CALGARY, CANADA — Maybe Ryan Draper figured he’d done his part for the customers searching for InformCycle.ca but keying in InformCycle.com. Maybe he figured that he’d played nice long enough and he needed to do something shocking to get his ex-employer’s attention. Or maybe Web surfers should be more careful about what they type in and not complain when they don’t arrive where they’d hoped – or see what they’d intended.However the “maybe” scenarios play out, one thing that’s for certain is that Draper has to cough up $15,000 for Inform Cycle as part of making amends for behavior that a judge says “smacks of malice.”
At issue is the fact that Draper purchased InformCycle.com in 2004. For a while, Draper forwarded traffic that hit his site by accident, while actually looking for InformCycle.ca. But for 16 days in November, Draper decided to have a little fun – and make a little money – by redirecting all visitors that landed on his .com to a gay porn site.
According to Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Scott Brooker, that’s an actionable offense.
Brooker believes that the fact Draper previously worked for Patrick and Lorie Griffith, the owners of Inform Cycle, and contends that they owe him money proves that “the true reason for Draper’s actions was to embarrass and harm Inform and its principals, the Griffiths, by attempting to link them to this smut, thereby harming the goodwill that Inform was attempting to establish in its new business.”
