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 really don’t think that doing anything illegal is the way to go. I certainly don’t appreciate it when people physically attack BME and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else.
(979) 690-3895
Yeah, when you go check out archive.org, most of his site always had things about piercings and tattoos splashed everywhere.
I think this guy is a total tool.
bmezine.com registered 3/11/1999
bme.com 3/6/2000
and bme is much older then that. Maybe when Ike makes landfall and makes it further into Texas, a tree will fall on him. heh
*sigh*
It seems you need to buy bme.com. If you didn’t own it, then yes, anyone is within fair rights to buy it and squat, this has happened daily and and constantly since commercial content even started appearing on the web in the early 90′s. It’s not new.
If you go to big commercial sites, usually they have planned and own the .com, .net, .org, and often common typos even.
I myself have hit that other squat site via typo, etc, and just thought “oh yes they didn’t buy those other possibilities, okay, let me type in the real deal.”
If you can say that the letters “bme” together are enough of a trademark that others shouldn’t squat on them then you can take it to court, but I do fear it will be an uphill battle.
So, I try not to typo because I know what I want to see, which is here only 🙂
With his history in courts… I doubt bmezine will loose the counter suit.
Que pedaz….. que es ahora una clinica de abortos con link de publicidad al extremo! mala muestra.
BMEzine has filed legal action on other websites for copyright infringement on photos and (possibly) articles, right?
Those are official datestamped documents you can use as support evidence.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA at the third picture!
“oh hey, I’m just some girl with a tribal tattoo on my face from MS paint”
mannnn this is really sad though in all honesty. corporate big boys trying to control everyone, and now infringing on BME?!?!?!
🙁
should have set up domain names the exact same as trademarks. pay a rediclous amount of money to register a name or slogan and they search to ensure their is no conflict of interest with other companies. if domains were set up like trade marks their would be a lot less garbage like this. but, you cant change the past.
obviously he won’t get away with this one. but the question is how do you stop this guy or these companies from continuing to do this?
This seems really blown out of proportion. Sure, this guy is a jerk. But here’s my analogy: You set up a hot dog stand, selling all-beef dogs on premium rolls with fresh kraut and superb service. People love your business and come back for years, and tell all their friends about it. Then, years later, some moron puts up a stand across the street with a similar sign, only he sells turds wrapped in Kleenex. WTF would anyone ever go back there, and who really cares how much this loser is making off his rip-off joint? That’s just capitalism; if you can turn a profit selling turds in Kleenex, you’re surviving. But the first guy, selling quality products in huge quantity for years on end, he loves his life and retires to luxury. That’s the American dream.
Petty, squabbling masses scratching in squalor. Even when their bank accounts are plump…
honestly how do you think to buy BMEzinesucks.com and not BME.com? its almost like asking for a D-bag to try to hustle some money out of you.
thomas- should we sit back and accept it because thats the american dream? if thats the case then you might as well get your tongue split and your body scale tattood and make yourself a few bucks. its the principle, sure it happens, it’s just not cool to profit off someone elses hard labour.
he is discrediting bme by advocating kleenex material and turd links.
haha oh the irony! trying to steal bme when it was recently itself stolen anyways. classic.
Hack. That. Ass.
someone post his real address. He has a lot of friends who want visit him 😉
Every comment here mentions BME referring to bmezine.com – if BME is what you’re known as, it’s what everyone in this ‘community’ refers to the site as, it’s (as one person said) “our strongest point of unity” – it sounds like everyone who gets their identity from this site (which is pretty sad all things considered) knows and refers to the site as BME. Nobody says ‘I saw that on bmezine’ – they say ‘I saw that on BME’
Doesn’t it seem obvious that people looking for BME on the internet are going to first try bme.com? If this is such an important part of your identity and it means so much to you – It never occured to anybody to secure bme.com before this???
If a fighter walks out to start the 8th round with his hands at his sides and gets knocked the fuck out – he can’t then cry foul.
“if BME is what you’re known as, it’s what everyone in this ‘community’ refers to the site as, it’s (as one person said) “our strongest point of unity” – it sounds like everyone who gets their identity from this site (which is pretty sad all things considered)”
It’s not so much getting an identity from this site, as it is having a sense of community with people of similar interests, being part of something bigger than being a singular, which to me does not seem sad at all.
“haha oh the irony! trying to steal bme when it was recently itself stolen anyways. classic.”
If you believe that, I have a Tiffany necklace I can sell you for cheap.
Mike: I didn’t buy BMEzinesucks.com, a friend did and gave it to me along with BMEsucks.com.
i love the idea of being found guilty of cyber squatting so you sue the people you’ve been exploiting,
It’s like suing a stab victim for damage to your knife.
I don’t know man, I just don’t know. This site is not what it once was….but that site makes it even worse. Good luck, I guess, in winning another court case.
sheesh
i’m sure a lot of people call the letters B M E (aka bmezine) home just as much as a lot of people call toronto (aka toronto, ontario, canada) home. the letters and abbrevations are just semantics. the words and letters hold market value when it comes to business and for that this is why it needs to be resolved.
bme will ALWAYS be a community regardless of who its administrators, followers, supporters, advertisers or members are. all of us make bme what it is, not one single person. UNITY is the name of the game, not identity.
i can’t condone attacking him either, however i’ll support anyone that puts a stop to his injustice. i have absolutely zero respect for anyone that doesn’t work for their money.
