The following is an email received from Gerry Kaimo, in response to Jon’s article, “Senator Loren Legarda and the Lessons from PLDT vs. PLDT.com” which contains a reference to an article written by Carmela Fonbuena for ABS-CBNnews.com and NEWSBREAK. Gerry Kaimo was the individual who had control of PLDT.com when the company PLDT decided to lodge a complaint against him, in which he successfully defended against the complaint.
Here is the email in full:
The article written by a certain Carmela Fonbuena has more leaks than a Maynilad water line. She is obviously not familiar with either the Internet nor it’s laws.
For example:
There was no cybersquatting because
1) the domain name pldt.com was out there for 4 months and that was after two other registrants, neither of whom was Philippine long distance telecommunications, acquired it then let it lapse. I didn’t acquire it ahead of Philippine long distance telecommunications, it was just out there, and it had been out there for some time.
2) no attempt was ever made to sell the domain name to Philippine long distance telecommunications
it was not ‘shut down and transferred back to pldt after a lengthy legal battle’.
it could not have been transferred BACK to Philippine long distance telecommunications since the telephone company NEVER owned it in the first place and did not even have a legal trademark or trade name at the time of the suit. the latter fact was established when, in the process of trying to submit as evidence various advertisements and references making use of the initials ‘pldt’, the company had to admit that it had never actually registered the initials as a trademark or trade name. the ‘evidence’ was thus inadmissible.
the way i see it, for the remaining five (six?) years of the court case, the telephone company was reduced to having to argue that all it wanted to do was shut down the site, after having admitted, in effect, that it had no actual legal right or claim to have it shut down. so the lengthy legal battle was not a triumph of your lawyers holding off the barbarians at the gate, so to speak, but a triumph of their lawyers in keeping up a fight that they had no business picking in the first place.
Jon, in all these years, from the time I put up my pldt.com site till today, NO ONE has ever used the term cybersquatting to describe my actions regarding pldt.com. An apology is expected if this writer has any knowledge about writing. I have been accused of being something I am not. Either I get an explanation from her or she talks to the same lawyers who beat PLDT’s lawyers to a pulp for 6 years.
Come on, let’s be fair. She cannot dare call herself a journalism till she realizes that the first rule is verifying the facts. I hope to hear from her before she hears from me, and in the same manner by which she maligned my name. I would appreciate it if you could help me locate that “writer”.
I will cc this letter to some REAL writers. Ms. Fonbuena hopefully gets to me before I get to them.
With regards,
Gerry Kaimo
Popularity: 1% [?]
oooh. that’s interesting.
(i won’t say anything anymore about fonbuena’s major booboo — for now — because apparently i’m not allowed to criticize journalists heh heh)
but questions instead:
will abs-cbn, newsbreak, and fonbuena apologize to gerry?
will there be an erratum issued? will the article be corrected, and a subsequent article issued to clarify?
or, conversely, will there be some form of “we din’t do nuttin’ wrong, we did get our facts straight” post or story?
news at eleven. :D
When I wrote “cybersquatting” in my entry, I did not intend to agree with Fontabuena nor imply that Gerry Kaimo was one.
Cybersquatting is only cybersquatting when a site is occupied to extort money from the interested parties. Gerry Kaimo clearly did not extort money from PLDT, thus he should NOT be termed as a cybersquatter.
On the other hand, JS Lim is clearly cybersquatting.
I shall post a clarificatory post (copy furnished to Mr. Kaimo) later tonight.
jester my friend,
Pre-empt me not. ;) :P
No, Gerry clearly is not gearing this towards you Jon..
Nick,
I know, but I believe he deserves clarification. As such I think Mr. Kaimo wouldn’t have seen Fonbuena’s (oops! not Fontabuena as I wrote above) reference to him as a cybersquatter.
I posted an update on the original article, linking to this post and clarifying my use of the word cybersquatting in my article.
oooh. sorry jon. i think you may have misunderstood my earlier comment. i wasn’t referring to your post when i said “will there be an erratum issued” — see, your post links to the abs-cbn one, and therefore the erroneous and misleading information is abs-cbn’s, not yours.
heck, you fell into the trap and were yourself misled. ;)
Gerry Kaimo is one of, if not the first of a breed of Pinoy cyber-activist that inspired me.
It’s good to hear that he still has that fire.
Jon, I think everyone knows you were merely making reference to Fonbuena’s article in a neutral mannner.
here i am hoping gerry kaimo will take the time to chronicle how he found out, how he felt upon reading jon’s article, how he felt if he had read fonbuena’s article, how he felt while writing his email, how he feels about jon’s article now, and how he feels about fonbuena’s article now.
shouldn’t take ten minutes to send another email.
(major hint hint heh heh heh)
fine. forget the hinting. gerry, how about a follow up for us who are waiting on you? we’d sure like it straight from the source. :D
Typographical error: “She cannot dare call herself a journalism till she realizes that the first rule is verifying the facts.”
“Journalism” must be “journalist.”
I sympathize with Gerry. Carmela could have found the story I wrote back in 1999 useful for background. :-)
so what now, alecks? what do you think is going on in response to this?
It’s been almost a year now, and the would be journalist still can’t seem to find it in her to either admit she was wrong because she failed to do enough research about the topic. Sorta shooting from the hip. I’ve had
my share of a few journalists (real ones) who at least bothered to call or email me to clarify a few things prior to seeing their works make print, or get published in a website. I feeel sorry for those who claim to be journalists who claim to be such, but are not aware of the ruled and policies involved of the craft. Anyone can pick up a pen or a laptop, write a story and claim that he/she is a journalists. Quite unfortunate, The real journalists have gone through hell and back, are not afraid to write about the truth, whatever the fallout may be. But they should be able to stand by their story. If they can, there are other fields they can enter. Maybe Carmela will do better writing fiction, like stories about the tiyanak in Malacanang or any of her aswangs. If she can dare do that, and be prepared to take the fall for what she wrote, because she believes in it, then she is on her way. If she chooses to make like an ostrich and stick her head under the ground while the rest of her body is fully exposed, then she maybe should write for the gossip magazines. She knows what she wrote and is fully aware that it was wrong. If she cannot face up to that, the only one who will suffer the consequences of that are her integrity as a writer (?) because it is difficult to brand her a journalist, what with my six years of talking to real journalists who asked me real tough questions whether they were from Manila, Cebu, etc, or the journalists that interviewed me from Italy, Japan, the US, Ireland, Thailand,the UK and some more. It is very hard to keep a lie going when you are being interviewed by different people because if you do, you will eventually be caught, But the truth will never change. I thank you Jon, for the chance to let you guys know how I feel about
what’s-her-name. It will take a lot more than ten Fonbuenas to try and change the truth about the PLDT saga. My thanks to the writers who showed support in my battle against the giant monopoly.
PS And yes Marck, journalism should have been journalist. It was a typo. Thanks for spotting it.