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Did anyone ever find out if Dutch offered to give the domain back BEFORE Mason hired an attorney?
If so, then Mason was being a dick here by still pursuing the damages.
If Dutch refused and only agreed to return it AFTER the attorney got involved, then I agree with Mason's desire to recover damages at that point, especially with attorney fees being so high.
Log on to my new website www.toddwittelespoker.com for in depth coverage and analysis of this issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Can we get a comment from A Scocozza?
:knifeQuote:
Originally Posted by gauchojake
Doesn't matter, Mason would have sued him anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Probably, because he doesn't want more haters to do the same thing.
What if some kid in Russia registered a bunch of TwoPlusTwo domains?
How did Mason find out that Dutch Boyd registered the domain?
If you do a WHOIS search on a domain now, most of the time it gives you no information.
:denied
IIRC the ownership was hidden and Mason had to hire the attorney and incur expenses to dig up the owner of the domain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
That is reasonable, but this doesn't seem to be a part of Mason's official story on the matter:Quote:
Originally Posted by propokerIIRC the ownership was hidden and Mason had to hire the attorney and incur expenses to dig up the owner of the domain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Quote:
Hi Everyone:
As many of you know, Two Plus Two has been in an ongoing legal battle against professional poker player Dutch Boyd who registered the domain name TWOPLUSTWOPOKER.COM without our knowledge or permission, and attempted to profit from it. After several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with Boyd in good faith, we had no choice but to file suit against him. We don’t enjoy litigation, but in this case it was necessary to protect our name and brand.
More than two years ago, in March of 2012, the United States District Court agreed with our position and granted summary judgment against Boyd, awarding Two Plus Two statutory damages and attorney’s fees for Boyd’s violation of the federal anti-cybersquatting act. Boyd then appealed the District Court’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal and challenged the judgment on several different grounds.
Last week, the Ninth Circuit upheld Two Plus Two’s judgment in full, agreeing with the District Court that Boyd’s actions were wrongful and that Boyd acted in bad faith in registering the domain name at issue. The Ninth Circuit also confirmed that Boyd’s registration was willful and deliberate, and therefore that the award of Two Plus Two’s attorney’s fees was proper.
We are very pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s decision and thankful that after several years (and barring any further appeals by Boyd) it looks like this lawsuit is finally over.
Best wishes,
Mason Malmuth
I guess it's possible that Mason hired the lawyer to identify the person behind the domain name, and THEN tried to negotiate with Boyd, but that leaves out a pretty big part of the story.
Mason's account implies that they knew it was Boyd, tried to negotiate with him to get the domain back, and when that failed, had to sue him.
But what were the negotiations? They could have gone various ways:
1) Mason offers a nominal sum of money to Boyd for the domain, Boyd refuses, Mason sues him
-or-
2) Mason demands the return of the domain for free, Boyd refuses, Mason sues him
-or-
3) Mason demands both the domain and his lawyers fees (and perhaps something on top of that), Boyd refuses, Mason sues him
I would love to know the actual story here.
Also, why did Mason have to hire the lawyer to identify Dutch before negotiating with him? Couldn't he have demanded to the faceless owner of the site that he wanted the domain, with the threat of a lawsuit if he didn't return it?
Dutch's Kickstarter-funded book is supposedly coming out this weekend, albeit about a year late.
Here is a Pokerlistings article where they interview Dutch about several subjects, including the Mason lawsuit: http://www.pokerlistings.com/dutch-b...preciate-71254
In this article, Dutch insists that he tried to give twoplustwopoker.com to Mason as soon as he asked for it.
Quote:
It was definitely a downer. I actually lost the judgement two years ago though. This week they just turned down my appeal.
It wasn’t really a big surprise. It was really unfortunate. Mason [Malmuth] basically spent a lot of money just to prove a point and stick it in me.
It was for cyber-squatting but I didn’t really cyber-squat in the traditional sense. I registered it. I bought like 500 domain names and that one slipped through.
As soon as they approached me I offered to give it to them for free.
When the cyber-squatting law was written it was because people were demanding millions of dollars for domains.
I registered a lot of sites that could have been considered cyber-squatting but I gave them back to the people they belonged to.
twoplustwopoker.com wasn’t even worth keeping. They ended up suing me after it expired. They had the domain name back and they just felt like spending $40k to prove a point. It was basically a money grab.
I didn’t really do anything to Mason. I don’t understand where he’s coming from. I’d always heard he was a reasonable person. It doesn’t really make sense to me to put someone in bankruptcy for the fun of it.
