The site BestofStLouis.com is gone. There isn’t even a traditional “It’s over” page…it’s just gone. The domain now goes to an all-ad page.
What happened? Lawyers and copyright law happened, and the heat came from the Riverfront Times.
As we’re sure you’re aware, each year the Riverfront Times puts out its “Best of St. Louis” issue and because of that believes it holds the rights to the term “Best of St. Louis”. That seems week to us that someone can own something as generic as that, but we aren’t lawyers and the Riverfront Times’ parent company Village Voice Media didn’t bother to call and ask our opinion, so they went ahead and sent one of those oh-so-fun legal notices to the two guys that ran BestofStLouis.com. They were “graciously” given until September 1st to take their site down.
Just as they should have, BestofStLouis.com posted the letter on their site, but instead of trying to fight this, or at least work with Village Voice Media, they just hung it up claiming they were “hacked”. Pseudo-claiming the hack came from some mysterious Village Voice Media executive order.
[F]aced with the prospect of trying to resurrect our site from its hacked and smoldering ashes only to tear it down by September 1st to comply with a legal order we have no resources to fight, we said “fuck it.”
*Sigh*
You lost us guys.
BestofStLouis.com, run by Max Bemberg, Ben DeMeyer and Alex Luft, were standing on that methaphorical street corner saying the RFT was bullying them and people were feeling it, getting behind the little guy…and then they pushed it…”Oh and we think they had hackers attack our website.” they might as well have said “…once the RFT rolls out their alien news print brainwashing technology their plan will be complete!”
To the Riverfront Time’s credit they did post about this item on their DailyRFT blog last Friday and allowed comments which, overall, carried a mixed sentiment.
Meanwhile at Punching Kitty headquarters (…which is a mountain with a giant kitty-head carved in to it. It’s over by Grand and Natural Bridge Road, you wouldn’t have seen it.)
One more St. Louis website bites the dust and we take a step closer to being that web-version of Boardwalk with 2 big red hotels on it. A few more fake cease-and-desist letters and us, along with our army of hackers, will rule the St. Louis website world!!
Oh, and CityTV with your “Best of STL”?! Nice try. We all know “STL” is just short of “St. Louis”! You’re next.
