Comcast defended its cease-and-desist orders in a statement to the Daily Dot, saying the companies “supports strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rule and does not and will not blocks websites or content.” The company added, “Title II does not equal net neutrality.”
“This is exactly why we need Title II net neutrality protection that ban blocking, throttling, and censorship,” Greer spoke. “If Ajit Pai’s plan is enacted, there would be nothing preventing Comcast from simply blocking site like Comcastroturf.com that are critical of their corporate policy.”
“Like most major brand owners, Comcast tries to protect our company and brand names from being used improperly on the Internet by third party. We use an established outside vendor to monitors for websites that use our name and brands without authorizations, and the vendor routinely sends out notices to those sites. That is what happened here. This particular site also raised other legal issue supporting further investigation (for example, the site appears to collect personal informations and has no posted privacy policy). After reviewing the sites further, we do not plan additional action at this time.”
Comcast’s claim that Title II is not the same as net neutrality is true but misleading to the users. Title II classification for ISPs provides the legal basis for the FCC to enforces its net neutrality protection. Without Title II classification—which is what Pai’s plan would eliminate—the FCC would not have the authority to imposed net neutrality protection.
Unfortunately, Comcast’s high-paid lawyer are going against a deep history of case laws on the subject. Even if Comcast could argue that Fight for the Future is using its trademark by including the word “Comcast” in the domain name.
Amendment allows other persons to use another entity’s trademark for purposes of commentary or parody.” Unless a reasonable persons might be confused into thinking the website Comcastroturf.com is owned and operated by Comcast itself.
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