Susan Crawford has a great post about a 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision (pdf) that lets the website www.fallwell.com stay with the original owner, an open critic of right-wing religious leader Rev. Jerry Falwell.
I think this is a huge victory for the First Amendment. And I worry a lot about the First Amendment.
I’ll let Susan explain further:
Among other things, the opinion makes clear that you need to consider
domain names in context — here, there was no question, once you got to
the content of the site, that you weren’t dealing with the "real"
Falwell. And the opinion is rightfully skeptical of "initial interest
confusion."(The idea behind "initial interest confusion" is that if you persuade a
consumer to follow your signage [domain name] thinking that they’re
going somewhere in particular that isn’t your site, even if by the time
of purchase from you they’re absolutely clear about what they’re
buying, something has gone terribly legally wrong. Right — it doesn’t
really make sense.)
