User talk:Justmeherenow/Spoof

The Glenn Beck – Isaac Eiland-Hall controversy concerns the spoof website didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com. The site was authored by Isaac Eiland-Hall and parodied political commentator Glenn Beck. Beck has complained that the website defames him.

Website
The website's domain name is a paraphrase from a performance by comedian Gilbert Gottfried at a roast of Bob Saget in which Gottfried jokingly implored listeners to disregard the (non-existent) rumor that his fellow comedian had raped and murdered a girl in 1990. The website was created by Isaac Eiland-Hall in parody of Glenn Beck's allegedly paranoid style of political commentary.

It was reported that the Internet group "Anonymous" was associated with the spread of the meme. Eiland-Hall had seen the discussion on the Internet discussion community Fark and created a website about it. On September 1, the site went up and served more than 120,000 page loads in the first 24 hours. The website asserts it does not believe the rumors to be true. It states, "But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation" in a criticism of Beck for somtimes challenging those he opposes to prove a negative.

Controversy
In October of 2009, lawyers for Beck's media company, Mercury Radio Arts, filed a complaint, under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, to the World Intellectual Property Organization. According to the complaint, Eiland-Hall "is attempting to mislead the public regarding the nature, origin and affiliation of the Web site"; it also asserts that the website's domain name is "defamatory" and "infringes on Beck's trademark interest in his own name." Eiland-Hall's response to the WIPO, written by First Amendment rights lawyer Marc Randazza, asserts the domain name is protected political speech, claiming, "Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to [Beck]".

Some observers believe that Beck's attorneys' filing may have been to ascertain Eiland-Hall's identity, which had been anonymous prior to Beck's complaint. Jeffrey Weiss of Politics Daily wrote that by taking legal action, Beck "did the one thing guaranteed to garner the greatest amount of publicity for the site"; and commentators speculated about this possible, so-called "Streisand effect."