Chris Raettig said he set up his site offering visitors the
anthems of several companies in MP3 format because “they were so
bad, they were good.” He comments, “The KPMG anthem in particular
was hilarious.” For several minutes, the firm’s anthem repeats the
mantra:
"KPMG
We're strong as can be
A dream of power and energy
We go for the goal
Together we hold
On to our vision of global strategy."
Raettig’s site quotes an unnamed KPMG insider describing it ask,
“awful, awful, awful and we are very (very) embarrassed to be
associated with it.” Raettig received an e-mail from KPMG which
noted that his site contained a link to KPMG’s site at kpmg.com.
The firm wrote: “Please be aware that such links require that a
formal Agreement exist between our two parties, as mandated by our
or organisation’s Web Link Policy.”
Raettig replied, refusing to remove the link and posted the
firm’s e-mail on his web site. Legally, KPMG is in largely
uncharted territory. While it might succeed in persuading a court
to stop him linking to pages within its site, known as deep
linking, it will be hard for the firm to argue that he should not
link to the home page at kpmg.com. KPMG has little to gain by
taking a firm stance against the existence of the link, but the
risk for the firm is embarrassment and, potentially, damage to its
reputation. Raettig finds the whole dispute entertaining and has
won the support of many others citing freedom of speech.
In another recent case of a large business shooting itself in
the foot by taking action against an individual, Canadian Tire, a
large retailer, took a claim for the domain name CrappyTire.com to
the World Intellectual Property Organisation. It lost its claim,
but also had its name ridiculed in the international media.
