The Glenn Beck Report

Glenn Beck Humiliated by WIPO Loss

Gonna gitcha, sukka.

This is a story I’ve been meaning to get around to writing about for a while, now. I’ve had an email exchange with one of the principals, because I wanted to see if he had a comment or would like to have the story treated in any special way. In light of the menacing, bullying, yet cowardly acts of the self-proclaimed defenders of the Constitution who bring guns to public meetings and make anonymous death threat calls in the middle of the night (been there, answered those), I thought I’d give “Name Withheld” a chance to nix this story or at least give me his viewpoint on the whole thing. He declined to comment, but gave me a load of information with which to use as reference for this post.

If you have ever watched or listened to Glenn Beck you have heard him insinuate something that is totally unsubstantiated and then claim it must be true because nobody is denying it. For example, How do we know Obama isn’t turning AmeriCorps into a secret, armed police force? The White House hasn’t denied it. Beck uses this tactic on a continuing basis to create straw man conspiracies. Of course nobody’s denying it, Glenn, because you’re the only dicktard stupid enough to say it, and who cares what you say?

didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com

In case you’ve not heard about this, here’s the nutshell version. Some posters over at Fark.com’s forum, a satire and news site, had a rapid series of free associations and determined that Beck’s routine was actually very similar to how Gilbert Gottfried performed at Comedy Central’s roast of Bob Saget which took place on August 3, 2008. During this roast, Gottfried begged people to stop accusing Saget of rape. So, this guy named Isaac Eiland-Hall, fed up with Glenn Beck’s frequent use of guilt-by-insinuation (aren’t we all?), claimed the domain name http://didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com and set it up as a parody website. A parody of Glenn Beck’s character assassination and smear techniques. However, Eiland-Hall was deadly serious about Beck’s smear tactics and also his own First Amendment rights.

I should interject here that the website took flak from everywhere as “serious” liberal commentators were quick to “condemn” it as they were covering the story. Even Keith Olbermann took a swing at it, while giving it free PR at the same time. It’s hard to know what goes on in the editorial rooms of MSNBC but I’ll bet they were LTAO as they were deciding how Keith should handle the story.

Eiland-Hall stated (later) that the tipping point for him was Glenn Beck’s interview with Minnesota’s Congressman Keith Ellison, to whom Beck confessed he was nervous because of Ellison’s Muslim faith. “And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” Watch:

So because of Glenn’s ignorant, racist, flapping gums and some high-spirited posting in the Fark Forum, didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com was born.

The site went viral and soon Glenn Beck was on it with legal threats trying to get it taken down. The site went down briefly when the webhost changed nameservers, but it stood with unflinching valor as Isaac and his attorney Marc Randazza held their ground against the most popular screwball in the Fox News bullpen of screwballs. Having failed to bluff the website out of existence, Beck chose to take the fight to WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Switzerland. (I forget, is that Old Europe or NEW Europe?) The complaint was based on an alleged trademark violation. However, WIPO ruled in Eiland-Hall’s favor as this is clearly not a trademark issue; the website is political in nature and not an effort to profit from the name (re-read that last statement, Glennie-boy). After winning, Isaac said his point had been proved and graciously gave Glenn Beck the “keys to the account” and told him he could take the website down at his leisure. It’s still there as of today. There is a lot of information about this controversial case on the ‘net, and Eiland-Hall’s new website is www.GB1990.com if you would like to check it out.

Naturally, I have taken an interest in this case since I operate a website with Glenn Beck’s name in the domain name. Also, I know the schizoid freak reads this and it probably keeps him up nights trying to figure out how he can shut it down. Glenn, sadly for you, this is political commentary, and you’re a public political figure so you are fair game. I am not selling anything here, just documenting your lies.

Oh no you didn't.

There is a larger issue here and I hope it’s not missed. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in effect that money = free speech in Buckley v Valeo. The ruling was that the state couldn’t limit political ad buys by candidates or anyone because that would be limiting their free speech. Soon the Supreme Court will review whether or not corporations have free speech rights. I predict that the mostly corporate-owned SC will rule that they do. There you have it. Corporations with money and free speech rights. The perfect hatchery for fascism in the media.

The significance of the WIPO ruling is that somebody like Isaac (or me) can spend about $75 and take on a giant media doofus backed by the mega-cult Mormon church and prevail. I have operated www.stopdubya.com for 9 years, even as the Bush Administration threatened us with domestic spying and forum posters threatened me over the phone. But despite the reach of Bush’s network my little part-time budget site stayed put, because they knew that regardless of how bad I made them look, I wasn’t lying. Further, if they would have made an issue of my site (or any of the hundreds of other anti-Bush sites) it just would have given that site the spotlight in the national media.

As long as we have true net neutrality we’ll have free political speech. Even if others can buy it by the boatload.