The IPKat has learnt from AXcessNews that Google is reportedly being sued for trade mark infringement by Jews for Jesus. A blogger named Whistle Blower has established a blog located at the domain name http://jewsforjesus.blogspot.com/. The blog is powered by Blogger software, which is provided by Google, which offers bloggers the opportunity to choose their own domain names in the form http://xxx.blogspot.com/ – hence the action against Google. The website in question is critical of Jews for Jesus’ activities.
The IPKat is rather concerned about this. He’s intimately acquainted with the workings of Blogger since that’s what powers his blog. The beauty of the software is that it allows bloggers to do things for themselves. Google neither exerts control over the content of sites, nor the urls that they operate under. If they had to in order to escape legal liability, it’s unlikely that Blogger would remain a free service, limiting a valuable channel of free expression. Whistle Blower could have chosen a url that made clear that his blog was critical of Jews for Jesus, rather than being connected with it, but it’s hard to see how Blogger could have enforced such a requirement.