Fergus Cassidy

In February 2005, I wrote about the plight of Michael Coulston. He put up www.ryanair.org.uk to “make some honest and innocuous observations about Ryanair’s operations” and to inform other travellers of his bad experience with the airline.

His holiday two years previously was ruined when his baggage got lost en route to Ancona, Italy.

In November 2004, he received a letter from lawyers acting on behalf of Ryanair which said Coulston’s website “gave rise to claims for defamation and injurious falsehood”. It also requested the site be “shut down immediately”.

Coulston moved his UK-hosted site to a Canadian hoster and Ryanair kept after him.

Hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘passing off’, Ryanair were out to silence someone who was critical of the airline and determined to tell others.

Ryanair eventually succeeded in taking control of www.ryanair.org.uk by complaining to Nominet UK, which manages the .uk ccTLD, but Coulston wasn’t going to be silenced.

He started www.ryanaircampaign.org and transferred the previous site’s contents. Ryanair took a case to the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) arbitration panel, again claiming trademark infringement and claiming the site had been registered in bad faith.

The tactic didn’t work. Two weeks ago, a WIPO panel which heard the case, found that Ryanair “failed to sustain its burden of proving that the Respondent lacks rights or a legitimate interest in the Domain Name”.

The panel also ruled that Coulston “did not register and use the Domain Name in bad faith”.

So the winner of my 2006 ‘David v Goliath Award’ goes to Michael Coulston.

…same as the old boss.

Larry Lessig on the back to the future Democrats:

“The Dems have looked at the potential ‘return’ from the activists on the Net. They’ve considered the kids being sued by the industry (including the kids running MySpace, and maybe soon, YouTube), and the kids creating amazing new (but presumptively illegal) mashups and remixes, and they have compared that value to the party with the value promised by Hollywood. Result: the 20th Century continues to rule.”

The ‘Festivus for the rest of us’.

Was rummaging through today’s online Irish Independent and wanted to read Kevin Myers’ column, presuming he was writing about Haughey.

Was re-directed to a local shop (see site screen grab below).

Why was the column not online?

Even with a detailed map straddling the steering wheel, I failed to find the correct turn on the anonymous asphalt of rural Kildare. Outside, a dense, dank fog consumed my car.

Out of the grey, a pulse of blue light blinked, followed by an unexpected yellow flash from a hi-vis jacket.

Knowing exactly where I wanted to go, and broken English aside, which he unnecessarily apologised for, this man from a small town near Budapest, Hungary, directed me back on a journey almost abandoned.

I brought him a few miles down the road to a posh hotel, where he works nights, and we shook hands outside the pompous-pillared entrance.

As I drove on into the night, I wondered who was really the foreigner.