It sucks. I don’t think anything positive came out of it.
I think there’s something wrong with Mason. I think that he’s got a persecution complex. I don’t really think he has a lot of friends because he thinks that everyone is out to get him. I feel sorry for him, really.
He has a reputation as being someone that doesn’t play well with others.
I will say that Dutch was indeed a cybersquatter, and in fact his company Jacknames.com even implies that. I am presuming the term "Jacknames" came from the fact that he was "jacking" domain names from others.
There was a guy I knew -- an older guy who took a lot of pictures at poker tournaments from about 2005-2010 -- whose domain name was "jacked" by Dutch. I know this because I used to visit this guy's site occasionally, and one day it was gone. I saw him in the Bellagio, and asked him what happened to his website. He said that Dutch had grabbed the registration when he let it expire, and was asking for money. Later he told me that he paid Dutch to get it back.
I forget the guy's name. I think it was Steve. He especially liked to take pictures of young women in poker. Anyone know who I'm talking about?
Steve Hall, at PokerFolio.comQuote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...h-boyd-348382/
folio.
Yeah, that was his name. Steve Hall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlySteve Hall, at PokerFolio.comQuote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...h-boyd-348382/
folio.
How I could forget a name with "folio" in it, I have no idea.
Also, my read on the Mason negotiating thing is not that he negotiated to get the domain back, he wanted to negotiate a settlement where ol' Dutchie paid him off for the revenue Dutch stole by running affiliate links and ads on twoplustwopoker.com. Mason contacted dutch about the domain and damages, Dutch gave up the URL, Mason still wanted to negotiate damages, Dutch was all "Dude I gave you the site" and so Mason sued. That's how I pictured it anyway.
Here was Dutch's explanation of the Pokerfolio debacle, from the 2008 thread on 2+2:
Quote:
First off, I didn't steal the domain name from Steve. He let the name expire. I can definitely sympathize, as I've let a ton of really great domains expire because I neglected them and didn't renew in time. Pokerspot.com and Rakefree.com, for example, both expired and ended up in the hands of domain speculators. I was even a few days away from losing DutchBoyd.com.
Pokerfolio.com is a great domain and I picked it up with the intention of using it as a website showcasing my poker domain name portfolio. I didn't know it had previously belonged to Steve, or that he was using it on his business cards and identity. I didn't purchase this domain name with the intention of selling it back to Steve Hall. I picked it up on its own merits. It cost me $60 at an aftermarket auction (which is usually where domains go when they expire).
A few weeks later Steve approached me at a Bellagio prelim and told me that he lost the name and I now had it. We talked very briefly, since I was playing the tournament... I told him he was pretty lucky that I was the one who ended up with it and that I'd be more than happy to sell the name back to him. I threw out a hundred dollars, which I figured was more than a reasonable offer. I spent sixty on the name and I should be able to take at least a little for my time. He kind of hesitated, and my read was that he was kind of strapped for cash... so I told him I'd be happy to take some photos or something in lieu of cash. I also told him to email the nameservers so I could point the domain over while we get it figured out.
I almost believed this all to be a big misunderstanding until I read the bolded part.
First off, I'm not sure I believe he spent $60 for the domain name. You could register these for a few dollars, even in 2008. However, it's true that some registrars charge a premium for registering recently-expired domains, so I suppose the $60 is possible.
However, the fact that he wanted $40 for his "time" is a joke. Just give the guy back the freaking domain name at cost, and apologize for the misunderstanding.
Anyway, if Dutch really gave the guy the domain in exchange for a few pictures, that's a different story, and I guess there's not much to make of this. When I saw Steve, he told me that he had paid Dutch for it, which may not have ended up being true.
I'm also somewhat doubtful that Dutch made much money from twoplustwopoker.com. I can't see why he would refuse to provide the information regarding how much he made from the site, unless he just didn't have it. You would think he would be happy to provide that if he just made a few bucks. I guess it's possible that he made more than we would expect, but honestly I can't see a site like twoplustwopoker.com making very much money, unless he had sold advertising to suckers, pretending that it was actual 2+2. I doubt Dutch did that, so this part of the story is kind of strange.
That's probably how it went down, but do you think Dutch really made much from the site?Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly
If he made just a few bucks on it, why not just give that money to Mason and be done with it?
No, not likely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Because Dutch Boyd.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Given Dutch went to law school didn't he, Malmuth probably want to pound him in court to really rub it in.
