31–40 of 54 posts
A bit off topic but Facebook sends fake emails to me, claiming to be from my wife's Facebook account, inviting me to join Facebook. She actually doesn't use her account and only set it up as a test, months ago. I guess they can use paid-for email logs farming the to: and cc:, to associate her to me. Anyone else experienced that?
"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…
But twitter.com/avtr is basically worthless for most people. Clearly noone deserves to earn millions just for registering /avtr. If they think it's worth less than promotional items, they're getting a good deal. There's no reason they couldn't hold out for more if they wanted, but they'd have to run the risk that at some point it wouldn't be worth buying. Further, /avtr is probably not much better than /avatar, /avat…
Still, if this story is true, this reflects poorly on FB.
A bit off topic but Facebook sends fake emails to me, claiming to be from my wife's Facebook account, inviting me to join Facebook. She actually doesn't use her account and only set it up as a test, months ago. I guess they can use paid-for email logs farming the to: and cc:, to associate her to me. Anyone else experienced that?
Did she ever sign up for the "see email contacts of yours are on facebook" thing?
We already have a good system for establishing identity on the internet. They're called domain names, and they have reasonable ownership semantics and established case law. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea to use a URL on someone's platform with ToS allowing arbitrary revocation and reassignment.
EDIT: just wanted to add a case, lookup nissan.com
"One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar, we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero" The nerve of some people. OK, maybe "avtr" is not all that great, but to think that they'll give you some useless plastic crap (or poisonous coke) and then proceed to make their millions. It just shows how the big corps think about the "normal" people - they are just sheep, or "consum…
Hey, corporations are people too! The Supreme Court said so! Be nice!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-684415688278839051&...
Documentary is standard movie length, but highly recommended. The readable bytes, if no time to watch:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2004-03-28-corp_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, corporations are people too! The Supreme Court said so! Be nice!
Actually corporations are more than people. This case is one data point. I can't imagine Harman Int paid facebook so much money to be noticable when it's added to their pile. We (many of us) just assume that a corporation has a right, stronger than an individual, to a name in a medium. If I were human Harman I would have responded to corporate Harman that, thank you very much but facebook has already stolen my name o…
We already have a good system for establishing identity on the internet. They're called domain names, and they have reasonable ownership semantics and established case law. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea to use a URL on someone's platform with ToS allowing arbitrary revocation and reassignment.
Domain laws are pretty unreliable and disproportionally favor big companies filing complaints. It's a VERY broken system. EDIT: just wanted to add a case, lookup nissan.com
Despite their best efforts, Nissan (the car company) has never been able to get it from its rightful owner. Sounds like the system is working to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, obviously anyone can sue anyone for anything. That doesn't make it anything other than an absolute no-hoper of a case. For a threat to sue to have any effect at all it has to be at least somewhat credible. And if you disagree with that, pay me $1000 or I'll sue you! ;-)
> That doesn't make it anything other than an absolute no-hoper of a case Errm. No, sorry. I wished that was true but it really isn't. If you are a corporation suing another corporation for trademark infringement on something as silly as what is essentially a path name then you can only lose, even if you win. After all, both parties can expect to pay a solid amount of money to their lawyers, and only in rare exceptio…
By caving they are in effect setting their own precedent that trademark holders can demand and will receive arbitrary URLs on their private web site. You would think that this outcome would be so bad for them that they'd gladly pay practically any amount to avoid it.
So no - I don't think there is any credible legal reasoning behind FB's decision on this one. I would expect it is an internal policy, probably combined in this case with money and/or advertising commits changing hands.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That doesn't make it anything other than an absolute no-hoper of a case Errm. No, sorry. I wished that was true but it really isn't. If you are a corporation suing another corporation for trademark infringement on something as silly as what is essentially a path name then you can only lose, even if you win. After all, both parties can expect to pay a solid amount of money to their lawyers, and only in rare exceptio…
What you say is true, but you're omitting the fact that judges routinely order the accusing party in nuisance lawsuits to pay the defendant's costs. $50k is nothing to facebook in the long run, especially since they are quite likely to get it back, and may in fact be worth it to establish a clear precedent in such cases - if such a precedent does not exist already. By caving they are in effect setting their own prece…
That's not so 'routinely' as you think, and these costs are not equal to the actual costs billed by the defendants lawyers.
I wished it was, then I could recover a 100K or so from various idiots that sued us over the years.
> especially since they are quite likely to get it back,
They really likely would not. The judge might even rule against them for a variety of technical reasons.
Going to court is much like going to the casino, only for much higher stakes.
> By caving they are in effect setting their own precedent that trademark holders can demand and will receive arbitrary URLs on their private web site. You would think that this outcome would be so bad for them that they'd gladly pay practically any amount to avoid it.
Yes, that's what you would think. But the fact that they don't should make you wonder if you aren't missing something.
They're evil, but they're definitely not stupid. I really do not think that this case behind the scenes is as simple as what it looks like on the outside.
Trademark law is tricky and the outcome of such a case is by no means certain. I'm fairly sure that facebook made that provision in their terms of service exactly for cases like this, because standing up for the 'rights' of their users over what is essentially a string of bits on a server is not in the interest of their bottom line.
Only a very small fraction of their users will ever run in to this problem, and only a very small fraction of those will have sympathy on their side.
> I would expect it is an internal policy,
Agreed, in fact it is a published policy.
> probably combined in this case with money and/or advertising commits changing hands.
If there ever is any proof of that then I think the sentiment will change drastically, for now - and I stress that that could change any moment - it does not look as though 'harman' has been assigned to any other party.