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A fan sued by Lady Gaga
By Jean-François Poussard, on the 05th of October 2011
The American artist engaged an UDRP (extrajudicial procedure) against a fan owning the domain name ladygaga.org. Her complaint was rejected because the non commercial use of the internet website was considerated as legitimate. Why did the singer suit the owner of this domain name when more than 1 800 domains related to her name are registered mainly by third parties. Flashback on a “bad romance” against a background of “celebrity squatting”.
What’s got into Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta? The most famous celebrity in 2011 according to the magazine Forbes used the American Arbitration and Mediation Centers National Arbitration Forum (NAF) to get back the domain name ladygaga.org.
The respondent proved that he had a prima facie interest to use the domain names, indicating that ladygaga.org is a non official and non commercial fan site. For the panelists, “Lady Gaga cannot have fame without fans and fans cannot have fan sites without referring to the objects of their adoration”.
The choice of requiring the transfer of precisely ladygaga.org is surprising given the high number of domains identical, confusingly similar or composed with the trademark Lady Gaga.
In September 2011, the online brand monitoring platform Keep Alert detected more than 1 800 domains currently registered. The star only owns around thirty of them for her official websites lagygaga.com and heartbeatsbyladygaga.us due to a partnership with the Hip-hop producer Dr. Dre to develop high-performance headphones.
The name of the « poker face » performer is already registered in almost every generic or country code Top-Level-Domains (gTLDs and ccTLDs), even the less popular as ladygaga.dj (Djibouti), ladygaga.mn (Mongolia), lady-gaga.name (generic) or lady-gaga.ws (Western Samoa). Typosquatting cases are also common as ladygagaaa.com, ladi-gaga.ru (« i » instead of « y »), the inversion of the two names (gagalady.net) or the classic « dotsquatting » wwwladygaga.com.
250 domain names related with her shows, 160 for her look
The vast majority of the registered domain names includes the names of the singer associated to descriptive words.
There are recurring generic words such as:
- « blog » (20 registered domain names, ex: ladygagablog.net),
- « buy » (15 domains like buyladygaga.net),
- « club » (20 with for example clubladygaga.com) or
- « new » (30, ex.: newladygaga.info).
Then there are hundreds of domain names related to the activities of the interpreter. Her shows are very popular with:
- 100 domain names including the word « ticket » (ex: ticketstoladygaga.com),
- 85 with « concert » (ex: concertsladygaga.com) or
- 70 « tour » (ex: ladygagatourdates.net).
Obviously artistic words are often part of the domain names as:
- « video » (60 domains, ex: videosdeladygaga.com.ar),
- « music » (50, ex: ladygagasmusic.com),
- « lyric » (20, ex: ladygagatheedgeofglorylyrics.com),
- « pic » (20, ex: ladygagapictures.info) ou
- « song » (20, ex: ladygagasong.com)
Her unusual look also attracts domain names fans. About one hundred of domains include words related with fashion:
- « costume » (ex: bestladygagacostumes.com),
- 20 « outfit » (ex: ladygagaoutfitideas.com),
- 20 « dress » (ex: dress-as-lady-gaga.com),
- 20 « glass » (ex: ladygagaglasses.net).
The names of her albums (45 domain names with the word “monster” like ladygagamonsters.org) or the titles of her singles are also present as bornthiswayladygaga.net, lady-gaga-alejandro.org, lady-gaga-bad-romance.com, lady-gaga-judas.com or lady-gaga-poker-face.ru.
The name of the singer is also associated with:
- The major countries in the world (ex : ladygagaitalia.com),
- Years (Keep Alert detected the futurist registering of ladygaga2015.com),
- The largest Internet brands: ladygagagoogle.com, lady-gaga-twitter.com, ladygagayoutube.org.
Almost a thousand of fan sites
If Lady Gaga decides to sue all her fans owning domain names related to her names, her legal representatives will have to work! 51 % of the registered domain names revert to active websites dealing with her. 50 domain names specify it with the mention “Fan” in the URL as ladygagasfanmovement.com. 20 domains fell in « love » with the singer (ex : loveladygaga.ru).
32 % of the domain names are used for commercial aims with the traditional parking pages and their sponsored links. Lady Gaga would have no difficulties to recover these disputed domain names on the basis of her brand and of the use in bad faith of her name. But she preferred ladygaga.org… Same goes for the 13 % of inactive websites. The mere possession (“passive holding”) is most of the time considered as bad faith.
Keep Alert also detected more the thirty porn domain names thanks to its automatic label “porn content”. Her domain names ladygaga.xxx has already been blocked by the registry of the new porn TLD .XXX.
The star is not only victim of pornsquatting among the domain names denigrating her. Have a look: anti-lady-gaga.com, fuckyouladygaga.com, godhatesladygaga.com, ihateladygaga.com, isladygagaaman.org, ithinkladygagasucks.com, ladygagahasadick.com, ladygagahermaphrodite.org, ladygagaruinedme.com, ladygagasucks.com…
Facing all these disputed domain names, the choice of the star to sue the neat ladygaga.org is simply incomprehensible. How will her fans react? ladygagatruth.info? Will they sing together the song iwannashootladygaga.com in order her to ladygagarip.com? Will they forgive her wishing her a happy event (ex: ladygagapregnant.com, lady-gaga-first-child.info). Will the star with 14 million “followers” on Twitter create her own new TLD as dotladygaga.com wishes?
The strategy of defending the rights of individuals is sensitive. Keep Alert, online brand monitoring, also detects unethical practices regarding the names of artists, politicians and sportsmen, among domain names, paid searches (eg Adwords), social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia ...). For each result Keep Alert provides a time-stamped screenshot and an automatic qualification of the content.
To find out:
