Eye on Winer

Dave Winer recently launched NewsJunk, an RSS-backed aggregator of political news, with Nicco Mele. Mele, the former webmaster for the Howard Dean campaign, says they’ve been developing it for months:

I’ve been working on a new project with Dave Winer — Newsjunk.com. For the last few months, I’ve been annoyed at how hard it is to follow the political coverage. News pops up in a lot of different places, and having single source to follow what’s happening throughout the day has been an itch that needs scratching. Dave remembers the briefing books we had on the Dean campaign, a fixture of many campaigns. So NewsJunk.com started as a way to scratch the itch of the political news junkie, and a way to begin to build an open briefing book.

During the 2000 cycle, I worked as the webmaster and technical director of the Shadow Conventions. That’s actually where I first met Dave, through Edit This Page.com. Then during the 2004 cycle, I worked as the webmaster for Howard Dean. This cycle (2008) after a false start, I’m excited to be working on NewsJunk.

What’s the over/under on how long it takes before this collaboration crashes and burns? As Jason Calacanis will tell any human or puppet who asks, Winer can’t work with people. He’s never mastered the principle “you have to be a friend to have a friend.” Mele, who destroyed his rep among former Deaniacs by backing McCain, is exhibiting some weird judgment here too.

As Mele ponders how much effort to put into their joint venture, perhaps he should consider the significance of the following three facts:

1. Winer owns the domain
2. Winer runs the application on his own server at 70.85.234.142
3. Winer claims all rights to the project: “© 2008 Scripting News, Inc. NewsJunk is a trademark of Scripting News, Inc.”

Loren Feldman’s earning his Winer Number:

Want to have some fun? Trademark the 1938Media name than take those cyber-squatting domains away from DW..

By Fred Grott on May 28, 2008

Fred - I dont give a shit about anything Winer does. His career is finished, mine is just starting. His legacy will be that of a desperate old douche bag. Fail.

By Loren Feldman on May 28, 2008

Videoblogger Loren Feldman recently began mocking Dave Winer through the magic of puppetry:

1. The Dave Winer Experience
2. Happy RSS Awareness Day from Dave Winer
3. Is Obama Black or Black?
4. Dave Winer on Desensitizing Twitter

Winer responded by cybersquatting the domain names 1938media.net and 1938media.org on May 1, created an account on YouTube under the name evilmikearrington on May 5 and used it and the domains to promote his own puppet video, which shows he’d get killed in a puppet war.

One of these days, Winer’s habit of cybersquatting to fuck with people is going to bite him in the ass.

Dave Winer is dropping four of his domains that contain tech company trademarks:

• WhyGoogleSucks.Com
• WhyAppleSucks.Com
• NextMacQuestion.Com
• CloneTheGoogleApi.Com

Eye on Winer recently caught him squatting the name of a critic, an obnoxious stunt that inspired ValleyWag to call him a “crusty old web wanker.” (You’ll get no argument from us.)

The whois records for the domains show that Winer dropped them before they were set to expire. Did Google and Apple put the screws to him? Google’s attorneys have gone after hundreds of cybersquatters in domain name arbitration for using “google” in their names, winning every case.

We’ve mentioned that Dave is squatting on EyeOnWiner.com and earlier today that he’s also squatting on NickIrelan.com. Which made me wonder… what else has Dave registered?

(more…)

In January, Dave Winer got into a spat with Nick Irelan, a reader of his blog who challenged Winer’s claim to have invented RSS, podcasts, blogs, outliners, web services, non-stick cooking spray and the use of the scrolling wheel mouse button in heterosexual cybersex.

Because Winer is class all the way down, he didn’t just rebuke Irelan on his site. He registered the domain name NickIrelan.Com:

Domain Name: NICKIRELAN.COM
Registrant:
Scripting News, Inc
2 1/2 Third St
St Augustine Beach, Florida 32080
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Created on: 24-Jan-07
Expires on: 24-Jan-08

Administrative, Technical, Billing Contact:
Winer, Dave dave@scripting.com
Scripting News, Inc
2 1/2 Third St
St Augustine Beach, Florida 32080
United States
(206) 369-0687

Registering someone else’s name in bad faith violates the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Winer could face fines from $1,000 to $100,000 plus attorney’s fees if found to have broken the law. Irelan’s not a public figure — he’s a college student according to his LinkedIn profile — so Winer can’t defend his actions by claiming he intended to use the domain to comment on him.

Irelan tried to add Winer’s cybersquatting stunt to his Wikipedia entry, but it was quickly deleted by other editors, even though the proof’s right there in the WHOIS database.

If anyone knows a lawyer who could help Irelan get his domain name, please comment here. I’ve sent Irelan a link to this blog.

Update [~EoW]: After this story got picked up by ValleyWag, Dave wrote in (to VW) to say that he’s released the domain. I’ll believe it when I see it, but apparently the heat was a little too much for him. Score one for the good guys.