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!”
Crazzzzzy
dude, seriously?
Seriously.
Oh my god, he’s asserting that BME is a pornographic website.
Mouth. Drop. Floor.
Will it ever end?
Karma
when i read this i grew increasingly furious.
if anything happens to BME because of some low-life douchebag, i (as i’m sure amongst a large majority of others) will flip the fuck out.
what petty bullshit, some people really need to grow up.
ugh.
i will be sure to help contribute anything i can find,
as i know everyone else will, too.
this kind of shit furthermore proves that faith in humanity = slim.
Shit. Now I’m pissed.
Wow, check it out.
http://domainnamewire.com/2008/09/08/ricks-files-lawsuit-to-retain-control-of-bmecom/
This is ridiculous, and the replies to the article Rachel just posted are absurd!
I’m resisting the urge to use every profanity I know right now…
People need to furiously comment away on that ridiculous post.
The post on Greg’s site that is…
and to think, if you’d just let the guy run his stupid ppc site you wouldn’t be getting sued…
I don’t get it. So he lost, threatened to sue…and now is suing? Suing because he lost because it was all ruled in your favour.
Have I missed something here?
#13, you’re right. If BME had just let the guy steal from them, everything would have been fine. (???)
How about this, if the cyber-squatter had just been an honest businessman, he wouldn’t have lost the case to BME. His lawsuit looks pretty desperate.
~ – I think defending our claim to BME is worth taking the risk of some shit stain sueing. Really, as a community, the title “BME” is our strongest point in unity. And I know as a bme user, I’d hate to think people are going there and actually paying the guy to be misled around a completely unrelated site.
Michelle – Believe me, I’m a big fan of BME. This is the blog I read most. Having said that, I don’t really see how a guy running a ppc site on the bme.com domain name is tarnishing this community… I don’t know how you can call this a cyber squatting case either since the official bme domain is bmezine.com.
Yes “BME” is the strongest point in unity, but do you want that unity to be for people that read the same website or live the same lifestyle?
And it’s not like the guy is getting paid by the users that land on his site accidentally. He gets paid by advertisers for the ads on his site. To me this is like two little kids fighting with each other… Instead of drawing so much attention to this dude the bme owners could have done their homework and out ranked him in the search engines, or better yet buy the domain back from him.
PS – even if he wants 100k for that domain, that’s a reasonable price for a 3 letter .com in todays market. I just fee like this can be handled with a bit more couth, but I know people here like to take things personally.
This community has made BME a somewhat household term so why try to take that back? It jsut seems like something way to corporate to be tied up in when there’s a bigger picture.
They did offer to buy the domain name.
I can see what you are trying to say, but I think no matter how you look at it, if you have intellectual property (the term BME definately is. How often when talking about it do you say BMEzine out loud – its BME, period.) than its absolutely appropriate to go to battle to retain it’s use. Especially when there is tangible evidence that people are going there in search of modblog, for instance.
Not to mention that the guy is a *wanker*. Don’t you ever get tired of wankers like that feeling like the world is theirs and they can simply take from others at will? This is theft. There is no way around that.
And I’m very sure that if you had a financial stake in it, you yourself would take it rather personally too.
How about when someone who hasn’t seen BME before winds up at BME.com, and sees that crappy website that leads you to nothing but more ads? Won’t they think “what’s all the hubbub about this BME website, this sucks!”
The guy was impersonating BME online. That’s not right. It seems like BME tried to handle it as nicely as they could, but this arrogant crook wasn’t having it.
Yeh, he’s just using the lawsuit as ad-opportunity.
Porn site? Are you kidding me?!?!?!
I’m too pissed off to write anything other than I’m totally disgusted.
Other words come to mind as well, but I’d rather not string along an entire sentence of profanity.
~: Despite the fact that we could have sued him in court first, seeking damages, we tried to resolve this amicably. We started by offering this cybersquatter a significant amount of money to just buy the domain from him and be done with it. Our offer was significantly more than the domain was worth. He demanded more. We accepted. Then, he raised his price. We accepted again. He raised his price a third time, and we decided that we had enough.
Here’s the thing… of all things, what could “BME” mean? It could mean lots of things, right? “Boston Medical Enterprises” or “Bio Medical Engineering” or “Buy Me Everything”
And if this guy’s website had that kind of stuff on it, then nobody is offsides.
But, why put all the piercing and tattoo links on his site WITH “BME”?
There is only one reason — to try and impersonate BME. That’s wrong.
i just think that you’re empowering this man by trying so hard to get him to stop, know what i mean?
