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by snowwrestler 4082 days ago
There's an argument to be made that the purpose of trademark protection is to protect against confusion, not against criticism.

It's hard to imagine that many consumers would confuse a website called ford.sucks for the real actual Ford Motor Company. If it goes to litigation, I could see a U.S. federal judge deciding that the entire .sucks TLD is basically immune to the consumer confusion argument, with possibly a few exceptions for vacuum cleaner companies, sump pump manufacturers, and others who might "professionally suck."

Personally I think it's foolish to try to preemptively register every nasty domain name. It's a big language out there, and crowdsourcing seems to work really well when it comes to insults.

But, a lot of companies are super sensitive to criticism, and Vox Populi is obviously trying to profit off of that.