A tiny startup called BlockShopper was bullied by a large law-firm (also known as a bunch of litigious bastards) into amending their hyperlink policy. Yes, you read that right. They were threatened and sued for linking to the law-firm's website in a manner that apparently didn't please them. See, the dumbasses didn't like the fact that BlockShopper linked to them because they believed that their potential customers would somehow "confuse" the links and assume that the information on BlockShopper's pages was officially related to Jones Day. According to the terms of the settlement, BlockShopper can't link to Jones Day using, for example, "idiots who don't know the internet works". Instead, they have to explicitly use "http://jonesday.com". Faced with potentially high legal fees that fall somewhere between "absolutely insane" and "eleventybillion", and also faced by a judge who seemingly doesn't understand how the internet works (he must have crawled out from under a rock somewhere), BlockShopper was forced to settle their case and accede to Jones Day's demands. The Ars Technica article I linked to earlier has the full details. I suspect Jones Day (also known as clueless morons, imbeciles, dumbasses, bullies and all-round idiots) are going to get a crash course on the Streisand Effect.
Jones Day are a bunch of litigious bastards
Category: Politics and Law