Glenn Beck Claims Defamation over Domain Spoof

We’ve all seen stories of copyright infringement applied to domain names as occurred last week in a previous post, but not often are defamation suits filed over domain names. Glenn Beck has filed a law suit against someone who reserved the domain name, “www.glennbeckrapedandmurderedayouggirlin1990.com” and it apparently took only two days for for Glenn Beck to send a legal team after the owner of the domain. Here’s a news item from Ars Technica about the domain name spoof which turns on a refusal to deny as evidence of wrongdoing toward Beck. Below are three videos which trace the history of this controversy, which started in a Gibert Gottfried comedy roast of Bob Saget, another video of Glenn Beck claiming Barack Obama is a racist and finally, one from the spoof site GlennBeckRapedandMurderedaYoungGirlin1990.com

The following is from Ars Techinca

When someone registers a domain like glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, they probably expect to hear from Glenn Beck’s lawyers. In this case, it took two days. The site’s anonymous operator tells Ars that the whole thing is satire???but that may not be enough to avoid charges of defamation.

Gilbert Gottfried, what have you started?

The controversy started a week ago in the Fark forums, where someone picked up on an old Gilbert Gottfried roast of the “comedian” (scare quotes fully intended) Bob Saget. During the roast, Gottfried repeatedly said (watch the video below) that Saget had “not raped and killed a girl in 1990.” The Fark forums took the joke about the power of insinuation and applied it to right-wing talk show host Glenn “Obama is a racist” Beck. (Video below)

via Can a mere domain name be defamation? Glenn Beck says yes – Ars Technica.