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epresented himself and settled with Ramirez’sattorneys. He cannot disclose the terms, butsince he no longer operates the site, we can inferthat he relinquished the domain name. He saysthat he gained “valuable knowledge that willinform his decisions in this area in the future.”When he first created the site, he “had no clueabout the legality, I just put it up as a fan,” and“I didn’t know that I could be taken to court.”He told us that the experience had “soured” himon “superstars,” and called it “unfortunate whenlawyers need to get in the way,” since “at the endof the day you are only trying to be a fan.”The athlete’s claim of trademark infringementwas not very strong because there wasunlikely to be confusion about sponsorship,the fan site was apparently noncommercial,and the URL was not registered in bad faith.Decisions by UDRP panels have allowed similaror identical names to be used by fans unlessthe site is simply a placeholder, there is a substantiallikelihood of confusion, or the owneris acting in bad faith. 209Preserving WildlifeIn May 2004, Google received a take-downletter alleging copyright infringement on asite devoted to wild animal preservation. Thedispute was really about a contract for redesignof the site. The designers, who claimed theyhad not been paid for their work, evidentlythought that getting the site taken downby asserting copyright in the design wouldgenerate the desired payment. The site ownerdid not acquiesce, and a lawsuit was filed.It settled when the site owner paid a portionof the designers’ bill; the court, he told us,threw out the copyright claim. Reflecting onthe experience, our interviewee critiqued theDMCA take-down procedure: “just becausesomeone is crying wolf doesn’t mean you haveto respond.”Strong or Reasonable DefensesThe National DebateOne of the most striking examples of anill-advised cease and desist letter came fromThe New York Times and sought to suppressa parody of the Times’s corrections page thatappeared on “TheNationalDebate.com.” 210Robert Cox, operator of The National Debate,told us that the conflict began in 2003 whenhe became concerned that the Times requiredeveryone except op-ed columnists to publishcorrections; the op-ed writers were permittedto decide this on their own. To protest thispolicy, he began chronicling errors in op-edcolumns and publishing them on a “ColumnistCorrections” page.“...routine elevationof copyright to a right ofcensorship could easily squelchactive debate and criticismof important ideas.”Around this time, Times columnist MaureenDowd wrote a column quoting President Bushand, according to Cox, “she manufactured thequote by taking something he actually said andputting in ellipsis dots, materially altering whathe said.” 211 Cox phoned the Times repeatedlyabout the Dowd column. “The column waspublished on Wednesday and was syndicated onThursday, so there was time to correct before itgot printed in other papers. But when I finallyreached someone, I received questions like ‘Whoare you with?’ and ‘Do you have an ax to grindagainst Maureen Dowd?’ I spent the next yeartrying to use my blog and emailing other forumsto get the message out – to pressure Dowd toissue a correction.”A fellow journalist suggested that Cox tweakthe Times by parodying its corrections page.He took both liberal and conservative op-eds,and wrote fake corrections “in a Times-esquestyle. People in the blogosphere thought it wasvery funny.”The Times did not. Its March 2004 takedownletter to the ISP Verio demanded that itblock the corrections page. 212 (Cox also receiveda cease and desist letter.) Verio told Cox thathe had to remove the page within 72 hours;otherwise his site would be shut down.Brennan Center for Justice 41