Rachel, I’m rather glad he didn’t accept. The idea of paying for what was your to begin with makes my blood boil. I’m sure I’m not alone on this.
~ – Lets look at the bigger picture. If more people like him are allowed to do these things, then we will have more instances of it. As a body modificaton site, BME is constantly going to be under threat for others to try and bring about it’s demise, especially with our community being divided over what happened with Shannon left (I want him to come back!). If we allow this sort of thing to slide, and the next “minor” thing to slide and so on we are inevitably going to end up on a slippery slope to demise. Its always important to defend your intellectual property, but even more so when your intellectual property is under the risk of attack like our community is.
That complaint is absurd, particularly the section that asserts “The term BME, although originally an acronym for “Body Modification Ezine,”has become generic and unprotectable because the term BME is commonly used to refer to persons who go beyond body modifications and are considered “body mutilation
extremists.””
If you need an expert witness, I or a number of other academics I could recommend (Victoria Pitts-Taylor comes to mind) would be happy to provide testimony. matt[at]postmodified.com
i can see where you guys are coming from, i’m just an anarchist at heart 🙂
“19. Upon information and belief, and according to its previous owner Mr. Larratt,
Bmezine was originally a credit card processing and hosting company and in 2004 the
company ownership changed and it began providing, among other things, the online
database of pornographic photos and videos.”
….No words.
Fair enough he didn’t acquire the BME site in bad faith originally, but what he is doing now is cynically abusing the similarity in order to profit. At least BMEzine comes up first when you type BME into google ; )
28. In other words, he is claiming that BME didn’t exist until 2004? I bet that is news to all of you who have been with BME since the mid-1990s, eh?
Is my post in moderation because I mentioned you know who? I really hope not, cuz I’d find that sort of censorship rather disturbing.
Does anyone else find his legal brief’s repeated mention of “subincision” oddly specific? I mean, as far as body mod categories are concerned, do any of you find “subincision” to be able to stand with piercing, tattoos, and scarification, or is this just proof of ignorance on the part of a gentleman who seems to have no trouble advertising tattoos and piercings for his own benefit?
Just a thought but couldn’t you use the way back machine (google it) to show that your site has been active longer than his? This would verify your common law rights which is what he is claiming. I wouldn’t count on getting the site with out the outlay of some cash though. As its been said already 3 letter domain names are worth a decent amount of money and weather he is a douche or not he still has the right to own it and be paid for its use.
I’ll try my best to help!
Well… its not there now… its just a search engine thing. but yes.. that guy sucks. you’ll probably win his lawsuit as well, as he does seem rather pathetic
does anyone know this guys personal site or blog, id like to leave a piece of my mind for him on his internet doorstep
ha ha, this is gonna be fun!
Im astounded at his constant statement of this being a pornographic site.
If its porn Ricks wants I know some sites he can visit!
~ – HP.com – HewlettPackard.com
BME.com – BMEzine.com
It’s not the letters that are missing that matter 🙂
I tried each banner on my myspace but they didn’t show (outlined box with X in the corner). Is anyone else experiencing this?
I’m having that problem with the banner as well. Please let us know if it’s us or the HTML.
I think the problem might be with how myspace overwrites urls and html with their own links. 🙁
when i saw the logos from BME on that tattoo shop i laughed…but this is too much x| this is pure and simply trying to steal from you guys…sue his ass again!!
good i hate modblog i hope they get shut down asap
An outside player surreptitiously trying to take down BME? Sounds familiar.
“bradly ” sounds like Greg Ricks trying to start a fight! xD
Not that the guy isn’t a fool and conman and general numpty,
But there is a fair amount of BME content that’s pretty pornographic. Some (most?) of the stuff in Hard is pornographic, no two ways about it. Obviously this isn’t primarily a porn site, but trying to deny altogether than BME carries porn is silly.
We don’t deny that it doesn’t carry pornographic material, but seeing as how thats dealt with seperately in BME Hard and is far from the focus, you can’t call BME a porn site like Greg did. Thats like calling Google a biology and science website simply because there are areas that deal specifically with that. The porn element is but a small part of a much larger picture.
Doesn’t BME have a business license and records to prove its prior existence to him? It sounds to me like someone needs to brute-force his site/server everyday until he gets tired of trying to fix it. These kind of things happen everyday at random.
I really dislike con-artists trying to make a quick buck like this. It shows a lack of humanity.
But you can also mail him your complaints by snail mail and email…
(obtained via WHOIS)
Gregory, Ricks
[email protected]
Gregory Ricks
4702 Johnson Creek Loop
College Station
TX
77845
US