Slipknot have filed a lawsuit against the anonymous owner of the Slipknot.com domain in an attempt to reclaim the website, which is currently used to sell counterfeit band merchandise.
For nearly 25 years, the anonymous cyber-squatter has sat on the Slipknot URL, forcing the actual Slipknot to instead make Slipknot1.com their official website. While the two websites have co-existed since 2001, the fact that Slipknot.com has been routing wayward fans to links for “Cheap Promo Products” and “Costume Masks” — knockoffs of the merch and masks the band actually sells — necessitated the lawsuit.
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The band filed the lawsuit, obtained by Domain Name Wire, into a Virginia federal court earlier this week under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. The identity of the Slipknot .com domain owner is still unknown, as the person — who purchased the domain in February 2001, two years after the group’s debut album was released — is linked to the site by a post office box in the Grand Caymans.
“The domain name was registered in an effort to profit off of plaintiff’s goodwill and to trick unsuspecting visitors — under the impression they are visiting a website owned, operated or affiliated with plaintiff — into clicking on web searches and other sponsored links,” the band’s lawyer Craig Reilly wrote in the lawsuit.
“A fan of plaintiff or someone who otherwise wanted to purchase authorized Slipknot merchandise would undoubtedly visit the slipknot.com website assuming it belonged to plaintiff and then purchase the Slipknot merchandise linked to on the site, causing damages to plaintiff.”
As of Saturday, the Slipknot.com is still active, offering the bootlegged merch as well as “Image Generative AI”:
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