When billionaire tycoon Warren Buffet heroically rescued Yahoo, eBay and Google from imminent demise by using his own money and converting them into nonprofits, CNNdn was the first to break the story.
But instead of winning journalistic accolades for his coverage, Zack Exley, chief of CNNdn, got an unwanted call from some lawyers.
That's because the story about Warren Buffet was just a joke, as was CNNdn, "the financial crash network" -- a website take-off on CNNfn that Exley created earlier this year to project what a dot-com meltdown would look like.
But, predictably, the honchos at CNN and its parent company, AOL Time Warner, were not amused.
In a request for a temporary restraining order against the Boston computer consultant, the network called Exley's site "a textbook case of cyberpiracy under the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act." Specifically, CNN is steamed that Exley's site uses a logo that closely resembles its trademarked logo, which they believe misleads people to think that the parody site is a legitimate member of CNN's family of news sites.
At issue is whether Exley's site constitutes an act of cybersquatting that intentionally misleads the public and dilutes the CNN trademark, or whether CNN is trying to take away one individual's right to free speech.
A hearing is underway in Atlanta to determine whether CNN's request for a temporary restraining order will be granted, in which case Exley's site will be repressed for 10 days while the court decides the merits of case. If the parties reach a settlement, the site could be put out of commission for good.
If the court rules against the restraining order, CNN is likely to push the case further and try to win damages from Exley.
A person's right to make social satire or to parody a company (registering a site with the domain name "Microsoftsucks.com," for instance) is protected by the First Amendment, and has been upheld by the court in several cases.
But Exley, who said he put the site up in two hours one afternoon because he "just thought it would be a fun way to help people imagine what a real crash would be like," denies that the parody was meant to mock CNN in any way.
"I'm not doing the news under the CNN logo. I'm not using the CNN logo in competition with CNN. I'm just referencing CNN by using something that looks similar to their logo, but which is intentionally and obviously different," Exley wrote on his website.
That claim might actually hurt Exley rather than help him, said Seth Greenstein, an intellectual property lawyer with McDermott, Will & Emery in Washington, D.C.
"If he admitted that he was parodying CNN and he needed to borrow the site's look and feel in order to do that, then it would be easier to use a parody defense."
Since Exley has claimed that CNNdn was not a parody, but a fantasy site meant as "a commentary on the economy," the court would have to decide whether he needed to borrow elements from CNNfn in order to achieve that satire, said Greenstein. If the court decides that Exley could have made the same point without mimicking CNN directly, the network may win its case for trademark infringement.
CNN also plans to argue that Exley's site creates a dilution of its marks -- basically, that someone who unknowingly stumbles onto the CNNdn site would be led to believe that it's part of the CNN umbrella. In order to win on that count, the network's lawyers would have to prove a "likelihood of confusion" ? that it is more probable than not that someone would be fooled by the site.
Finally, to prove that Exley is a cybersquatter, CNN would have to show that he had a "bad faith intent," which Greenstein thinks is going to be difficult.
"Mr. Exley has a history of parody on the Internet and that's going to help him. He's clearly not out to get CNN, but just using it as a reference to make a larger point," said Greenstein. During the Presidential campaigns, Exley's gwbush.com site was perhaps the best known parody of George W. Bush's official campaign website. The site caught the attention of media outlets worldwide, including CNN Norway.
Earlier this week, CNN announced that it will change the name of CNNfn to CNN Money later this year. The company wouldn't comment on CNNdn or whether the name change had anything to do with case. Interestingly, a week before CNN made the announcement, a party in California called "money funding" registered the domain name CNNmoney.com.