Plus the implied embarrassment that Dutch is hella broke adds to the pleasure.
The process of a lawsuit is extremely stressful and frustrating and a pre-trial settlement with a small penalty plus costs would have been the preferred path, so when you finally win and on appeal it holds up, you are going to be happy/relieved about it. The settlement would have been a lot less than the ultimate judgement. His negotiating was pretty much comprised of telling Mason and his Lawyer to gfy.Quote:
Originally Posted by zealanddonk
IANAL but what I understand is that a company needs to protect their trademarks. Failure to do so opens you up to anyone taking and running with it as they can point to the fact that you didn't protect it in earlier cases.
In the beginning...Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan DruffThat is reasonable, but this doesn't seem to be a part of Mason's official story on the matter:Quote:
Originally Posted by propoker
Quote:
Hi Everyone:
As many of you know, Two Plus Two has been in an ongoing legal battle against professional poker player Dutch Boyd who registered the domain name TWOPLUSTWOPOKER.COM without our knowledge or permission, and attempted to profit from it. After several unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with Boyd in good faith, we had no choice but to file suit against him. We don’t enjoy litigation, but in this case it was necessary to protect our name and brand.
More than two years ago, in March of 2012, the United States District Court agreed with our position and granted summary judgment against Boyd, awarding Two Plus Two statutory damages and attorney’s fees for Boyd’s violation of the federal anti-cybersquatting act. Boyd then appealed the District Court’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal and challenged the judgment on several different grounds.
Last week, the Ninth Circuit upheld Two Plus Two’s judgment in full, agreeing with the District Court that Boyd’s actions were wrongful and that Boyd acted in bad faith in registering the domain name at issue. The Ninth Circuit also confirmed that Boyd’s registration was willful and deliberate, and therefore that the award of Two Plus Two’s attorney’s fees was proper.
We are very pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s decision and thankful that after several years (and barring any further appeals by Boyd) it looks like this lawsuit is finally over.
Best wishes,
Mason Malmuth
I guess it's possible that Mason hired the lawyer to identify the person behind the domain name, and THEN tried to negotiate with Boyd, but that leaves out a pretty big part of the story.
Mason's account implies that they knew it was Boyd, tried to negotiate with him to get the domain back, and when that failed, had to sue him.
But what were the negotiations? They could have gone various ways:
1) Mason offers a nominal sum of money to Boyd for the domain, Boyd refuses, Mason sues him
-or-
2) Mason demands the return of the domain for free, Boyd refuses, Mason sues him
-or-
3) Mason demands both the domain and his lawyers fees (and perhaps something on top of that), Boyd refuses, Mason sues him
I would love to know the actual story here.
Also, why did Mason have to hire the lawyer to identify Dutch before negotiating with him? Couldn't he have demanded to the faceless owner of the site that he wanted the domain, with the threat of a lawsuit if he didn't return it?
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...tement-660963/
Interesting. Never knew the whole story.Quote:
Originally Posted by propokerIn the beginning...Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...tement-660963/
If this is true, I agree Mason was right to sue him.
So Dutch is just outright lying about everything? I would love to see his response to this.
Pretty much. The wayback machine website only contains text and none of the graphics or banners but it was loaded with dozens of links and banners on every page. About 10+ pages deep.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
http://web.archive.org/web/200708230...stwopoker.com/
How anyone can assign any credibility to anything he states escapes me.
I'm not going to post this on 2p2 cause I don't want to deal with getting banned regarding something I don't really care that much about the case but I did have some interest in seeing how it played out.
I'm not taking any sides here but I'm a bit of a stickler when things seem to be wrong.
If you're not familiar with domain marketing.... this is how it works.
People register a bunch of domain names. Usually hundreds or thousands at a time. The cost of registering a domain name is fairly cheap as is hosting a simple website with ads.
Different people have different techniques on how they select domain names. With the volume it's mainly automated at least partially. People may look up various sources and then come up with derivations on the name. Some people may just sit and type up a list of domain names and then maybe have a program that comes up with additional versions. I don't know how Boyd did any of this but these are common techniques. Sine he's a poker player and familiar with 2p2 I wouldn't be surprised if he knowingly inserted twoplustwopoker.com in his list or at least seeded some algorithm with variations of the words '2' 'plus' and '2'.
