Thread: The Emperors New Clothes or Name Registry Cash Cow?

The joys of MySpace - I recently started noticing very spammy bulletins on MySpace from a company in America who is running a burlesque agency of sorts - they are talking about a name registry, which seems ok initially until you try it. So far the only name I know of that's registered and has any fame value is Dita von Teese. The following names are not:

Julie Atlas Muz (Miss Exotic World 2006 winner)
Michelle L'armour (Miss Exotic World 2005 winner)
Miss Dirty Martini (Miss Exotic World 2004 winner) I also tried just Dirty Martini
Kitten DeVille (Miss... oh you get the idea)

I also tried Satans Angel, Immodesty Blaize and Kittie Klaw... guess what... they are all available and apparently all available for registering.

Now the fun begins - the organisation behind the name registry will register your name for the sum of £15 to £50 approximately (1 year to a lifetime - Ditas is only unavailable for 10 years!) - unlike at least two other online resources that do the same thing for free.

And it gets worse - I'm do not know the laws of the USA so I cannot say for defnate that the info is a manipulative lie to get money but I will state that I believe it is so - the owner of this licence to print money name registry has stated that they are just like Bandname.com, except that Bandname register band names for life for £6.90. The people behind this burlesque name registry talk about performers losing the rights to their names once congress recognises their book and someone else has registered that name! Apparently the Screen Actors Guild in the USA and Equity in the UK are useless compared to this book that will be published and will be a legally enforceable entity. Strangely the website also states that in a case of usng someone elses name you could be legally liable in many cases.

Of course, the legal disclaimer on this burlesque name registry site states that the sevice is for fun only and not recognised by any government agency.

The website come MySpace also runs an 'agency' that charges to join and accepts donations!

My question is to the more knowledgeable in the entertainment scene - could this group actually create a so-called burlesque name registry book that would be legally enforceable like bandname or am I correct - this group is trying to get cash for nothing?

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I've just been reading that very bulletin. £15 a month! I think not! I'll save my money instead for a flight to go and beat up whoever wants to fight for my name ;-)

I don't think there'll be many takers at that price. I had been wondering about their new online site, but as there's nothing to see yet, and after seeing this side of their business, again I think not

What a con. I hate people like that. Im sure that there would be some law somewhere to stop them from doing this.

xx

Originally Posted by Gehenna

The joys of MySpace - I recently started noticing very spammy bulletins on MySpace from a company in America who is running a burlesque agency of sorts - they are talking about a name registry, which seems ok initially until you try it...

This company were recently banned from MoB for spamming the site with adverts for their talent agency - again something that people are expected to pay something like £100 a year for. We then heard on the grapevine that they had taken exception and started bitching about us on MySpace as they decided that 'MoB had it in for the company'. They then took the bitchy blogs down after complaints from several performers.

Originally Posted by Gehenna

And it gets worse - I'm do not know the laws of the USA so I cannot say for defnate that the info is a manipulative lie to get money but I will state that I believe it is so - the owner of this licence to print money name registry has stated that they are just like Bandname.com, except that Bandname register band names for life for £6.90.

I actually do lots of work with the guy who owns bandname.com - he is also the guy who discovered and managed Duran Duran (and to a lesser extent, Kajagoogoo) during the eighties - strangely enough we spoke on the phone just yesterday about a different project. It's not a license to print money at all. Most of the money that Bandname.com makes is through targetting their userbase with relevent offers - eg insurance, studios etc... The £6.90 is simply there as small barrier to entry so that people don't register names willy-nilly.

Originally Posted by Gehenna

The people behind this burlesque name registry talk about performers losing the rights to their names once congress recognises their book and someone else has registered that name!

That won't happen and if the claim wasn't so worrying, it would be laughable. For a start, congress have much bigger fish to fry. They're fighting wars on two fronts, there's the credit crunch and the elections. Quite why they're suddenly going to make time to give all-encompasing powers to a site like this is beyond me. Decisions like this are simply not taken by US Congress - and even if they were, they would have no juristiction over the UK or anywhere else.

Originally Posted by Gehenna

Apparently the Screen Actors Guild in the USA and Equity in the UK are useless compared to this book that will be published and will be a legally enforceable entity. Strangely the website also states that in a case of usng someone elses name you could be legally liable in many cases.

Again this makes no sense whatsoever and it completely blasts their name registry concept into smithereens. What they are saying is that if you register someone elses name as your own then you could be sued. Therefore there is actually no point in registering any names with this service because they're not legally binding.

A flawed plan to say the least!

Originally Posted by Gehenna

Of course, the legal disclaimer on this burlesque name registry site states that the sevice is for fun only and not recognised by any government agency.

There are many more fun things to spend £15 a month (or £180 a year) on. For £180 a year, you could register about 20 dotcom domains. Legally these carry much more weight than registering your name with something like this.

Originally Posted by Gehenna

The website come MySpace also runs an 'agency' that charges to join and accepts donations!

Well it does promise 'worldwide exposure'!

Originally Posted by Gehenna

My question is to the more knowledgeable in the entertainment scene - could this group actually create a so-called burlesque name registry book that would be legally enforceable like bandname or am I correct - this group is trying to get cash for nothing?

