Here's Jason's article:
April 28, 1999
Heard on the Net
Business Wire's Lawsuit
Rattles Message Boards
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
Three online message-board users maintain that
their April Fool's gag involving a phony press
release was all in fun, but Business Wire isn't
laughing.
The wire service filed a lawsuit Monday against
Jeffrey Mitchell, William Ulrich and Janice Shell,
three regulars on the Silicon Investor discussion
forum. The suit alleges that the prank constituted
fraud and infringement of Business Wire's
trademark. The release touted Webnode, a fake
company that they said planned to sell pieces of
the Internet to investors.
Business Wire says Webnode was a "sham," and
says the three used the service to "publicize a
phony investment opportunity." Business Wire's
lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San
Francisco, also alleges breach of contract,
defamation and conspiracy.
The lawsuit drew a quick response among
message-board participants. A message board
titled "Business Wire Falls for April Fools Prank"
was at the top of the "hot" list Tuesday on Silicon
Investor (www.techstocks.com1), which tracks the
most active message boards on the service. Many
postings criticized Business Wire's handling of the
prank.
"I agree with the general sentiment [on the boards]
that this is more bad publicity for Business Wire
than anything else," says Kevin Podsiadlik, of
Dallas, who uses Silicon Investor and who believes
Business Wire is making too much out of a
harmless joke.
Business Wire is one of the
most popular services for the
distribution of company press
releases. The service's reach to
individual investors has grown
significantly in recent years,
partly because of the Internet.
Its press releases are provided on popular
investing sites, including Yahoo! Finance
(quote.yahoo.com3).
"A joke is one thing, but they've gone beyond the
boundaries of what is a joke. It's now April 27, and
they're continuing their joke," says Cathy Baron
Tamraz, an executive vice president of Business
Wire. "They think they're very funny. We don't." She
says legal action could have been avoided had the
group not continued to mock the service in recent
weeks.
The three defendants have been vocal in their
criticism of Business Wire, lampooning the service
-- with the help of other users -- on Silicon
Investor. On April 18 they posted a "retraction" on
the Webnode site, apologizing for infringing on
Business Wire's trademark and promising not to
use the name anymore. The retraction mentioned
Business Wire 44 times. "We also agree to cease,
desist, and refrain from using either the word
Business or Wire in any future Webnode press
releases," the retraction said.
"This whole thing is ridiculous," says Ms. Shell, an
art historian in Milan, Italy, who is one of the
lawsuit's defendants. "It's extremely disingenuous
of these guys not to mention that this evil hoax was
an April Fool's joke. They're trying to leave the
impression that we're trying to scam people," she
says in reference to a statement Business Wire
released about its suit.
The Webnode prank was centered on the notion
that people could buy pieces of the Next
Generation Internet -- which is an actual project
-- and then collect usage fees for the data that
would flow across their chunks of the Net.
Webnode claimed it had a contract with the U.S.
Department of Energy that permitted it to sell the
segments of the new Internet.
The three created a fake Web site
(www.webnode.com4) and invited prospective
investors to fill out a form indicating their interest
in the venture and providing their names and
e-mail addresses. But the pranksters say they only
did that to make the site appear more realistic --
and hoodwink more people (indeed, they claim
thousands of people filled out the form). They say
they didn't collect any money, nor did they ask for
any.
The group managed to trick at least one news
source. Wired ran a brief story on its Web site
(www.wired.com5) on April 1 detailing Webnode's
plan. The next day, the service ran a correction
that said the story wasn't true, and said, "Wired
News congratulations the pranksters and regrets
being suckered into it on as obvious a day as April
1."
The pranksters are well-known on Silicon Investor,
where they have a large following and an equally
large group of critics. They spend much of their
time using the message boards to ferret out what
they believe are investment scams.
"We do these things obviously to have fun, but also
in the hope to educate investors about the dangers
of scam artists and hypesters. And they sue us over
this?" says Ms. Shell. She has had several message
boards created on the service in her honor,
including a recent addition, "The Janice Shell Legal
Defense Fund."
Messrs. Mitchell and Ulrich say they haven't been
served with the lawsuit yet, but plan on fighting it.
William Marames, an attorney in Washington, D.C.,
who specializes in trademark cases, says the
pranksters could run into trouble if they use
parody as a defense, since the parody wasn't
actually aimed at Business Wire. But he said it
could be difficult for Business Wire to win any
monetary damages for trademark infringement,
since the service would have to prove that either
Webnode stole away business -- acting somehow
as a competitor -- or that the prank scared away
customers.
Several of the group's supporters on Silicon
Investor have pointed out that fraudulent
companies have sometimes used Business Wire --
and other services -- to distribute information
about themselves.
Ms. Tamraz, the Business Wire executive, says
there probably have been cases where companies
have distributed false information through the
service. But she says Business Wire doesn't have
the ability to investigate every claim made in every
release, and says when the service has reason to
believe false statements are being made -- as it
did in this case -- it takes action. "There's nothing
of this magnitude that we've dealt with before," she
says.
What's more, she says several people -- including
users of Silicon Investor -- have sent electronic
mail to Business Wire expressing their support for
its lawsuit. "People agree with us that this isn't
good for investors. There is this idea that you can
say whatever you want to on the Web, and it's just
not true," she says.
This isn't the first April Fool's
prank the defendants have
pulled. Last year, the trio set up
a Web site for another phony
company, FBN Associates, that
supposedly had several miracle cures for the
year-2000 problem (including a modified Timex
wristwatch that could detect noncompliant
computers just by being worn near them). The
group concocted fake press releases for that prank,
too -- including one announcing the products had
received a blessing from the pope -- but didn't
distribute the releases on Business Wire.
Still, the group says the suit won't damp any of its
April Fool's fun for next year. "We probably won't
use Business Wire again, though," says Mr. Ulrich.
URL for this Article:
interactive.wsj.com. |