Once the list is made the domains are bulk registered to see if any of them are not taken. Of those that are successfully registered the domain marketer has some scripts that generate these very simple websites that contain keywords and some sort of revenue generating links. Based on the content of this site I'm guessing that this was the same template Boyd used for all his poker related domain names. It's pretty generic. If you understand a little HTML and Javascript you can look at the HTML source on archive.org and figure out what the site would have looked like.
Of the domains that get registered, most won't make any money. The hope is that some will make enough money to cover the expenses. The expenses are pretty minimal. At the time you could register domain names for less than $7 at some places. If a domain winds up generating more than $7 a year it's profitable but you need them to generate enough to pay for the unprofitable domains to make the whole thing worth while.
Search engines have always tried to filter these results out of their search results because the sites don't offer any value to the visitor. They don't get much traffic and therefor not much revenue.
In addition to making revenue off the ads, reselling domain names is part of the revenue model. If you wind up registering a domain name that someone else wants then you can sell it to them. Let's say I just had an idea to start a company called ALKJDFAKSJDFSLJDFDFJSDF and I want to register ALKJDFAKSJDFSLJDFDFJSDF.com but see it's already taken. I'd have to buy the domain from the current owner.
Legal problems arise when you wind up registering a domain name that infringes on someone's trademark as Boyd's domain did in this case.
Boyd was right when he said this wasn't traditional cybersquatting. Maybe the definition has changed but initially cybersquatting was defined as someone claiming trademark domains that had not yet been registered or that expired. Let's say you're Coca-Cola and it's 1994 you decide to build a website but someone registered that domain name in 1993. That's more of a traditional cybersquatting. Also, let's say it's 1995 and Coca-Cola doesn't think the web is going to pick up and they decide to stop putting money into their website and let the domain name expire or maybe they forgot to renew it for some other reason and someone else winds up registering it as soon as it expires. Those examples are more what cybersquatting is. Legally, other violations related to domain names may have been lumped into cybersquatting legislation. Things like misspellings and variations on the name. Technically, that's not "squatting" in my view. That doesn't mean they aren't infringing on trademarks.
The traditional cybersquatting type domains can actually be fairly profitable. Let's say there's a popular website that has a ton of links pointing to it but the owner forgets and lets the domain expire and someone else snatches it up. You put up a different site with links and for a while you're still going to get a lot of traffic to the site until search engines realize there was a change. Even then you'll still get traffic from other pages that still link to pages that were on the original site.
If you're not familiar with how IP attorney's work...
People probably have a good sense of how attorney's that deal with Intellectual Property work based on what they've read related to what's been going on with MPAA and RIAA over the years. This is my personal take on how things probably went down.
Greenbreg Traurig, 2p2's attorney in this case, were dealing with a lot of these types of cases at the time. You can find a press release they put out bragging about being the top firm bring up these types of cases.
I don't know if GT was 2p2's attorney before this case or not but it appears that GT was the one that brought up the infringement to 2p2 based on what Malmuth said in the first post and not that 2p2 discovered the infringement and sought legal help.
Lawyers make money by suing people and threatening to sue people. Since GT was so big in this field I would assume they used similar tactics that RIAA and MPAA employ. If I were them what I would probably do is build some software that searches the millions of domain names that are already registered as well as the many thousands of domain names that get registered every dayand compare it with a trademark database to see if I could identify any potentially infringing names. That narrows down the field where maybe an intern or paralegal can go over the list and narrow it down further which then goes to an attorney who will pick out the cases they think will be profitable.
An attorney can only sue on behalf of a client so at some point a bunch of form letters go out to all the trademark owners indicating that infringing domains were found. Language probably includes how trademark owners, unlike copyright holders, can lose their trademark protections if they don't actively protect their trade names, which is true. Letter would probably also mention that there's a $100,000 statutory maximum award and how successful GT has been in the past. It's basically a targeted sales letter. GT thinks they can make money by representing the case and hopes the receiver accepts the offer for representation.
Based on what Malmuth wrote in that post, it sounds like part of that letter indicated that GT would have to do more digging to determine who was behind the anonymous registration and 2p2 would have to agree to hire GT to start billing hours on the case. I don't know how GT works but it's possible they may also be looking to dupe some companies into paying for a more thorough audit that may or may not result in something that lead to a case.
Once the clock starts ticking GT identifies the domain owner and sends them a letter letting them know their client's intent to resolve the trademark infringement and states what the statutory maximum is in these cases ($100k) and tries to get the infringer to shit his pants and send a check.
