Did Larry Winget Go Overboard?

If you have been liv­ing under a rock in the past few weeks, then you might have missed one of the biggest ker­fuf­fles in Inter­net his­tory. Or so it seems.

No, I’m not talk­ing about the con­tested elec­tions in Iran.

I’m talk­ing about the recent Face­book user­name frenzy, when Face­book allowed its users to reg­is­ter user­names, mak­ing pro­file addresses shorter and more memorable.

Lead­ing up to it, they used a count­down timer. Brilliant.

Last week, I was watch­ing a movie with my wife Sylvie Fortin. At 12:01 AM, I decided to log onto Face­book using my iPhone, just to see. And wouldn’t you know it? I man­aged to secure Face​book​.com/​m​i​c​h​e​l​f​o​r​tin for me, and Face​book​.com/​l​i​c​o​r​ice for our fan page.

(Sylvie also cap­tured “sylviefortin” for herself.)

The Licorice Group, LLC is the name of our pub­lish­ing com­pany, located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Obvi­ously, “miche­landsylviefortin” was way too long and would defeat the pur­pose of get­ting a shorter mnemonic. So I decided on “licorice.”

Any­way, you might be won­der­ing why I said this was a ker­fuf­fle. Well, hold on tight, because this one is a doozie (and there’s a mar­ket­ing les­son in here, too)…

I couldn’t believe it when I saw some mar­keters who failed to get their very own names because of a few dum­b­ass nitwits, with com­pletely dif­fer­ent names, decided it would be cool to reg­is­ter some­one else’s well-​​known brand name.

Yes, as mar­ket­ing experts, our names are brands.

It hap­pened to my friends Ed Dale, John Reese, Dar­ren Rowse, and a slew of others.

Some peo­ple call this cyber­squat­ting, which we see often in the domain name space. One jok­ingly said, “cyber­squat­ting on Face­book is facesquat­ting!” But I digress…

Need­less to say, this irks me. I think it’s not only unscrupu­lous, mean, and dumb, but also I believe that peo­ple who do this kind of thing are down­right scum.

Some mar­keters have cried foul. They said, “It’s trade­mark and copy­right infringe­ment.” Well, I don’t think it’s a copy­right infringe­ment. It might be a trade­mark one, although this is some­what debat­able since most names are not reg­is­tered trademarks.

But reg­is­tered or not, they are trade­marks nonetheless.

Whether or not tak­ing a well-​​known brand name infringes on another’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty, it can poten­tially lessen their com­mer­cial value, cause irrepara­ble dam­age, and above all, cre­ate con­fu­sion in the marketplace…

… The very thing trade­marks are meant to avoid in the first place.

Plus, it’s wrong. Very wrong.

But the issue I’m mostly upset about is some­thing else — some­thing that actu­ally hap­pened to one of my men­tors and favorite experts, Larry Winget.

Larry Winget is a well-​​known brand. He’s an inter­na­tion­ally renowned and sought-​​after speaker and con­sul­tant, and the author of many books, CDs, and DVDs, of which I own pretty much every­thing. Yes, I’m a huge fan.

But Larry encoun­tered a prob­lem that went way beyond sim­ple “facesquat­ting,” and he blogged about his incred­i­ble dis­plea­sure and right­ful out­rage at such a tactic.

How­ever, this seems to have rubbed quite a few peo­ple the wrong way. Tons of peo­ple com­mented on his blog. They were either for or against Larry’s attempt to pub­licly denounce this act. And some of the naysay­ers were very upset with Larry.

I respect other people’s opin­ions. I always love hear­ing how oth­ers see things dif­fer­ently. But on this blog post, some who opposed Larry’s “over­re­ac­tion” went just as overboard.

Some stated that the issue was a small one, and that the per­son who infringed on Larry’s rights meant no harm. It was a small mis­take in judg­ment, albeit a dumb one, but for­giv­able. And Larry should have been more tolerant.

Say what? Let’s take a closer look.

Some­one took “lar­ry­winget” as a user­name on Face­book. I believe — and I’m sure Larry feels the same way, too — that, if the per­son who took it was indeed called “Larry Winget,” it would have meant noth­ing to him. But it goes a lot deeper than that.

First of all, his name surely wasn’t Larry Winget.

But this is not where the story ends. This per­son reg­is­tered Larry’s name — get this! — in an attempt to gain Larry’s atten­tion, and per­haps affec­tion for being so bold and cre­ative, that he would be allowed to have an audi­ence with Larry.

When I first read that, my head did a double-​​take. He went on to say that he would be pre­pared to give Larry back his name, “no ques­tions asked,” and would under­stand if Larry refused to give him some of his time. (Double-​​take? Make that a triple.)

There are so many prob­lems with this.

First off, Face­book was very clear that names can­not be trans­ferred. What this per­son did was absolutely wrong because it pretty much forced Larry into a corner.

But it goes even fur­ther than that.

Short of not doing this at all, he should have changed his user­name, con­tacted Larry, apol­o­gized, and told Larry that, now that the name is avail­able (by his chang­ing it, that is), Larry should be able to change his user­name and re-​​capture “larrywinget.”

But he didn’t do that. Instead, he closed his account and fled, “like a cow­ard,” says Winget, mak­ing any attempt to re-​​capture this newly released name futile.

So Larry was right­fully offended. On many lev­els. It’s not just about iden­tity theft, which is wrong. It’s not just about try­ing to usurp free con­sult­ing, which is even worse.

It’s about the tremen­dous lack of integrity, cour­tesy, decency, and above all, respect. It’s about this person’s belief — and the belief of those who com­mented in sup­port of him — that this is nor­mal, totally accept­able, and com­pletely forgivable.

