In the past little while, we at BME have received e-mails from many of you complaining about the website at www.bme.com. Your concerns, namely, have centered around the site’s design, and that its links never led anywhere — and certainly not to BME content. This is the most recent version of the website.
More versions can be viewed here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
This was not our website. We did not authorize it. We certainly did not approve of it. Worse yet, after investigating, we learned that this was a pay-per-click site. In other words, when people went to that site looking for BME, if they clicked on any of the bogus links, they put money into the owner’s pocket. This was a classic trademark infringement/cyber-squatting scam. Evidence that visitors reaching BME.com were often searching for ModBlog or BMEvideo can be seen here.
The site’s owner was a man by the name of Greg Ricks. He gets sued for this kind of thing all the time.
Despite the fact that we could have sued him in court, seeking damages, we tried to resolve this amicably.
When that failed, instead of trying to collect money in court, we filed an arbitration before the World Intellectual Property Organization (view the complaint here). They responded (their response is here), and all three judges, including a judge they hand-picked, ruled unanimously in our favor. (View their decision here.)
Immediately after losing the decision, the cybersquatter tried to shake us down for $100,000 in exchange for not filing a lawsuit against us. When we refused to be intimidated, of all things, he sued us. (View his complaint here.)
Now he claims, ridiculously enough, that he, and not BME, is the “real” BME.
Naturally, the cybersquatter has already begun to manipulate the evidence. He tried to scrub the Internet Archive of evidence and gamed the search engines so that things look much different than they have to this point.
During this fight, we’d like to call upon the BME community to help keep an eye on things.
If you see any evidence that you think might be helpful in showing that we are, have always been, and will always be BME, we’d like to know. We have set up a special email address at [email protected]. Feel free to send in anything you might find.
We are prepared to defend ourselves against this frivolous lawsuit through all appropriate means. We will keep you posted as things develop. You made BME the great community it is today and we need your help to keep it that way!
Please take the time to place links to BME on any websites that you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s your MySpace or your personal blog. Anywhere that you can put our links and banners are appreciated!
Comments
115 responses to “BME needs YOU!”
I could leave a string of frustrated, utterly foul words but instead I’ll just say I love BMEzine and I hope you all win. BMEzine has been a fond resource for me throughout my bodmod adventures. ♥
We have a link to BME on our website, in the “friends” section, here:
http://www.goodwood-jewelry.com/store/about_us.php
U people not on,y suck u swallow with all ur shamless plugs for ur own sites so u will get what u desrteve in the end
Bradly – three questions –
1) what!?!? Who are you trying to insult here?
2) why thank you for complimenting our(? still not sure who you’re addressing..) oral skills
3) are you, in fact, an adverb? ’cause that’d be rockin’
I have the “Body Modification Ezine CD-ROM Archive Vol 1 – 01.01.98″
On the back side there is a text “Copyright c 1994-1998″
Ps. What’s wrong with your billing system? Is the problem related with this bull shit lawsuit?
Seems to me like the people running this site just need to take the moral high ground and let it go – you are still getting the people here in the end, its not like the website is suddenly deserted over what is SO OBVIOUSLY one of those scam ‘squatter’ domains.
Fucking waste of time and money all round. Thank you for contributing to the world of corporate BULLSHIT I thought I came here to forget.
Rah: Any chance I could convince you to make a copy of it?
almaxaquotal: I’m not really sure what you mean. You can’t really just ignore it when someone is suing you.
BME= Body Mutilation Extremists
Now I have seen it all.
I hate lawyers more than realtors, nore than used car salespeople.
“Rah: Any chance I could convince you to make a copy of it?”
Please send me a convincing e-mail 😉
For legal purposes, I think you’d need some proof of purchase. I wonder if my credit card company has kept the records…
I this this lawsuit sucks, and I’m sorry you have to go through the courts on this. That’s always lame. But I would really like to know what’s going on with this patent of yours…
“16. On March 27, 2008, Bmezine filed a federal trademark application, Application Serial No. 77432832, to register the mark BME for the following: “Providing an online interactive database of photos and videos in the field of body art, namely piercing, tattoos, scarification, subincision, castration” in IC 041 and “Providing news about body art, namely, piercing, tattoos, scarification, subincision, castration through photos and video” in IC 044. At this time, the application is still pending registration. Apparently Bmezine is using BME for commercial Internet related services, including, but not limited to, free email services.”
Umm… this looks like something you’d do to say…i dunno, get other sites that possibly ““Providing an online interactive database of photos and videos in the field of body art, namely piercing, tattoos, scarification, subincision, castration” One that comes to mind is mine… BodyMod.org. Possible to open a line of communication on this? And maybe let everyone else know what’s up? I have a few thousand people waiting on it.
Thanks =)
.: Adam
u
Adam: Sent you an email.
To make this as simple as possible. If McDonalds files a trademark on their name, McDonalds, it doesn’t prevent other people from selling food, it prevents them from selling it under the name McDonalds.
Does that make sense to you now?
Thanks for clearing that up!
first i got mad, then i thougth is it true?then again, if there´s no more modblog, what happends to the people that tattoed bme logos? teeeeenso.
Mobdlog has nothing to do with BME tattooed logos..