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...to Susan Bitch
Fun excerpt # 1
I have done nothing wrong. So, it being a free country and all, may
I politely suggest you go fuck yourself?
Dear Mr.Jim XXX, Esq. and Ms. Laura XXX, Esq.
(Yeah, I actually sent the
reply to the Lawyers she worked for and only the cc: to Susan Bitch. Cute, huh?)
I am puzzled why a total stranger, Susan
Bitch, is trying to take
away my domain name. This conspiracy between AOL attorneys and stranger
Susan (hereafter known collectively as "you assholes") have
demanded I give it away and absorb the cost of notarization, spend
my time to fill out the paperwork, then forfeit my registration and
site development expenses. They call that stealing where I come from.
And your come-on is pretty chilly there, Susan
Bitch. Are you trying
to abuse me and intimidate me with your letterhead of Wilmer, Cutler
& Pickering? What are you? Nothing on the stationary states what
you do – no "Attorneys at law", no Esq., nothing. Are
you a lawyer? What are all those branch offices for in Baltimore,
New York, London, Brussells and Berlin? Do you intimidate, abuse and
steal other people’s property in all those places without even
being lawyers?
If your friends at AOL felt this domain
was so important why didn’t you think of it a decade ago? You
could have registered the name yourself years ago - only now
does it suddenly occur to you that you want this particular domain
name? Why weren’t you interested 5 years ago? Or 3 years ago?
Or even last year?
I think it’s that movie that came out – there is a "You’ve
Got Mail" movie with Tom Hanks, right? I think that now that
that is a success you want to take away my domain so you can use it
for something you have planned. I think you want to make youvegotmail.com
websites to promote your AOL commercial interests. But when I took
that domain name out it had nothing to do with AOL! My postman says
"You got mail!" as have my roommates, ex-wife, all the way
back to my mother. "Rusty", they’d shout – "you
got mail." How can you claim you own the rights to a phrase that
people have been speaking for decades before AOL even existed?
You say your AOL voice says "You’ve got mail". I know
that. I have heard that guy and he sounds all excited about it like
it’s a swell thing. But in your letter you don’t show any
© symbol on it. You don’t show a
© symbol on it. If it is a service
mark or a trade mark it should say so with a sm or ™, shouldn’t
it? I think you are trying to push me around and as an American who believes
in free enterprise and free speech I am offended. Your phrase is a
spoken one with the distinctive voice – not the written words
with dashes and a dot com! Besides, You’ve is a contraction for
"you have." To say "You have got mail" is ungrammatical.
"You have mail" is OK, I think. My domain is not You’ve
got mail. It is you-got-mail.com and that is in written, not spoken
form.
It is like the difference between a poem or other literary expression
and a song. I think what you want to copyright and protect is that
distinctive guy saying "You’ve got mail!" all excited
and upbeat. You could register that, copyright it like it were a song.
That is how AOL has used it.
Suppose I wrote a song called "Sweet Baby Jesus". Now I
can copyright that song. But that copyright only applies to the musical
form. I don’t think it prevents people from speaking the words
"Sweet baby Jesus", or of using those words in print. So
I maintain that you want to protect that announcer and his mail call
– but that it has no consequence upon the written form. "You
got mail" is common speech and when in written form has no conflict
with your AOL mail announcement.
Besides, there are only 15 million people who could have heard that
guy’s voice on AOL over a period of a decade. The USA has over
250 million people, the vast majority of whom are not online, have
never even heard of your guy shouting "You’ve got mail!"
in a way that suggests you won the lottery or something. If they saw
a you-got-mail.com website they wouldn’t associate it with AOL
at all.
You think that my domain, without a website, might confuse AOL members?
Are they that unsophisticated as consumers? Have you performed a simple
Yahoo! search on the keyword "AOL"? Look at what one finds!
Now THAT could confuse your members, don’t you think? How will
they understand what www.aolsucks.org is for or any of these other
Yahoo! listings?
A
Trip to the Dark Side: AOL's Web Browser
alt.aol-sucks FTP Archive
America Offline Magazine
AO Heck: Troubles with Our Beloved Service
AOHeck
AOHell
AOL Banned Poetry Dispute Archive - Documents America Online's attempts
to censor poets. Includes archive of banned poems, correspondence
with poets, AOL representatives, E-zine editors, and other interested
parties.
AOL Exclusive - this newsletter features hints and tips about America
Online and the Internet.
AOL Rewrites the HTTP Specs
AOL vs AOHell
AOL Watch - a low-traffic moderated announcement list about America
Online.
