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December 10, 2004

Gripe Sites

Gripe sites are a growing force in online marketing. A gripe site referrs to a website devoted to complaints against a company. Usually, the address is Xsucks.com, where X is the company name. Almost any major company will have a gripe site, where naysayers post complaints, criticisms, and rants. Some examples include walmartsucks.com, homedepotsucks.com, and allstateinsurancesucks.com. Additionally, gripe sites may refer to other things that "suck" such as schoolsucks.com, milksucks.com, and fencingsucks.com.

Since gripe sites are usually unfavorable toward the company, you may wonder why I said that they are a growing force in marketing. The answer is that companies are actually buying the sites. For instance, fordsucks.com is owned by Ford Motor Company. By registering this domain name, Ford keeps people from easily finding disgruntled employees and customers.

It isn't surprising that most companies would prefer a world without gripe sites. For this reason, several companies have brought suit under trademark law. While the companies are not winning these cases because of first amendment free speech, the expense and threats often intimidate website owners.

For more information on gripe sites in general, see webgripesites.com.

For a detailed discussion on the legal arguments, see "Balancing the Crucible: The Revolving Conflict Between Fair Use and Corporate Use in the Battle to Control Domain Names" by Stacey Knapp. It is available in html, word, or pdf from the Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology.

Posted by at 02:34 PM.
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