At some point attorney's may leave it at that unless they think they have a really strong case they are likely to win at trial. They really haven't invested much at this point. It's very similar to how domain marketers automate a lot of the work and then hope to hit enough profitable cases to make all the work worth it. In this case Boyd's domain was clearly infringing on 2p2's trademark and they were probably happy to let it go to trial because it means more hours they can bill with a high probability of success. From 2p2's perspective it might be a freeroll if GT takes these strong cases on a type of contingency basis since the legislation would also award legal fees to the plaintiff's attorney.
Take away the names like 2p2 being a site everyone loves and Boyd being a person that ran a site that stole a lot of money from poker players. What you have appears to be.
1. Some dude registers a bunch of domain names to try and make some money.
2. If he makes any money at all off that domain it's probably minor since by that point all the search engines were pretty good at filtering these thin parked domain sites. Since the domain was left to expire it probably wasn't very profitable.
3. One or more of those domain names infringe a company's trademark and a lawyer notices it. They tell the company that their IP is being infringed and they can defend them in the matter. They say they don't even need to prove how much the infringement actually cost the company and can still sue for up to $100k.
4. Company says free money? Hell yeah!
5. Lawyers gonna lawyer.
If Boyd wasn't involved this probably wouldn't be that interesting to most people in poker.
First off, thanks for registering and posting that information here. Very interesting stuff.
However, I do have to disagree with some of your conclusions.
Keep in mind that I am no Mason Malmuth apologist. I am banned from 2+2 for an extremely stupid reason (basically he tried to make me apologize to someone he doesn't know for something I wrote on THIS site, and banned me when I wouldn't). So basically I think Mason is a big prick and dislike the guy, which is too bad because I mostly like the 2+2 forums, which have succeeded in spite of Mason, rather than because of him.
With that said, I believe cybersquatters are scum, and they are basically leeches who attempt to make money from others' hard work and/or brand recognition.
I do believe that Dutch registered a large number of domains at the same time. I don't think his registration of twoplustwopoker.com was a grand scheme to get rich off of Mason's hard work. He likely sat at his computer one day, registering every poker-related domain he could imagine, including several that were similar to existing companies.
Like you said, you can only make money in mass domain registration when the profitable domains make enough to cover the losses of the unprofitable ones. I'm sure he patted himself on the back for "twoplustwopoker.com", knowing it would draw in a fair number of confused people searching for 2+2, and thus would give his various affiliate links some good exposure. I don't think he believed he would get rich off twoplustwopoker.com, but likely at least believed it would turn some kind of profit.
More importantly, he was directly looking to profit from the recognition of Mason's brand of twoplustwo. This is clear because the term "twoplustwo" itself otherwise has NOTHING to do with poker. Its sole association with poker is due to Mason's well-known company name. This is what I consider to be blatant cybersquatting, even if not the traditional form of cybersquatting where someone grabs a domain name related to a company before the company itself can. It's still the act of registering a domain for profit, intending to receive traffic meant for another company. It is deceitful to both the website visitors and the company you are imitating. Basically, it's a scumbag move.
It is important to distinguish the difference between twoplustwopoker.com and a cybersquatted domain using a common poker term. For example, Haley Hintze writes for a site called flushdraw.net. If I registered flushdrawpoker.net and also covered poker news, it would be somewhat unethical, but not as easy to prove ill intent. This is because the term "flush draw" indeed has to do with poker, so flushdraw.net cannot claim that they have to exclusive right to run websites with the name "flush draw". It's a general term which doesn't belong to anyone.
However, here Dutch Boyd very clearly intended to grab visitors intending to visit Mason's company's website, and profit from that traffic himself. Dutch does not deserve that traffic or those profits, just as I can't open up a hotel on the Vegas strip called "Belaggio" and hope to snag people who don't realize the different spelling.
Simply put, even though I dislike him, I fully believe in his moral and legal rights to receive any and all profits derived from Two Plus Two Publishing. Dutch was trying to steal some of that, even if in very small quantities.
Regarding your comments about Greenberg-Traurig, while I believe your claim that they specialize in these sorts of cases, and hope to scare people into settlements with $100,000 lawsuit threats, I can't condemn them for what they are doing. You compared it to the MPAA/RIAA lawyers, but I disagree. What bothers me (and most others) about the MPAA/RIAA is that they are attempting to squeeze money out of people who are not attempting to profit off of their work. While I do believe the MPAA/RIAA have a right to fight piracy, I do think that suing individual downloaders/uploaders for thousands of dollars is ridiculous, as these people are not profiting or reselling the product. To me there is a huge difference between obtaining others' work for free and profiting from others' work. The latter is MUCH worse.