From what I can gather, they are trying to offer a service like MoB, but charge a hefty membership for it. Exactly what NOT to do if you're trying to create a community. They also seem to be claiming to be 'in talks about having a clothing line produced' - all before they've launched their proper site or created an identifiable brand. Quite who they would be marketing this exclusive line of fashion too is anybodys guess. Perhaps it's the same people who would pay to join an agency which hasn't launched yet or pay to register their name with a 'fun' service.

I have no doubt that they will eventually get their main website up and running and stop pointing it to their MySpace page, but with claims like the ones below, it seems a little far fetched:

• "Imagine one day a famous celebrity is surfing the net looking for the next music Video Idea, Pops on the page and decides to book a handful of girls off our site!
  For a start, it's the management/production teams of famous celebrities that tend to look for talent, not the celebrities themselves. Secondly, talent for music videos is normally sourced locally. Why go to the expense of flying girls in from all corners of the world to appear in the background of a music video when they can simply source talent from their own city (I believe that L.A. has quite a few people who want to get noticed) and pay them a pittence and their bus fare home. Also, things like this are normally done with a live audition. Management teams have better things to do than trawling through a million and one agency sites to look at pictures of people.
• "Imagine a big modeling agency searching the web looking for a variety of pinups finds what they are looking for on BBE."
  Again, this is not the way that the industry works! Model agencies have a vested interest in promoting people who are on their books. They don't search rival sites in order to find talent.
• Anything can happen from here & it will!

They also tell people to 'take advantage of our early sign up, it wont last much longer'. I suggest that you wait until they start offering their service for free - it won't be much longer!

Cheers for your reply James - I figured you would be more knowledgeable than most.

Just to clarify - I wasn't calling Bandname a license to print money - as far as I'm concerned £6.90 for a lifetime in print is peanuts.

And yes, I remember those 'MoB are evil bastards they banned us unfairly' bulletins, my wife and I wandered over to the MoB forum to see what the fuss was all about and noticed a bunch of cross forum posting spam - bit like the MySpace batches of spam bulletins that appear 5 at a time. Which reminds me, I must go and remove said MySpace people from my friends lists.

Originally Posted by Gehenna

Just to clarify - I wasn't calling Bandname a license to print money - as far as I'm concerned £6.90 for a lifetime in print is peanuts.

I never thought that you were calling it a license to print money, I knew you were referring to this other site. My point was that if bandname.com need to make their money from other services and they've been around for something like ten years and have the inside track with people like Sony BMG etc... then a startup site, service a tiny niche market and trying to charge way over the odds is a total none starter.

Originally Posted by Gehenna

And yes, I remember those 'MoB are evil bastards they banned us unfairly' bulletins, my wife and I wandered over to the MoB forum to see what the fuss was all about and noticed a bunch of cross forum posting spam

The funny thing about this was this all happened when Kittie and I were sitting in a restaurant in Cannes! I was eating carpaccio at the time! We have automatic spam filters which sweep the site every hour or so which deletes cross-posted messages and bans people for repeated offences!

I had absolutely no idea who these people were until we were informed that they'd taken exception to the fact that they had been caught out by our filters!

And for the record, the carpaccio was delicious!

Banned by Spam Filters - that's funny.

Hi all
I no who these people who run this site are. I have even sadly done a gig with them as have a good few performers I know. We also use this gig as a bench mark of how bad a gig is, to be honest I still have not done one that has been worse, for reasons that are to many to go into here. They are lovely people they just don't have very much experience but think they no everything about business and burlesque which I am sorry to say I don't think they do. I also read this about name registry and it did worry me so thank you for bringing it up as I don't feel I have anything to worry about now. Sadly I don't think this agency is going to work and I do think they are charging to much for it. As I said they are nice people just very inexperienced.
Diva x

Originally Posted by DivaHollywood

I have even sadly done a gig with them as have a good few performers I know. We also use this gig as a bench mark of how bad a gig is, to be honest I still have not done one that has been worse...

Eek! I thought that **** ***** and **** ***** were joking when they said this! Oh dear!
:shock:

Creative people should always be wary of any agent who attempts to charge them money for the apparent privelege of being their agent. It is the agent's job to get money for the creative person and thus earn a percentage.

Originally Posted by James

I
The funny thing about this was this all happened when Kittie and I were sitting in a restaurant in Cannes! I was eating carpaccio at the time! We have automatic spam filters which sweep the site every hour or so which deletes cross-posted messages and bans people for repeated offences!

I had absolutely no idea who these people were until we were informed that they'd taken exception to the fact that they had been caught out by our filters!

And for the record, the carpaccio was delicious!

We actually only found out about their disgruntlement and subsequent MySpace MoB bashing, about a week after we returned from Cannes. Until then we had had no idea of the existence of these people nor any situation that had occurred and then vanished.

When I was thus directed to their MySpace, I was astonished to read that not only were they offering all of our free services (classifieds/auctions, forums, talent network, podcasts, galleries.....) at a cost, but they were also brazenly claiming that 'THERE IS NO OTHER SITE LIKE THIS ON THE WEB'.

??