The AOHELL stories generated much publicity and there are Usenet groups
titled alt.aol-sucks, etc. The problems AOL has had over the years,
the class action suits for overcharges, user outrage at policies,
etc. have been common news stories every adult has been exposed to.
If AOL is worried about it’s members being confused it looks
like AOL itself has done much to provide the source of confusion.
I had nothing to do with it.
So why don’t you shut down free speech and sue everyone who has
an opinion about AOL you don’t like? Why don’t you sue Yahoo!
for posting links to website that say you suck? I didn’t say
AOL sucked, but I think you are confusing me with the groups that
have made that statement.
Furthermore, I don’t believe you have this phrase protected under
any legal system of registration. I think that movie has suddenly
made the phrase known to far more people than AOL ever did. Are you
and Warner Brothers working together here with licensing of the phrase’s
use for their movie?
Who owns the youvegotmail.com website? AOL or Warner Brothers? I registered
you-got-mail.com for very specific creative reasons BEFORE any movie
was known about. It was to be a site where if you didn’t get
any mail that day you could read some email from someone else which
had been recycled with your name substituting for the original recipient’s.
For a small fee you would always have mail! Never again would you
come home and check your email box to find it empty. You-got-mail.com
would guarantee original email with your name on it everyday. Spam
was to be a kind of side order – an option. We would make some
pretty humorous Spam, by the way. There could be a whole menu of jokes,
spam, get-rich-quick, etc. mail for the bored or lonely.
My creative idea went as far as starting the site for a few months.
But I was strapped with other creative projects and had to drop it
as I could not find time for creating content. I then asked my ISP
to remove the website to save hosting fees. That was a year ago. I
have simply parked my creative toy until I have time to resurrect
it and program the content.
Therefore, I
have not made any representation of being connected to AOL. No AOL
member has ever been confused by my actions. How could they? There
is no website. I do not believe that you have a trademark, service mark or copyright
on the English phrase pertaining to one’s daily mail status (got
mail or no got mail).
I think you have
suddenly decided to follow in the heels of Tom Hanks movie success.
You want to create some economic opportunity for yourself at my expense.
So you are trying to coerce me, unlawfully, into surrendering my creative
property. If you had taken this action a year ago, before the movie,
I would have much more faith that you are playing fairly. But now
that a movie has made the phrase into something you want to profit
off of it. That makes my ownership of the domain a simple coincidence.
I happened to have claimed a domain that now has a resemblance to
a hit movie. How could I have known that was going to happen? Obviously
I did not.
Your website thing opens to silence when you ain’t got mail,
right? Well, what about the other titles of "Your Finances",
"Chat rooms" (I’m making these up for purpose of example
– I don’t know what is on your opening page) – have
you made these brands, too? Are you going to claim ownership of www.chatrooms.com?
Have you branded, registered, or trademarked every phrase in the language?
I think this is absurd! Is it your intent to go after people with
domains that you think you could exploit into something profitable
after some windfall like the Tom Hanks movie? Will there be a "Chatrooms"
movie? Where does this end?
I wish to see substantiation that "…AOL has been using YOU’VE
GOT MAIL and YOU HAVE MAIL as brands…(for nearly a decade)".
What is your definition of a brand? Your reference to a decade is
a wild claim as just a few years back I recall your stock being slammed
when investors learned you were churning customers. I believe it was
discovered that AOL lost half a million subscribers that year and
replaced them only because of heavy promotional campaigns giving away
"free" AOL online discs. I recall that AOL was losing as
many customers as it was gaining.
Your claims should be put in the light of a more sober reality. Tell
me how many customers you have had who have stayed with you for 10
years. That would not be 15 million would it? Would it be fair to
say that you have lost over 5 million customers in the past 10 years?
Would an accurate count of members still with AOL after 10 years be
about 1/50 of your present membership?
I registered
my domain with no intent of doing anything other than start the service
previously described. I have never harmed your business in any way
that can be demonstrate. I think you are trying to create a new commercial
business that now sees my domain as one you wish to acquire because
a movie came out and popularized the phrase you claim is similar to
mine. Your claim is for your vocal presentation of the aforementioned
phrases, not the lowercase written, completely out of context, "you-got-mail.com"
domain. I had independent, artistic reasons for choosing my domain
which did not involve AOL at all. You can not steal my creative projects
in this manner.
I have done nothing wrong. So, it being a free country and all, may
I politely suggest you go fuck yourself?
Sincerely,
Rusty Robinson
cc: Susan Bitch
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