As you point out she doesn’t have a chance. Winthrop did a good job of helping get valdemings.com on the map. That site will get a huge number of hits now. Everyone will know how inept she is on keeping track of her firearm. The last place you leave something you don’t want stolen is in your car. It’s like asking for trouble. The police reports were interesting to read. Nothing like a little bit of sunshine.

I agree. He has somewhat cleared himself as much as possible. Still, if the chief has any grounds to stop this blogger, it will be through the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

There have not been many instances of people using the law for retrieval of the domain. This also does not hold into account whether the chief bypasses the law and goes straight to his domain registrar or even ICANN. Most of which are not known for staying neutral in these situations.

We all know this is just a lame attempt to stop a fellow blogger from speaking negatively about the chief and the Orlando police.

You may be interested in perusing some police/videographer encounters from Dave Ridley’s http://www.RidleyReport.com

To whet your appetite, I’ve sorted through and found the best 3 videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFuU8w8-L88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5TCnMnCwVY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sHM3c-r8Oo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWnbsxBmyjM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN9d_et21zw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCTEyutQQ18

As far as I know, the ACPA makes a person liable if he purchases a domain of someone else’s name with the sole intent of selling that person the domain at a huge markup.

Not only has he not done that in this case, he has also placed a disclaimer on the blog stating the following:

DISCLAIMER: THE CONTENT OF THIS WEBSITE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. ITS PURPOSE IS TO EDUCATE THE COMMUNITY ON ISSUES INVOLVING ORLANDO CHIEF OF POLICE VAL DEMINGS. UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, VALDEMINGS.COM DOES NOT REFLECT THE VIEW(S) OF CHIEF VAL DEMINGS. OPD CHIEF VAL DEMINGS HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH THE OWNER OF VALDEMINGS.COM.

Sure, we can pretend that Winthrop doesn’t know squat and really thinks the case has merit, but in reality he knows the case is spurious.

In spurious suits like this, the aim isn’t to win a judgment, it’s to bankrupt and punish the defendant by forcing the defendant to hire a lawyer and cost the defendant time away from employment.

More than this, it’s designed to intimidate anyone else who might be thinking about speaking out… and that tactic worked quite well up here in Seattle.

People (and the press) up here are still scared to death of speaking out against the police union and lawyers are still afraid to take civil cases against the city lest they find themselves served with spurious lawsuits out the butt.