The Chronicle reports this morning that Oxford University (the real one in England) has won a legal action to prevent an Australian man named Mr. Oxford University from using his name on his website. The article politely refers to him as "Mr. University." An entire new approach to the world of degrees. "I got my degree from Harvard University. He lives upstairs from my brother in Cleveland."
Mr University was formerly Doc Seagle, who reportedly lives in a tin shack in rural New South Wales (insert gratuitous Aussie insult here). He changed his name as part of his attempt to keep the oxford-university.com domain. Probably would have been different if he started out as Mr Oxford University ("friends call him Oxford").
Funny that the Chronicle article mentions only this most recent dispute over university-of-oxford.com without mentioning last year's decision. In this, oxford-university.com was transferred to the complainant, The University of Oxford, from DR Seagle (aka Oxford University). Apparently he changed his name during the course of this dispute -- but didn't bother to change the WHOIS info for the domain name registration. See http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-0308.html for this May 2000 decision. Here's a March 22, 2000 article about the name change -- http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/20000322/A23602-2000Mar22.html Mr. University isn't vanquished. I typed www.university-of-oxford.com into the address of my browser; this quickly redirects to http://www.oxford-university-press.com/ Yes, that's Lord Oxford -- which links to http://www.lordoxford.com/ This guy must have money to burn on domain name registration. Looks like he's also ranting on: oxfud.com, master-debaters.com, colinlucas.com, i-c-a-n-n.com, wipto.com, nazism.org, storm-cloud.org, swisscheeseland.com, truth-global.com, nazi-pigs.com and more. Nearly all of these have at the top of the page: "Standard Disclaimer, + All Views, comments and Statements expressed on this site are personal opinions of Oxford University and are copyright.© 1999-2001" ------------------ Kristin Evenson Hirst DistanceLearn.About.com
When I was working on a labor newspaper many years ago, I called one of the unions to get their local election results. "Who is the new president," I asked the man who answered, "That would be myself." "And what is your name?" He told me, and the story ran in the paper. Oops. It turned out that the new president's name was Mr. Myself. Better still, his first name was General. General Myself. What a guy. General Myself, I'd like you to meet Mr. University, who's engaged to Miss America. That would be Mary Louise America, of course.