Recently reported on Arstechnia, famous talk show host, Glenn Beck, filed a domain name dispute to gain control of the domain name, Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. While there’s a strange story about how Glenn Beck even got accused of this, the stranger story is what Mr. Eiland-Hall’s lawyer, Marc Randazza, had to say about this in his response to the claim.

In attempts to explain how exactly this domain name, Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, was a meme, Mr. Randazza used very unorthodox examples to describe a meme, such as:

“Similarly, nobody really thinks that “Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten,” which was an internet meme that originated on the same website that spawned the Glenn Beck meme, Fark.com. See Wikipedia “Every time you masturbate … God kills a kitten” (Annex D). Memes are not supposed to be statements of fact, and audiences understand this.”

Quite frankly, I’ve read quite responses to claims before out of interest, and I’ve never seen examples as wild as that one before. But sometimes, you need to make your arguments stand out to the reader, which is exactly what Mr. Randazza did in that previous example. Another explanation that I found humorous of memes from the response to the claim was:

“From “Mr. Spock Ate My Balls,” (defunct) to ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US3 to “Leeroy Jenkins”4 to a slew of sub-memes based on the movie “300”5, internet memes are as old as the internet itself, and almost as ubiquitous as actual cybersquatters.”

While Mr. Randaza, as discussed above, submitted an unorthodox response to Mr. Beck’s claim, Beck ended up losing the dispute. In the end, Mr. Eiland-Hall ended up giving back the domain name to Mr. Beck anyways (don’t ask my why he would spend all that money on a lawyer and give Mr. Beck the domain name). You can find the fully downloadable documents (the complaint, response, etc.) on Mr. Randazza’s blog.

I would love to get your thoughts on this, so comments would be appreciated! Submit them below!