You may recall that in early September we reported on the existence of the website www.glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. The Internet meme, “Did Glenn Beck Murder and Rape a Young Girl in 1990?” (answer: no), initially began as a Fark thread and was shortly thereafter developed into its own website, attracting a great deal of attention. It probably goes without saying that Glenn Beck was not thrilled by this and quickly filed a lawsuit against the site’s anonymous owners. From our post at the time:

Beck’s lawyers went after the domain registrar, asking it to take the site offline and turn over the name of the site’s anonymous owner. They also filed a case with the World Internet Property Organization, “the group which handles the worldwide domain dispute resolution process, on the grounds that the new website was improperly using Glenn Beck’s trademarked name.” Techdirt has a copy of the domain name dispute his lawyers filed here.

No such luck for Glenn Beck. The World Internet Property Organization (WIPO) has just ruled that the site, described by its owner Isaac Eiland-Hall as a “satirical critique of Beck’s conspiratorial politics,” was “strongly protected” under the First Amendment. A ruling, which I imagine may further open a floodgate for the creation of similarly extreme sites should Beck remain as zeitgeisty and controversial as he has been these last few months. From the ruling:

WIPO’s arbitration panel agreed that the website appeared “to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that (Eiland-Hall) appears genuinely to believe is employed by (Beck) in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason (Eiland-Hall) can be said to be making a political statement.”

So there you have it, First Amendment practitioners make strange bedfellows. Eiland-Hall, however, was apparently not satisfied with merely winning the case. After the decision was announced Eiland-Hall opted to hand over the website domain name (the site is now down) to Beck, himself, accompanied by this letter:

“It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a seas of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles…

Rather than choosing to strive for excellence and civic contribution, you simply pander the fears and insecurities of your audience. And in the process, you do them, and us all, a great deal of harm.

Shame on you Mr. Beck…”

So, perhaps one lesson here is: live by the Constitution, put up with Internet by the Constitution. We’ll have to wait and see whether Beck, a very vocal lover of the Constitution and all those involved in the writing of it, makes a public response to this when he returns to his show later this week.

As Ars Technica reports, Beck’s lawyers went after the domain registrar, asking it to take the site offline and turn over the name of the site’s anonymous owner. They also filed a case with the World Internet Property Organization, “the group which handles the worldwide domain dispute resolution process, on the grounds that the new website was improperly using Glenn Beck’s trademarked name.” Techdirt has a copy of the domain name dispute his lawyers filed here.

As we wrote last week, the joke is in poor taste. Adolescent guys may think that “rape” and “murder” are funny words to throw around, but they are real, traumatic events in many people’s lives. Ars Technica also reports that the site owner “had a moment of pause when someone wrote in to him saying that she had been raped as a young girl and that she found the site grotesque rather than humorous or insightful.”

It’s also ineffective politically. Beck has used some heavy-handed scare tactics over the past few months, but hurling the worst insults imaginable at him lets him off the hook. If your critique of Beck is that he’s lowered the level of discourse, the “satire/parody” of going a step further doesn’t compensate for the fact that you’re making things worse. This forum post expresses the point that the more earnest memesters were trying to make, though it may have gotten lost in the noise:

Still, Beck’s trying to end the meme/rumor by lawsuit will have the opposite effect, at least on the Internet. As Gawker’s John Cook points out, Beck’s “efforts to shut it down will only increase the number of times ‘Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990′ are encountered by Google’s indexing bots.” Which doesn’t even take into account all of the mischief this will inspire pissed-off forumers to wreak.

Update #3, 4:30pm: “Glenn Beck murder” and “Glenn Beck rapist” are now top suggestions when you do a Google search for Glenn Beck.

Reddit readers may have noticed a storm of recent posts getting a massive number of up votes (like this one) with some variant of the question “Did Glenn Beck Murder and Rape a Young Girl in 1990″? According to this site, which has emerged as a hub for the meme, the whole thing started a mere 4 days ago on a Fark thread. They’ve since Jokerized Beck and flooded sites like Yahoo! Answers, YouTube, and Twitter with the question.

People will ask the question and not answer it, insisting that Beck “prove that he didn’t;” supposedly, this parallels Beck’s argumentative style. The bottom of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com reads, “Notice: This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven’t yet seen proof that he didn’t. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.” Really, though? It all comes across as a malicious, masterfully executed prank whose pranksters were grasping for a higher political justification.

Still, expect to see more of it. This image from Beck’s Encyclopedia Dramatica page, featuring the Anonymous suit in front of an American flag with the words “The 19/90 Project” in front of it (below),  suggests that the libelous Beck meme may just be getting started. The YouTube video also has an Anonymous icon, and the poster complains that YouTube has frozen his view count, which could mean coordinated blasts of traffic.

Anonymous has an outsized presence on the Internet, thanks to sheer numbers, dedication, and l33t hacking skills. When they set themselves upon going after a target, like Scientology, they’ll swarm like piranhas until they get bored and move on to something else. This time, Glenn Beck may have found himself in their crosshairs.

Update 12:30pm: A few more images associated with the campaign. Note the dates: all of these were created just a few days ago and have an astonishing number of responses.

Above: A dubious-looking poll on Twiigs.com.

Below: the anti-Beck site is the #4 topic on Reddit this week — and it was just posted yesterday.

Update 2, 2:30 pm: a commenter who seems familiar with the matter writes that while a fringe of Anonymous may be involved, the majority of the group isn’t behind it. I’ve also removed a reference to 4chan which didn’t say that 4chan was behind the campaign, but in retrospect was somewhat misleading.

Update 3, 4:30pm: “Glenn Beck murder” and “Glenn Beck rapist” are now top Google suggestions when you search Glenn Beck.

Finally, as Mediaite commenter m points out, there’s also a faked mugshot of Beck and a faked Durham police report from 1990.

(h/t The Stranger’s Slog)