Monday, November 13, 2006

A Stupid Lawsuit

The company Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation is suing Youtube.com. They say web surfers have mistyped the word "youtube.com" and typed in "utube.com" instead. This caused the utube.com web site to crash. Is this really the fault of youtube.com? These same people could have just have easily typed in ytube.com (the letter "y" is left of the "u" letter on a QWERTY keyboard) and have gotten a music video web site. Is this web site going to sue youtube.com next?

I cannot read the minds of people mistakenly going to the utube web site instead of the youtube web site but I can take an educated guess. The people going to the utube web site are people that talk in Internet chat rooms. The people I am referring to are teenagers who use acronyms when talking to each other like lol (laugh out loud) or imho (in my humble opinion) or in this case u (you). So, when a chat-room teenager hears about the youtube web site from a friend or even from TV for the first time (s)he will by habit type "utube" instead of "youtube" in the address bar. That is what I believe is happening.

OBTW, If you are wondering I have never visited an Internet chat room. I have used an instant messaging program though.

No comments: