These photos of urinals were posted to urinal.net and the airport was not amused. Urinal.net posts photos of urinals from around the world, but Lester B. Pearson terminal refuses to confirm or deny the existence of toilet fixtures in or around their airport. They would rather believe that, not unlike the future world of Star Trek, nobody in the future world of Toronto would do anything as disgusting as eliminating waste solids or liquids while on the premises. They complained back in November of 2004, and I just found out about it thanks to a Best Of link on BoingBoing.

In complying with the GTAA’s demands however, they opted for sarcasm; thankfully.

The urinals of an airborne vessel take-off and landing facility located in a suburb of Canada’s largest city
This facility is located on the outskirts of said city and is named after a person whose name starts with a ‘P’ and ends with an ‘earson’. The three-letter code for this facility includes the letters Y, Y and Z, necessarily in that order.
Urinal Dot Net is not permitted to disclose the actual name of this facility, due to threats of legal action from an organization whose name we’re also not allowed to mention. We can only say that it goes by an acronym with the letters Gee-Tee-Aye-Aye.

The new complainant is even better.

According to a cease and decist letter recieved from a law firm, representing the proprietors of this resort, Urinal Dot Net is accused of violating federal laws that prohibit the “…[use] in commerce [of] any word, term, name, symbol, or device…” that might “…cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association…” between Urinal Dot Net and the resort in question. Although the name of said resort cannot be published, the name does happen to be composed from…

Look below the picture in case you couldn’t decipher the clues and arrive at MARCO BEACH OCEAN RESORT. If you look at the original page for the hotel, it appears that they have in fact removed the offending page; so long as you don’t click on any links…

Techdirt has an interesting bit of information on the cease and desist letter that was delivered to the Urinal.net fellows;

apparently the lawyers claim that the cease & desist is copyrighted to them and that the recipient is not allowed to forward it to anyone. I wonder if that means they can’t even forward it to a lawyer?

So, the urinal guys have been served with a Cease and Desist demand on the basis that they’re diluting the MARCO BEACH OCEAN RESORT’s good name, and causing confusion among the public about the good name of MARCO BEACH OCEAN RESORT. Well, that’s the story anyhow, as they aren’t able to print the C&D since the lawyers claim copyright. I don’t believe that you can copyright court documents (maybe you can in some places?), so I would imagine that the head web designer at the MARCO BEACH OCEAN RESORT sent the email C&D and not a real lawyer. Perhaps it is a real lawyer, but one that has no idea about copyright?

I’d love to know if C&Ds can be claimed to be under copyright – anyone have a clue?

I would suggest that the Urinal.net guys submit their C&D to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse…