Blood Diamonds and Free Speech: DeBeers Goes After nytimes-se.com
Remember the New York Times Special Edition? The faux-Times was distributed in print November 12, and its headlines were echoed on nytimes-se.com. The site is now under attack by the South African Diamond conglomerate, DeBeers, for carrying the ad below.
Steve Lambert, one of the artists behind the spoof, reports from the Anti-Advertising Agency website:
in an attempt to sidestep the First Amendment and other legal protections for parody, DeBeers is trying to intimidate the domain name registrar into shutting down the nytimes-se.com domain name. It’s already a stretch, as DeBeers has no connection to the nytimes-se.com name, which may be why they didn’t use the standard protocol of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and went straight to bullying the registrar.
The organizers now have the backing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who have responded to DeBeers’ complaint [PDF], and informed the registrar of its rights.
While the dispute is being mediated, please take the time to spread the news.
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