Rival guilty of libel in hacking of coffee website
An employee of a gourmet coffee company is guilty of libel for hijacking a rival roaster’s website and linking it to pages displaying pornography and foul language, a jury has found.
Tim Dominick, roasting director of Sacred Grounds in Arcata, was found guilty Thursday of two counts of libel and one count of intentional infliction of emotional distress against the owners of Bayside Roasters.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. March 14, 2007 For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday March 14, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 3 inches; 106 words Type of Material: Correction
Libel case: A headline accompanying a brief article in the Feb. 18 California section incorrectly stated that an employee of Sacred Grounds in Arcata was found guilty of hacking into a rival coffeehouse’s website. Also, the accompanying article gave an incomplete version of the libel decision against him. A jury found that Tim Dominick bought rival Bayside Roasters’ website domain name when its registration lapsed and linked its address to a page containing off-color descriptions of a body part. Dominick was also judged to have caused a pornographic website to be the first site recommended on the Google search engine when users searched for “Bayside Roasters.”
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