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Old 03-20-2005, 02:05 PM  
MrsJustforFun
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 20
Here are the details of the situation as I posted them at Oprano (I'm not a regular there either):

Hi, this is MrsJustforFun, a regular over at Tom's Newbie Booster since 1999. I was wondering if any of you folks are familiar with the blogger known as "Queen of Sky". Last Fall she was fired from her job as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines for posting what her employer said were inappropriate photos on her blog.

With a little self-promotion she was able to secure appearances on the TODAY show, the BBC, cable television's CNBC and other TV and radio shows. She has been featured in a NY TIMES article and in TIME magazine and on many mainstream blogs and other publications such as CNET and the NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE.

Her blog has been the most popular one on Journal Space for a long time.

Since the blogger who calls herself "Queen of Sky", who is Ellen Simonetti of Austin TX, became a public figure by virtue of her self promotional activities last year, we acquired the domain name queenofsky.com and wrote informational content about her and her case against her employer. Also, we included advertisements to legal adult entertainment sites. A perfectly legitimate site since she holds no trademark or service mark on the phrase Queen of Sky consisiting of generic words.

Recently one of her blog reader fans notified her of our domain queenofsky.com and Ms. Simonetti began a vicious campaign against my husband, the official registree of the domain, and went so far as to post his photo on her blog and provided her fans with links to his mainstream online endeavors effectively shutting down the message boards on those sites. In addition she provided her fans with his personal information including address and phone number.

Ms. Simonetti accused us of cybersquatting even though we have never offered to "sell" her the domain name queenofsky.com that she mistakenly feels should belong to her. She has threatened a WIPO complaint, although she has no grounds since she is a public figure with not the same expectation of privacy rights as private citizens; she holds no trademark to the phrase; and Queen of Sky is just a pseudonym that anyone can use as an online screen name/handle/nickname. It's unlikely she would have the $1,500 to file with WIPO anyway, considering she has a PayPal donation button on her blog and is still unemployed.

Because of the "fame" she has brought to herself, we have considered turning the domain queenofsky.com into a reality site focusing on flight attendants/stewardesses and/or women in uniform niches. Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of Sky has maintained her "15 minutes of fame" since last Fall and with her pending EEOP case against Delta Air Lines, and the national and international media coverage she has attracted, and it is likely to continue even longer.

However, we are a rather small "mom and pop" operation as far as the adult biz goes and aren't sure we want to invest the money and effort into the endeavor. And, frankly, my husband in particular is getting rather bored with Ms. Simonetti's smear campaign, continued by her and her fans on her blog and guestbook. At one point we removed all adult material from our domain and switched to mainstream ads but she continued the harrassment. As a gesture of good faith we even offered to transfer the domain queenofsky.com to her for free in return for her ceasing and desisting from maligning my husband online. She did not take us up on the offer.

Anyway, please feel free to flame me for this lengthy post but I needed to get it out of my system. And you folks often have such creative ideas and solutions to problems so I wanted to vent here, even though I'm not an Oprano regular. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this and any comments would be sincerely appreciated.
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