At Brayve we have been doing this the things we do for over eleven years. For most of our clients, its business as usual, but today, we had an exceptionally good day.

We don't take on work from certain industries because, for us, our client's industry becomes our own. It is really important that those who hire us see a tangible result. If we build an e-commerce solution, they want to see the online shop working, when we attach a marketing package a return on investment is due.

Recently we took on a project portfolio for Lgb Alliance. Our business is a female, lesbian and disability empowerment environment. Our owner Ruth Richards-Hill, was from one of the poster couples that promoted the equal marriage campaign in Scotland for the Equality Network. She knows and understands the complexities of politics within politics and how the threads of issues within the LGBT community are diverse.

SO this project became something special. As soon as the LGB Alliance announced its existence, the detractors came out of the woodwork. Very few actually asked for facts and engaged with the reasoning for this groups existence. Being labelled a hate group, it is remarkable how many trans people have actually stood up to support their arguments.

Ruth who married a transwoman articulated her viewpoints and why she supports the LGB Alliance in a personal blog post which you can read over here.

On Thursday, the Dispute Resolution Service at Nominet - the body responsible for the registration, management and legalities surrounding UK domain registrations made a landmark decision over a case that had been dragging on for months. The expert decision-maker at the highest level of the process decided in favour of the LGB Alliance who had made a complaint against James Billingham inter alia that he had registered a domain using their name (an unregistered trademark) in bad faith and in order to obstruct obfuscate and damage their reputation.

His reply was so self-sabotaging that the LGB Alliance hardly needed to submit a response, except to make it perfectly clear that the case was about the intellectual property rights, the regulations surrounding domain registration and abuse applied. The case is made public once the decision is made and can be found by searching the Nominet case registry here. The case number is D00022121

 Billingham's claim was that his freedom of speech was being denied and his right to object and call our client a hate group was being subverted. Actually - he has not had a problem doing this and has subsequently registered further domains, to which of course there are further remedies.

The outcome of this case has come at a time where there has been a massive attempt by trans activists to silence the objections of gay and lesbians to legislation that while purportedly making the rights of trans people easier to access, will, in fact, compromise the rights of gay and lesbian people and also those of women and children.

Initially, the activists tried to shut down the Just Giving page of the LGB Alliance. Fortunately, on having seen the mission statement and the fact that the organisation has done nothing illegal, the page was restored.

If anything a really vociferous group of trans activists are denying the rights to the LGB Alliance that they demand for themselves.The outcome of this case illustrates that provided the LGB groups that seek to support and protect the interests of their own protected group, and to do so within the bounds of the law, they can do so without the deliberate obstruction of a differing activist group.

One of the core desires of the LGB Alliance, which is clear on their website, in their social media posts and elsewhere, is that there should be clear dignified dialogue and freedom of speech. Nowhere will you find a social media post from the LGB Alliance that spews any of the hateful, threatening or foul-mouthed rhetoric that they themselves receive on a daily basis.

Can a gay person be homophobic? Well, that really depends on who you ask. As we work in the world of digital, we contextualise these questions in the course of our work.

The LGB Alliance arose as a response to major changes within Stonewall, the LGBT charity that changed direction starting a little over five years ago. If you do a little research, you will see that Stonewall have changed the language that they use to define homosexuality, transgenderism and of course everything that comes with it, such as what it means to be non-binary, genderqueer or androgynous.

Stonewall was contacted by Ruth Richards-Hill on the 14th July and notified that Mr Billingham and others had redirected the domains in dispute to their website. The enquiry was made clear that the assumption could be taken that this was with their consent. During the conversation, the person messaged Paul Twocock who was allegedly in a meeting, and he responded by saying that he would return the call. He never did. The conversation went on for just under ten minutes. That is a lot of time to provide the information that Stonewall should possibly consider their position in advocating the redirection of abusive domain registrations to their website.

Ten weeks later and there is no evidence that Stonewall have done anything to stop the redirection of these domains. For a company that receives between six and eight million pounds a year of funding thirty percent of which is publicly funded it is astonishing that they do not have the resources to send ONE EMAIL to the abuse department of the registrars (a single company GoDaddy has registered all but one of the offending domains). Yep that all it takes, one email.

Neither can they claim that they don't know about these domains since they use Google Analytics (easily enough viewable in their page source)  which of course would provide all sources of traffic and the existence of these domain, the traffic sources would be identifiable.

So another question to ask is whether Stonewall have in fact been capitalising on the web traffic from this bad faith domain registrations which Nominet have ruled against.

They may declare that there was an oversight, but in all honesty in the Grand scheme of things Richards-Hill says that few corporates having been notified of an infringement of this nature would ignore such an enquiry altogether

So is Stonewall being homophobic? Well, they certainly are ignoring a group of people they claim to represent. Based on the ever-increasing following that LGB Alliance is growing for this very reason.

More interesting is whether Stonewall is going to stand by the redirection of a newly registered domain viz. lgballiance-is-a-hate-group.co.uk (no link is intentional - let's not give them the juice they want) and claim ignorance. The domain name itself abuses the trademark name of the group in trademark registration and is also exceptionally defamatory. Is Stonewall courting a similar action to James Billingham? Are they prepared to use public funds to defend a possible action that comes as a result of them doing something completely contrary to their own supposed demands and beliefs?

Hateful and divisive cooperation with activists that are breaking the rules seems to be something Stonewall is relishing being associated with.

We are so pleased that we are not and never will be a client of ours. We do not defend or support an ideology that supports the idea that some gay people are more equal than others - exactly the message that Stonewall is sending right now.

The outcome of this decision at a very high level, tells us that the rule of law still matters. That because a group has a differing opinion, their speech cannot be silenced, that their views matter too and that nobody can use manipulative procedures to bring those they disagree with down. 

It also provides evidence that LGB Alliance is not breaking the law, are a legitimately registered organisation with a protectable brand identity.

If they were, in fact, a hate group they would had a visit from the police by now, if not been shut down by larger powers in the system such as companies house.

The outcome sets a precedent and those that make these abusive registrations may not realise that a decision can be made preventing a person from persistent bad faith registrations, effectively cutting off their ability to publish online.

At Brayve we take pleasure in supporting the underdog. The behaviour of the big guns only makes us more resolute. And the behaviour of trolls only reinforces why they need to be removed from the digital sphere.

If you would like to support LGB Alliance please make a donation through their justgiving page.