After all, no mal­ice was intended. Right?

Wrong. It’s not only sad, it’s down­right insulting.

I think it’s a sad world when people’s sense of enti­tle­ment allows them to think they deserve it, they can get away with this stuff, their uneth­i­cal if not ille­gal actions are excus­able and jus­ti­fied, and these experts are “rich enough” to absorb it.

It’s an even sad­der world when, while one feels they have the right to do this stuff, the other does not have the right to defend their name and rep­u­ta­tion, or feel angry and offended sim­ply because, as some peo­ple said, “it’s part of doing business.”

You’re kid­ding me, right?

If you think I’m arro­gant, think again. I would applaud any­one try­ing cre­ative ways to get my atten­tion. After all, I’m in mar­ket­ing and I love learn­ing new ways to gain atten­tion. And believe me, in my 20+ years as a con­sul­tant and copy­writer, I’ve seen quite a few.

But at my expense? No way.

So Larry had every right to react the way he did.

The thief, and all of Larry’s detrac­tors and the thief’s sup­port­ers who over­re­acted just as much, tend to for­get the fact that Larry has to spend time to deal with this situation.

He has to take time out of his busy sched­ule, per­haps time away from work­ing with his pay­ing clients, to fix things and do some dam­age con­trol. His blog post was part of it.

He had to, in part, to alert his read­ers, prospects, and fol­low­ers why they can’t find him on Face­book, and why they might see some­one else there instead.

Not only that, but Larry also has to absorb pecu­niary losses caused by the con­fu­sion this has caused, such as the loss of sales and rela­tion­ships cre­ated by the high­jack­ing, as well as the dam­age to Larry’s name, rep­u­ta­tion, and com­mer­cial value.

So he was jus­ti­fied in pub­licly voic­ing his concerns.

Now, to those who feel this was mere petty theft, I have a cou­ple of issues to bring up.

First off, what this per­son did was more than just petty theft.

He stole Larry’s name, and then tried to steal his money by try­ing to coerce him for some free con­sult­ing. Plus, he even lied in his mes­sage and, finally, he left and deleted his account, forc­ing Larry to plead with Face­book and jump through need­less hoops.

The first part may seem obvi­ous, but you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing why I said “he lied.”

You see, this person’s reply to Larry, which only occurred after Larry got in con­tact with him to find out what had hap­pened — makes you won­der if he was going to con­tact Larry at all in the first place — included this inter­est­ing tid­bit, edited for brevity:

“If not, I didn’t take your name on face­book to try and extort money from you or get any­thing else, so I am more than happy to turn the name over to you no ques­tions asked.”

Read that again because it’s important.

Some peo­ple, quot­ing this pas­sage, have com­mented this was evi­dence that he wasn’t try­ing to steal, squat, or do some­thing mali­cious. That he had no ill-​​intent.

Oh, really? Those com­men­ta­tors failed to look at the rest of what he said, if you were to under­stand his true intent. Because in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, he said…

“I would love the oppor­tu­nity to meet with you face to face (…) to bounce some ideas and ques­tions off of you.”

I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a clear and con­spic­u­ous attempt at steal­ing Larry’s name in an effort to coerce free con­sult­ing from him. Sorry, but that’s extor­tion and it’s still wrong, no mat­ter how petty or well-​​intended it might seem.

So this per­son not only stole Larry’s name, but also attempted to extort from him and lied about it, too. To me, that’s a three-​​striker right there, as in “three strikes and you’re out.” Even if each one seemed petty or insignif­i­cant, as a whole or individually.

If you, too, think this was merely petty, and that Larry over­re­acted, then some­thing has cer­tainly gone awry if peo­ple think noth­ing should have been done about it.

For exam­ple, just because I wanted to meet with my bank man­ager when I robbed the bank, even if I had every inten­tion of return­ing the money, “no ques­tions asked,” it doesn’t make it right. Or excus­able. Or wrong for want­ing to pro­tect one’s assets.

In fact, the thief ended his mes­sage with:

“If it wasn’t me, it likely would have been some­one else.”

It still doesn’t make it right!

What gives you the right to rob a bank? And to say, “Bet­ter me than some­one else?”

I do equate this to steal­ing from a bank because, to me, it’s no dif­fer­ent. Sure, there was no vio­lence. Sure, there were no threats. And sure, there was no actual money stolen. But he did try to usurp Larry’s name, time, and exper­tise, let alone his reputation.

I rec­om­mended this bril­liant video before on the whole idea of “free lunches.” It’s from one of my favorite con­sul­tants, Perry Mar­shall, enti­tled “Those who bite the hand that feeds them, lick the boot that kicks them.” I urge you to go and watch it.

Bot­tom line, respect goes both ways.

I can’t speak for Larry, but some­thing tells me that, if this guy’s name was truly Larry Winget, Larry wouldn’t care much. I know there are other, well-​​known peo­ple named “Michel Fortin” out there. It wouldn’t have both­ered me if they cap­tured my name first.

Well, it would, but not that much. After all, it’s their name, too.

The prob­lem is, this has noth­ing to do with tak­ing a user­name. It’s about integrity. It’s about doing what is right. It’s about respect­ing Larry, his time, and his name.

If you think Larry went over­board for such a petty thing, I have two things to say:

1. When is doing some­thing wrong no longer con­sid­ered “petty”? Where do you draw the line? It might seem petty, and petty theft may indeed be petty. But it’s still theft.
2. It’s a slip­pery slope. And if you con­sider this insignif­i­cant, that tells me a lot about how much you value your own name, your time, and yes, your relationships.

Think about that last one.

Any­way, way to go, Larry.

About the Author

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