I have no sympathy for cybersquatters when they get threatening letters by Greenberg-Traurig. I cannot feel bad for scumbags getting comeuppance for their actions.
I do agree with you that this case generated more public interest because it involved Boyd, rather than some anonymous squatter. However, I can't feel sorry for Boyd here, either. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it backfired.
Odd considering I tried to avoid making any conclusions, especially not the ones you appear to think I made.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Nowhere did I say that cybersquatting or infringing on anyone's intellectual property is okay. I indicated I believed the domain name to be clearly infringing 2p2's trademark. I merely shared my knowledge of how the process works.
Nowhere did I condemn what GT was doing just pointing out how I believe the most likely do it. I think it's pretty clever. They have the potential to make money from the trademark holder by conducting a more thorough investigation and/or from the infringer. A better comparison might have been to those asset recovery firms that send out notices to people with unclaimed property that offer to get it for them for a fee? My comparison to the MPAA/RIAA was about the process I assume they use to be able to find the volume of cases they do. MPAA/RIAA and other attorneys that are looking for copyright violations have developed software that scans for such violations.
Considering search engines were pretty good at filtering these types of thin content parked domains by that point in time and how much content 2p2 has and how established the site is on the internet I have a hard time believing that it would have gotten much if any traffic.
I've been following the case for a while when I first learned that Boyd was being sued for $100k. I had some knowledge about domain marketing and was something I could easily do if I chose and was thinking "crap if he made $100k off this one crappy site I should look into it more."
Turns out the $100k is the statutory maximum a plaintiff can sue for without having to prove any actual damages. Final ruling was for around $25k in damages but nowhere can I find how the judge came up with that number. I was hoping that at the conclusion of the trial it would be revealed how much the site actually made or how much traffic it generated so I can compare it to my assumptions.
In this video Boyd says what I suspected, that the domain didn't generate any money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZK0sclN6Ys
Forget who the parties are in the suit. What are you thoughts on the amount of the judgment?
Boyd did indeed say that, of COURSE he said that, but why would you believe him? He refused to turn over any docs or evidence related to the site, so his word is kinda worthless on this topic. The only person who could prove how much the site made or didn't make is dutchie, and he punted on that opportunity.Quote:
Originally Posted by MicroRoller
I have some relevant experience and by that point in time search engines had gotten very good at detecting those types of parked pages that don't contain any useful content and were not including them in search results so it wouldn't be getting much in the way of search traffic and it's not like it was an expired domain that would have had natural links.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyBoyd did indeed say that, of COURSE he said that, but why would you believe him? He refused to turn over any docs or evidence related to the site, so his word is kinda worthless on this topic. The only person who could prove how much the site made or didn't make is dutchie, and he punted on that opportunity.Quote:
Originally Posted by MicroRoller
Did this site make Dutch a bunch of money? Probably not.Quote:
Originally Posted by MicroRollerI have some relevant experience and by that point in time search engines had gotten very good at detecting those types of parked pages that don't contain any useful content and were not including them in search results so it wouldn't be getting much in the way of search traffic and it's not like it was an expired domain that would have had natural links.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly
Is the judgement kinda insane? Yeah.
Is Mason a big prick? Yeah.
Do I feel sorry for Dutch or should anybody? Not in the least.
If I had the money & oppurtunity I would have done this to Dutch just to fuck with him. He's a POS & a cancer on the game & does nothing that is beneficial to the game we all love. You could also probably write that sentence about Mason too but this isn't about him. If Dutch had made any good faith attempt, & I mean even the slightest, to pay back the money from his failed pokerspot poker room I may have a different take on things but the fact is he NEVER did. As a matter of fact, he went so far as to turn down a deal that would have gotten all the players paid but he "wanted" that & a bigger payday for himself.
There's a petition going around to ban Howard Lederer from the community & everybody(well almost from what I can see) will get paid in the end. Nobody is getting paid from pokerspot & never will & he walks around poker rooms & the WSOP like he's a star & owns the place with no repercussions. Dutch walks around with this "oh whoa is me" attitude when, the facts are, he's brought it all upon himself.