I have old CD “body art”it is on russian language and most of pictures are stolen from bme, because many picture have information: copyright 1999 or 2000 bme. copyright 1998 BME. i didn’t know this adress- bme.freeq.com.
and i found picture form 1997
maybe i can sell this cd 🙂
BME is a porn site. The clever business model is using a youth-driven site that can move a lot of traffic, to push its porn business to the top of the search engines.
thats what some guy said
proves enough to me that bmezine is recognised as bme
Brian Johnson wrote:
“Doesn’t it seem obvious that people looking for BME on the internet are going to first try bme.com? If this is such an important part of your identity and it means so much to you – It never occured to anybody to secure bme.com before this???”
Maybe because in 2000, the website http://www.BME.com didn’t go to a tattoo site. It’s like this: Some guy registered http://www.apples.com (look it up). His whois says “Apples on the Web”. The site doesn’t show anything right now. If he launched a site about apples or fruit, or even something off the wall, then Apple computer wouldn’t have much to say about it. AND, nobody should criticize Apple computers for not buying that domain.
But, if the guy who registered http://www.apples.com puts up links to computer products without Apple Computer’s permission, trying to scam people into thinking that it is Apple Computer’s website, then he would be breaking the law.
Criticizing BME because it didn’t anticipate that someone would hijack their name is just ridiculous. If you don’t put bars on all your windows, that doesn’t mean that you deserve to have your house burglarized.
I particularly enjoyed the spelling errors in his complaint.
Sometimes, I hate the internet…y’know?!
I think my favorite part was when he called BME ‘Body Mutilation Extremists’
“If you don’t put bars on all your windows, that doesn’t mean that you deserve to have your house burglarized.”
No – but if you leave your front door open and go on vacation don’t be suprised when someone boosts your stereo. Doesn’t make stealing from you legal – but sure goes a long way toward making you look like you’re asleep at the wheel.
And why does this debate have to be brought into everything anyway?
Has anyone else looked up Modblog.com? Is that one of his, too?
modblog.com
Jeebus, BME seriously needs to look into buying these domains.
As soon as someone gets me one of those unlimited money bags, I will get right on it! 🙂
Well at least modblog is making no attempt to deceive people into believing it is *the* modblog. I mean, no one is gonna go there and mistakenly believe they are here.
what a horrible man. first piggybacking off BME, then calling us “body mutilation extremists”, then asserting that this is a porn site.. why doesn’t he just go and drown some puppies?
Michelle – God it felt awkward to read that…You’re like the little sister that brings up mommy and daddy’s messy divorce at our great-grandmother’s funeral in the middle of a discussion about her favorite hat…
That was waaaaaayyyyyy out of left field and nobody had commented on or cares what your stance is on that issue. This is neither the time nor place for that so please focus on the issue at hand and please try to do more listening(reading) than talking(commenting).
I don’t know if this helps but;
On Nov. 9 2007 my wife was modblogged. The entry appears to have been deleted, perhaps because it was one of Shannons ‘hot chicks’ posts I don’t know.
However, in that entry there was also an image from a magazine here in Australia called Picture, which is a high circulating weekly edition kind of like the UK’s Daily Star.
The image was of a full page article they did on BMEzine.com including the websites name, an interview with Shannon and a few pics.
Important thing about this – It was printed in 1997!
Don’t know if it help but it’s I figure it can’t hurt having the BME name recognised and in print on a different continent in 1997.
If you were able to find that post or that image that is.
I stand corrected , it was printed in 1998. – still thats 10 years ago!
Omniscent – In both venues I had been attacked for that. But you are entitled to your opinion and I will keep it in mind.
agreed.
ah shit. “agreed” pertains to OmniScent‘s post.
Look, this issue kept coming up. From anything from super nasty comments through to subtle. Some of it directed at my comments personally. (especially in the other post, on the parking blog) I felt like I kept repeating myself saying its not about what happened with rachel. How things went down there is irrelevant to this particular issue. And since it *seemed* like I was siding in this regard, or saying that one excused the other, I wanted to clarify. I wasn’t the one to bring it in here.
But obviously its annoyed you guys, which wasn’t my intention. I wish it would just be deleted now. But I can’t see that happening. If I took it more personally than it wasn’t intended, I apologise. ITs not the first time I’ve had my foot in my mouth, nor will be it be the last. 🙂
I have had a lot to say about this issue because it made my blood boil. (The bme.com one that is.) I apologise for being comment heavy. As you can see, I normally don’t post *anything*. This particular issue just got my goat is all. Honestly, I didnt mean any harm!
Man, this is just laughable. I hope you put a proverbial foot up that dude’s ass and get him off the crack he’s clearly puffing. pfft..
seems something has progressed as bme.com now shows a generic search engine
Honestly, I didnt mean any harm!
I can’t believe you don’t shut up.
Michelle: “I wish it would just be deleted now.”
Wish granted.
Thank you very much for that.
Upon reflection, I can see that I got carried away with commenting on this particular post. Sorry guys and I’ll shut up now *nod*
isn’t there a way to see by legal papers who launched the website first? since he showed up recently, it shouldn’t be that hard :O
what a PLEB
see, stupid shit like that should just get completely get thrown out. it’s a waste of everyone’s time and money.