Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#71

Post by joshAg »

Dr_tldr wrote: post #69
kedean wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rule usually only applies if the word doesn't have other valid uses. For example, 'cracker' is a racial slur for white people, but it also means an edible snack, so it's in the clear. To my knowledge, the word 'kike' does not have a non-offensive meaning, at least in the english speaking world.

Again, only in the United States. The word "kikel" is the yiddish word for "circle", and illiterate Jewish immigrants coming to the US didn't want to write an X by their name because they inferred they were being asked to draw a cross. Once this was figured out as the problem, Jewish immigrants were instructed (in yiddish) to write a circle instead, thus they were referred to as "kikes" by immigration officials. Sinc…

The rest of the world doesn't have to deal with it if they don't want to. This is easily solved by registering the trademark with someone other than the US, establishing the brand and trademark and then coming to the US.

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#72

Post by stordoff »

earlyresort wrote: post #36
josh2600 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are parsing it incorrectly. Can I be 'kik'-ed. Kik being the operative word here not the slur to which you refer.

Perhaps my background makes me a little more attuned to this particular word, but 'kike' practically leapt off the page to me. In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule. I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double ente…

I'm a native English speaker, and probably would have made the same mistake. 'Kick' conjugates as 'kicked', so I would have conjugated 'Kik' as 'Kiked' and 'Kikked' just looks weird to me. Though I've heard the term 'kike' before, I certainly don't hear it enough (I'm in the UK FWIW) that I would have recognised it unless it was pointed out (and obviously at that point would adjust the name).

Your posts come across as ascribing malice to a fairly trivial (IMO) mistake. Politely pointing out that the name could be misinterpreted to be a derogatory term would have been a been course of action.

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#73

Post by [deleted] »

stordoff wrote: post #72
earlyresort wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps my background makes me a little more attuned to this particular word, but 'kike' practically leapt off the page to me. In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule. I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double ente…

I'm a native English speaker, and probably would have made the same mistake. 'Kick' conjugates as 'kicked', so I would have conjugated 'Kik' as 'Kiked' and 'Kikked' just looks weird to me. Though I've heard the term 'kike' before, I certainly don't hear it enough (I'm in the UK FWIW) that I would have recognised it unless it was pointed out (and obviously at that point would adjust the name). Your posts come across a…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#74

Post by [deleted] »

josai wrote: post #58

Without wishing to otherwise get involved at all, I'd like to say that as an Australian native english speaker, I have never heard of the word "kike" or that it is apparently a slur against jews. Why would anyone else in the world know that? I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Ima…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#75

Post by jacalata »

josai wrote: post #58

Without wishing to otherwise get involved at all, I'd like to say that as an Australian native english speaker, I have never heard of the word "kike" or that it is apparently a slur against jews. Why would anyone else in the world know that? I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Ima…

As an Australian native English speaker, I'd heard of it - but I was a very widely read kid, which is probably where I came across it.

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#76

Post by jacalata »

Dr_tldr wrote: post #69
kedean wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rule usually only applies if the word doesn't have other valid uses. For example, 'cracker' is a racial slur for white people, but it also means an edible snack, so it's in the clear. To my knowledge, the word 'kike' does not have a non-offensive meaning, at least in the english speaking world.

Again, only in the United States. The word "kikel" is the yiddish word for "circle", and illiterate Jewish immigrants coming to the US didn't want to write an X by their name because they inferred they were being asked to draw a cross. Once this was figured out as the problem, Jewish immigrants were instructed (in yiddish) to write a circle instead, thus they were referred to as "kikes" by immigration officials. Sinc…

Do you know of any other uses of the word in English?

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#77

Post by PhasmaFelis »

josai wrote: post #58

Without wishing to otherwise get involved at all, I'd like to say that as an Australian native english speaker, I have never heard of the word "kike" or that it is apparently a slur against jews. Why would anyone else in the world know that? I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Ima…

I take it that the original project said "kiked"? As an American, I wouldn't blame the creator for that since they clearly didn't know about the usage, and I think it's uncouth to assume malevolence here. It's not reasonable to expect people to exhaustively check anything they publish for bad words in any language on Earth.

Still, if you're publishing for an international audience, it makes sense and is polite to make a change once you've been alerted. I think Parro-it handled this very well. (Especially since, as others have pointed out, the proper English conjugation of "kik" is "kikked".)

This sort of thing does go both ways, BTW. There have been several significant media flaps over the word "spaz," which just means "clumsy/hyper/awkward" in American English, but is a pretty serious ableist slur in British English.

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#79

Post by michaelmrose »

nickodell wrote: post #31
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, the rule is essentially confusion: is a consumer likely to be confused? In both cases (yours and kik) the likelihood of real confusion is unlikely, although admittedly sunglasses are a couple steps more removed than a messaging app. Good reading is the Apple V Apple series of court cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

True, but the brouhaha over kik was over npm's module name dispute policy. So, it seems like the operative questions are 1) How likely is X to create an npm package? and 2) If a node.js developer types `npm install X`, are they more likely to expect X's package, or my package? For the parent commenter, 1 is a definite no, and 2 is kinda wishy-washy.

I don't think anyone on earth installs a package with npm without specifically knowing what they are installing. This is in contrast to users going to foo.com expecting to find foo corps website.

Going to foo.com is a very serviceable strategy for getting foo corps website and if it's not you have invested 2 seconds and risked nothing.

Contrast that with npm unless you specifically know the package by name getting foo corps software by npm install foo is a total crap shoot that is only somewhat likely to succeed will cost you as much as a minute or more of your time and is installing software considered by most technical people to be risky.

Nobody is likely to confuse foo package with foo Corp unless the description of the package is unclear thus name and description should be considered together to decide if confusion exists.

Re: Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked

#80

Post by stephenboyd »

mholt wrote: post #16

There's also https://github.com/egoist/is-trademarked-cli - a CLI tool I came across the other day, to see if a name is trademarked.

That's actually the dependency that provides the trademark checking ability of OP's tool. And its first commit was two days ago, so it was probably also a response to the NPM kik-storm.
Post reply on HN