Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/14/why-disney-owns-muppetfucker-n.html
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Good news, though! Fragglebugger.com is still available.
Not bad for a Monday.
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That’s why I can’t ever perform at SXSW.
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I wouldn’t share the part of the story where it took two people to come up with that name.
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A libertarian Muppet has his own hand up his ass.
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I googled unicorn goatse to find a joke unicorn chaser.
Not exactly what I was looking for but it’ll do
Edit: Is that Oprah or am I just seeing what I want to see?
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The story brings back happy memories of www.hornymanatee.com
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I’m pretty sure it is. The real question is why.
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No match for “FOZZYFIDDLER.COM”.
No match for “BEAKERBOTHERER.COM”.
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Someone bought fragglebugger.com and redirected it to this post!
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Went to Hump! last night. Which for brevity is an alt leaning amateur porn film festival. One of the films was a music video of a puppet singing who would like to be my sock puppet. Your photo captures the spirit well. 
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I own http://hail-hydra.com and am really surprised I’ve not gotten a cease and desist from Disney yet.
They were going for Frag le bouger, a site about new FPS-inspired French dance moves, but there was a terrible spelling mistake on the registration form. Clearly.
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Unlike “muppet”, “hydra” was already a word long before mass media and copyrights. I know that IP lawyers count more on intimidation than anything else, but the better ones try to be certain that they would at least have some sort of case if they were to pursue litigation.
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Disney would most likely use trademark law to go after hail-hydra.com. Don’t use “IP” as an encompassing term, each of the different types of IP have different laws and standards.
Trademarks can contain commonly used words. And the trademark is most likely on the phrase “hail hydra” rather than on a single word (although i can’t actually find a trademark on that phrase, but my search wasn’t exhaustive). Otherwise Apple Music and Apple Computers couldn’t be trademarked.
In fact multiple trademarks for exactly the same word/phrase can exist if they are different areas. The trademark database has several existing trademarks on the word Hydra for different usages.
The fact that i’m using it satirically could be of some help, but honestly i’m not going to put up a huge fight over it. It’s an entertaining joke, not something to stake my livelihood on.
The same thing happened to Legofucker. He had to change his moniker to Plasticfucker for legal reasons, and then to Plasticgod for commercial reasons.
Now we just need doozerdicks.net and gorgglompers.org to really make it complete
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An old music friend of mine was recording a bunch of found sounds and making a noise project. He never sold any of his music (that no one would buy it notwithstanding). One of those sounds was background muppet noises on tv while his friends were talking over it. He sent a nice letter explaining that he was making this art project and asked if they’d let him use the clip. A few days later he got the full on cease and desist twelve page manifesto of go fuck yourself.
I get copyrights and trademarks and all, but fuck Jim Henson.
Whatever else Henson may have done, he still made The Cube, and nothing can change that.