That pretty much sums it up but I kind of feel sorry for the other guy that wound up getting a $150k default judgement. Especially if it's true that 2p2's attorney told him not to show up to court. See http://www.reddit.com/r/poker/commen...lsely_sued_by/Quote:
Originally Posted by Hockey Guy
Great post from a 2+2 member named "loggy", accurately assessing the situation:
Quote:
Originally Posted by loggy
I do want to add a few things:
1) I don't think Dutch "parked" the page. It looks like a custom page he quickly threw together (and perhaps ran on many of his other domains), full of affiliate links. Here is a copy of the twoplustwopoker.com in May, 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060511...stwopoker.com/ ... Notice the "win big money at party poker or the starluck casino" line near the top. That's very uncommon language for parked pages, which tend to be very generic in nature and don't outwardly advertise specific brands (even if those specific brands are contained in links).
2) I do believe that Dutch probably didn't know how much revenue that specific page had made, since he was likely using the same affiliate codes for all of his domains. I believe he didn't answer Mason's demands as to how much he made both because he didn't know, and because he was afraid it would somehow be used against him. Sometimes, when confronted by opposing attorneys with demands, your best course of action is to say very little and provide the least amount of information.
3) I believe the main reason for Dutch's lack of cooperation was that he didn't want to pay the likely thousands of dollars of attorney's fees that had already been spent on researching the owner of twoplustwopoker.com. He probably felt he was better off taking his chances in court, hence his lack of cooperation.
4) I also believe that Dutch was on the arrogant side, and probably got too overconfident regarding his chances to beat Mason in court. He was probably irritated that he was willing to hand over the domain, yet Mason still wanted him to cough up thousands in attorneys fees up to that point.
5) There is an important fact missing here, and perhaps someone can either point to Mason's explanation or ask him. twoplustwopoker.com had a "Contact Us" link. Rather than spend money on an expensive attorney to figure out the true owner of the site, did Mason ever simply utilize the link and demand the return of the domain? If so, what happened? If Dutch refused (or ignored him), I fully understand Mason's actions.
6) Mason did have a right to a return of all revenue that Dutch earned from twoplustwopoker.com, and if that couldn't be determined, it needed to be approximated. If Dutch refused to do this, again, I understand Mason's actions. However, I am concerned that the demand for revenue reports was accompanied with a demand for attorney's fees already incurred.
7) How much was Mason asking for in attorney's fees, after his attorney initially made contact with Boyd?
Dutch responds on 2+2!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DutchB
I would agree with much of your post Druff.
In regard to #6, this is pure conjecture as I am not in the position to ask Mason's lawyer for his reasoning. I would think that in such a blatant case of trademark infringement where legal action is most likely, you would want to know exactly who you were communicating with instead of scaring them off with a blind cease and desist email.
Couple new points. I pointed out in the thread that one of the pokerstars referral codes in the site's coding gives the affiliate referral to pokersiteonline.com which is very close to the name of another very large affiliate site, pokersourceonline.com. The ownership of pokersiteonline.com is hidden. Another knock-off url was also in the code, http://www-fulltilt-poker.com the ownership of this site is also hidden. See the pattern here?
Dutch knew exactly what he was doing with those names and it wasn't just a case of randomizing poker related urls as he claims.
Yes, I've been reading your arguments in the 2+2 threads, and most people have no clue what they're talking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by propoker
You clearly found Dutch's affiliate IDs in various spots on his pages. For example, you found what was almost definitely Dutch's UB affiliate ID in one of the URLs.
This means that, as I suspected, the pages weren't parked. The "parking" was a lame excuse being used in court, but it's likely not the truth.
I also LOL'd at Dutch's claim that this was an "automated" process of registering domains related to poker terms. There was nothing automated about this, except perhaps Dutch wrote a program that takes domains he feeds to it and quickly fills out the registration forms (thus saving him the hassle of typing in his name and address 500 times).
Computers are really good at some things and really bad at others. They are great at analyzing large amounts of data quickly, and drawing logical conclusions from them. For example, if I asked a computer, "What color is the sky?", it could analyze every webpage related to "sky" and a color, and come up that overwhelmingly webpages associate the sky with the color blue. The computer would come back with the correct answer of "blue", despite not actually having a real understanding of the sky actually being blue. At the same time, computers are poor at abstract, fuzzy, or emotional thinking. If I asked a computer, "There's a girl next door that I'm trying to ask out on a date, but I don't want it to be awkward afterwards if she rejects me. How do I get this done with subtlety where I can deny that's what I meant if she says no?" The computer can't answer this one, because it involves understanding human nature and human emotions. At best, the computer could search for articles about similar situations and parrot them, but couldn't give its own advice.
