12:26pm

Re: Uninteresting because fake
http://xkcd.com/331/
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Killer_Tofu (profile), 14 Jul 2009 @ 12:28pm

Re: Additional WIN
Icing on the cake.
I love failblog.
Spread the word to those I can who always enjoy a good laugh.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Why so serious?, 14 Jul 2009 @ 12:33pm

Re: Uninteresting because fake
Actually, you FAIL.
Looking at the GWR Book of 2004, page 84 has the actual record of 2,823 people being killed during September 11th 2001.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 12:54pm

i think you're a big failure mike masnick, b/c you don't know a damn.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Another anonymous somebody, 14 Jul 2009 @ 1:35pm

Re:
"i think you're a big failure mike masnick, b/c you don't know a damn."

Don't you just love and respect those who have nothing substantial or relevant to share with the community? Instead, they post inane comments designed to insult or otherwise irritate the author of this blog and the other contributors. I admit, I know nothing about Trademark or Copyright law, but I do know that courteous and relevant commentary are necessary in order to better understand every point of view in a given subject matter. I know that this response will fall on deaf/blind individuals who will continue to post their "opinions". However, it is my hope that some will see the light and conform to more civil conversation.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 1:44pm

Re:
You fail at English.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 2:26pm

Re: Re:
you fail at relevancy b/c your comment is irrelevant to the topic of this article.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 2:28pm

Re: Re:
thank you for your preaching. you're better than the rest of us, and while we all burn in hell after death, you will go to heaven. thank you for being a better human being than others.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 4:27pm

jesus the original image is old as hell. i remember seeing it on ytmnd like ages ago (i'd say over 2 years ago).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 14 Jul 2009 @ 5:21pm

Re:
"jesus the original image is old as hell. i remember seeing it on ytmnd like ages ago (i'd say over 2 years ago)."

Pix or it never happened.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 7:45pm

Just a quick google reveals that indeed this picture was making the rounds a few years back as something that the Guinness World Book of Records featured but "took down".

Example:
http://www.javno.com/en-world/attack-on-wtc-enters-guinnesss-world-records_20278

So the "page" is certainly very old and was "removed" even earlier. And indeed it's quite probable that the page never existed. I could find no mention of a URL that we could check at the Internet Archive, I will try harder but I don't really expect anything.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joe, 14 Jul 2009 @ 7:59pm

Guinness go take a dip in the wading pool you bunch of babies.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 8:04pm

Found it, the page existed since 2003 according to this post http://www.krikkit.com/2003/08/

The page was at http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/index.asp?ID=53241

Checked all existing copies at archive.org, from 2003 to 2006, none has "break this record" only "send to a friend" as an option.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 8:54pm

And finally, having a look at the source of the earliest archived pages reveals a commented out flash with id "RateThisRecord"". So

* either a "break this record" button existed in early 2003 and was quickly changed to "rate this record"

* or the button was really "rate this record" in the brief time it existed at all (which would explain the star next to it, btw)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2009 @ 10:13pm

Re: Uninteresting because fake
Exactly! A fake photoshopped comment totally calls into question the credibility of the comment. Contrast that with a fake fail, which is funny in exactly the same way as a real fail!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Jul 2009 @ 12:23am

I wonder how many morons in a hurry come to this blog expecting to find free music torrents?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mischa, 15 Jul 2009 @ 10:52am

OK, that was bad. I just wasted an hour looking at the Fail Blog. :-P
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Almost Anonymous (profile), 15 Jul 2009 @ 1:05pm

Re:
Yeah, I didn't hit the hour mark, but... yeah.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Xbox Free Live, 28 Oct 2009 @ 7:43pm

Morons
What a bunch of morons.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Free PSN Codes, 8 Nov 2010 @ 9:05pm

Moron
Wow lol some people are so stupid.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Free PSN, 8 Sep 2011 @ 12:53pm

Re
haha this is insane! how come this morons do that.
[ link to this | view in thread ]