Copyright? I am being told to shut down my site! please help!
Right now I'm not going to say my real site, but its like this! I bought a domian name that relates to a big band! for sake of argument lets say its Beatles, but its not. Lets say the official site is Beatles.com & I bought Beatles.us ! When you go to my .us domain, I only have 1 page with 1 icon & the icon I took off of a shirt. The icon when clicked leads to my Proboards forum that is not on my site, but is linked! Here is the message I got from a lawyer but I am replacing the band name with Beatles!

"
Beatles simply cannot allow the use of its trademarked and registered name without its permission. I must call upon you to cease and desist immediately from the unauthorized use of the name "Beatles, or any name confusingly similar. Please confirm that you will comply with this instruction. Thank you for your immediate attention to this demand. All rights and remedies are hereby reserved."

Now is this right, and I cant use my domain name?! I can understand not using the icon, but there are thousands of sites using them much more than myself and also are using Beatles.de, etc.

Your lawyer is right, to all of my best knowledge all .us domains must be copyrighted names, and if you don't own the copyright to that name then it is illegal to own that .us. I think other domains are different, but .us is an exception. Thats my 2 cents. I may be wrong, since I am not a lawyer.

I would send a reply telling them that you acknowedge their request and that you are having your lawyers check into this matter promptly.

Be nice, don't sound like you are panicing. Then start some research into domain name infringement, to see if they really have a case against you.


hope this helps and good luck.

Well I took the one logo off the forum and I am doing the same for my new site! Still confussed, but I had no intentions of making profit, selling, or even have a history of selling domain names! I may slap a "non-offical site" on the main page!

What I don't understand is why not go after the people who are using the logos, have millions of hits on there site, and are trying to make a profit!

You can still keep the domain - just use it for something else not related to the band:

http://www.beatles.com

No idea how this site does it - but look at the disclamer:
http://www.beatles.net

I was supprised that none of them had any insect related info.

ha! that is a great disclaimer & i'm going to steal it :D


anyway, I cant make it look like something else! The name sticks out like a sore thumb!

but thats a great disclaimer, funny I picked the Beatles as an example!

A layman's understanding:

Those who hold copyrights have to assiduously protect them or face the possibility of losing them. Star Trek is a good example; they go after everyone who uses names, images, or any other Trek-copyrighted material on their web sites. If they did not, then they would risk allowing those things to fall into the realm of public domain. If they allowed even the non-offensive fan stuff to pass, then tried to sue some money-making rip-off, the court would say, "hey, you let all those people use your copyrights--that means the copyrights now belong to the public and anyone can use them, for profit or not." That's why the lawyers go after even lowly fans who are doing nothing but giving positive hype; they risk coming across as ungrateful fan-bashers, but they don't have much choice, legally.

Most Trek fan sites can use Trek material by recognizing the copyrights somewhere on the page (e.g., "all names and images related to Star Trek are copyrighted by Paramount Pictures, Ltd." or some such). You might want to email the lawyers back to see if they would accept this.

However, one problem is that you chose a domain name, and not an indirect one (e.g., "beatles.us" and not "beatlesfan.us"), so they might be more prickly about it, as it would tend to appear more directly representative of the band.


Tokyo