Similarly, it takes a human being to think up clever ways of registering URLs where confused people will accidentally visit them, while attempting to visit the original, well-established site. These include:
twoplustwo.com -> twoplustwopoker.com
pokersourceonline.com -> pokersiteonline.com
fulltiltpoker.com -> www-fulltilt-poker.com
A computer couldn't come up with these clever tricks, as you need to be able to think like a human in order to predict the likely mistakes other humans would make when typing URLs. A computer would come up with dumb URLs such as "pokersourceonlinepoker.com", which wouldn't be likely to catch anyone looking for pokersourceonline.com. It takes a human to think, "Well, pokersourceonline is a long name, and people are so used to the term 'poker site'. Since 'site' and 'source' both start with an 's', I bet replacing 'source' with 'site' would confuse a lot of people into thinking they're at the right place!"
Bottom line: I'm pretty sure Dutch didn't park the pages, and I'm pretty sure Dutch intentionally registered similar domain names to steal other sites' traffic for profit. It is exactly what it appears to be. Even his company "jacknames.com" suggests exactly what he's doing -- jacking domain names from other companies.
The only question is whether Mason should have hit him with a nuclear bomb when a stun gun might have been the more appropriate response.
And to register all of them with hidden ownership, while the generic names did not hide ownership.Quote:
Similarly, it takes a human being to think up clever ways of registering URLs where confused people will accidentally visit them, while attempting to visit the original, well-established site. These include:
twoplustwo.com -> twoplustwopoker.com
pokersourceonline.com -> pokersiteonline.com
fulltiltpoker.com -> www-fulltilt-poker.com
Boyd brought that on himself for not being honest and upfront when confronted. After a couple of FU's and GFY's in his emails to Mason and GT it was nuke time. Boyd mentioned that the settlement offer from 2p2 was $15K. If Boyd would have cooperated with the investigation the legal hours would have been greatly reduced and the settlement could have been much lower.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Something that comes up frequently in the conversation is regarding Mason conversing with Dutch. Mason NEVER had any direct communication to Dutch, although Dutch did sent a couple emails to Mason. Dutch was told to run all communication through Mason's lawyers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SixToedPeteMason says Annie Duke is dishonest, Daniel Negreanu displays bad behavior and Howard Lederer is honorable. Mason also thinks he won vs. Dutch Boyd. Mason actually lost.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly
In my opinion, Malmuth's heavy handed approach in dealing with the relatively minor Dutch Boyd domain name incident reveals why the purveyor of two plus two has such a terrible reputation with some in the poker world.
I've never met Mason Malmuth. I have read his books. They are very good. Still, some feel Mason Malmuth is one of the biggest assholes in poker.
A little digging reveals why.
Another Pathetic Mason Malmuth Tale Unfolding...
Mason Malmuth Scrapping TwoPlusTwo Strategy Archives?...
The Five Most Hated People in Poker...
Dutch Boyd made virtually no money off the disputed domain name and actually returned it to Mason's lawyers BEFORE the lawsuit. There was no harm, no foul.
Yet Malmuth wanted big money from Dutch to end the dispute. What kind of man behaves this way?
Dutch did not buckle under Malmuth's legal threats so Mason instructed his lawyers to go full throttle with a lawsuit over a $10 domain name.
Mason Malmuth wasted time and tens of thousands of dollars over nothing.
He 'wins' a summary judgment against Dutch Boyd. I think he was awarded @$34,000 in lawyer fees and $25,000 in statutory damages. It gets some press so Mason feels like a winner. He is not.
Dutch Boyd is a very intelligent man. He graduated from law school at 18!
He knows he can appeal the summary judgement. He knows if a bond is required there are exceptions made for financial hardship. Dutch can drag this out for as long as he desires. During the appeal process Mason cannot execute the judgement. He can't collect a dime.
Plus, Dutch Boyd holds an ace in the hole. If he doesn't prevail in his appeals, he can file bankruptcy at any time. It's inexpensive to do so and it will wipe out Mason Malmuth's judgment.
Malmuth will get nothing, nada, zippo. He will be left with @$34,000 (much more with appeals) in lawyer fees and the knowledge that he is a laughingstock in the poker community.
Mason Malmuth can't win.
However, if you've ever read his books, you know the guy is smart. So why would Mason Malmuth waste so much time and so much money over a trivial dispute he knows he can't win?
Perhaps it's because the guy is just a certifiable first class asshole.
Another strong call by Chuck. Mason reports Dutch made $60k payment and issues public apology letter.