BITNIP - The battle for IFPI.com continues

The battle for IFPI.com continues

Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)

Saturday, 20 October 2007

We've mentioned before that The Pirate Bay, a torrent tracking organization, acquired the domain name IFPI.com which used to belong to the UK based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an anti-piracy organization.

In this round, the 'real' IFPI filed a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) under the dispute resolution procedure in hopes of getting that domain name back.

In our previous article, we mentioned that while the IFPI still have control over their main domain (ifpi.org), ifpi.com now points to a Pirate Bay page that reads: 'International Federation of Pirates Interests' and hilarity ensued.

However, IFPI (UK) spokesperson Laura Childs doesn't seem so amused. She said to Ars,

IFPI's website www.ifpi.org continues to operate as normal. The web site www.ifpi.com was acquired by a cyber-squatter who appears to have passed it on to an associate of The Pirate Bay. IFPI has already taken legal action to get the domain returned. We have filed a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) under the dispute resolution procedure. This procedure is designed for classic cyber-squatting cases such as this which involve the use of a URL in bad faith.

In response, Sunde from The Pirate Bay told Ars,

We have not done anything illegal or even immoral. I can't see why we shouldn't be able to keep the domain name. We're not going to bash IFPI on it, we're going to host our own IFPI on it.

With my limited knowledge of having worked on a few domain cases, my experience tells me that The Pirate Bay will have a fairly decent chance of keeping the domain. They did not acquire the domain name in an illegal manner nor are they associating themselves with the 'real' IFPI.

For example, I can go and register Nike.com and talk about the mythical goddess of victory and it should technically be fine as that should not be considered a 'bad faith' registration