*OT* Today's WSJ ran this article about 3 SI regulars being sued by Business Wire...
John
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.com), 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.com).
"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.com) 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.com) 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.
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