Slashdot Mirror

No, there's actually a documented history of names being used for other purposes. This kind of thing has been going on for over a decade. FordReallySucks.com is all about the quest of big companies to squelch critical sites that use their name.

http://www.fordreallysucks.com/more_info.html

Brand reputation is not only legally protectable, it's one of the most valuable parts of intellectual property out there.

You are incorrect. Brand reputation is not protectable on its own. Otherwise, we would not have sites like FordReallySucks.com and IHateStarbucks.com. They are undeniably harmful to the brands to which they are related, and they are using the words "Ford" and "Starbucks" liberally. As another example, Consumer Reports is harmful to brand after brand when they report negatively. Companies continually compare their products to those of competitors while using their trademarked names, and the whole point of that is to harm competitor reputations and brands.

As far as I as a layman understand it, the basic point of trademarks, both with infringement and dilution, is to prevent consumer confusion. I understand that Apple is claiming that consumers might somehow be confused. But I think that's bogus: Psystar is just saying they are selling machines with Apple's MacOS X, which they are.

Equally, they are selling machines with Microsoft Windows, and with Linux. Unless you're asserting that Psystar's customers also think that they are buying a Microsoft computer or a Linus Torvalds computer, then it would seem to me that the average consumer understands the difference between the OS and the model of computer, and that any confusion going on is the normal consumer confusion, and not biased in any particular direction by Psystar's claims. Ergo, no trademark violation.

Whether Apple should be able to control who sells their software and how it gets installed seems like the actual interesting question here. The trademark claims strike me as the usual lawyerly sticks to beat people with until they run out of money.

Regardless of who's suing who in this mess, there won't be any new precedent set about linking to a website. 2600 Magazine won a court case in 2001 when Ford Motor Company tried to stop 2600 from linking to their website. Not only that, but one of the original sites from the tussle is still up. Here is the original news announcement from 2600.

Aero

The article clearly mentions a partnership with "Mazda, Ford, and GM."

They're 3 different companies. (Though Mazda is 1/3 owned by Ford.)

And besides, as we all remember from several years ago, Ford really sucks.

Sure, you can add the political slant to it, but I don't think it matters.. the 2600 folks already showed us domain registration to express an opinion, even when the domain includes a trademarked name, is ok by the courts: http://www.fordreallysucks.com/

FordReallySucks.com

2600 won

Too bad it wasn't in time for these guys

No. This is.

Okay, so Phoenix was renamed to avoid legal problems with the Phoenix BIOS people. Now I'm wondering whether we'll see more name changes to avoid legal problems from the Firebird people or the Thunderbird people.

Don't forget that Ford really sucks.

Whether you realize it or not, only the government can use force and violence on innocent people.

Ford or GM have never jailed anyone for buying a Toyota. If you aren't happy with the quality of Ford's automobiles or are put off by their business practices you have complete freedom to not purchase one.

If you aren't happy with how your State or Federal taxes are spent, try not paying them. Your ass will be in jail or your money will be taken from you (or both).

If you really believe corporations are so powerful, I'd think a strong central government would be the last thing you would want. It's a nexus of control run by easily bought off politicians. (Both Republicans and Democrats are easily bought, go read www.OpenSecrets.org if you don't believe me.)

Perhaps you can clarify what powers a corporation has (it can't vote), and how coroporations would go about limiting the freedoms Libertarians hold in principle?

I also find myself perplexed as to how private ownership of most everything can be equated to feudalism. Feudalism is a system of government whereby the government owns all the land, means of production, and the citizens are somehow indebted to the governor (or "King", lord, count, noble, or whatever). That sounds much more like primitive Communism/Stalinism to me than a free market with genuine private ownership.

Reminds me of the problems 2600 was having with ford. Ford didn't like them linking to thier site so they sued them. 2600 then found out that ford was sueing a bunch of people for stupid reasons, such as Jaguarenthusiastsclub.com, which is an animal site. You can read about it HERE. The case recently got droped BTW.

I just thought I'd point out a similar case: Ford Motor Company sued 2600 Magazine for having a link to ford.com. Recently Ford has dropped its appeal against 2600. Hmmm, I wonder if that's the first 2600 victory in court... Anyway, check out the details at www.fordreallysucks.com

that Ford really sucks, it's an awesome technology.

>But what were they going to bitch about? Anything
>in particular? I guess that's what I am curious
>about. Is it anything significant, or is it just
>another excuse to bitch?

Sounds like it was just an excuse to bitch.

From http://www.fordreallysucks.com/more_info.html

>Months after the threat from General Motors, we
>pointed the domain at various competitors of GM.
>It was our eventual plan either to find or put
>together a site that would provide a forum for
>people critical of the company. While that was
>being done, we pointed the domain to other sites
>that might be of interest to people who weren't
>big fans of General Motors. One of these (it made
>sense to us then and it still does now, albeit
>less so after what we've learned) was Ford.

I'm surprised any of these suits would have ever gotten anywhere.

The point was not go "get the suit anywahere"; I strongly suspect that Ford knew it would lose once this made it to court. The point was the scare 2600 into dropping the site. Like many other large companies, Ford uses this tactic in lieu of any actual legal right to shut down registrants of domains with "ford" in their names. fordreallysucks.com is full of anectodes of this.

Fortunately, 2600 doesn't scare easily. And the precedent set will help protect other domain name registrants who are being bullied by Corporate America.

Ford sucks. No, really, we mean it. Long and hard. And Ford swallows. Spit. Skeptical? Don't just take our word for it. Just ask the guy who registered fordsucks.com. Or the guy who registered classicvolvo.com and wound up facing a legal battle. (Yes, Volvo is owned by Ford, as is Mazda, Lincoln, Mercury, Jaguar and Aston-Martin.) Or you can ask Wally Rawson, a third-generation seller of replacement parts for Ford cars and trucks. Wally registered 4fordparts.com and 4fordtrucks.com as part of his parts business. Ford sued him. At the same time, Ford sued Hans Rekestad (the guy in Sweden running ClassicVolvo.com). The fordsucks guy was also named in the same lawsuit.

--SNIP--

Ford didn't just sue. Ford asked for $100,000 in damages. Not for all these cases put together - $100,000 per address! And Ford won't just let any of these people give up the names and walk away. Ford won't reimburse them for their registration and renewal costs.

Wally Rawson (the parts guy) didn't want to be bothered with the lawsuit, so he just gave Ford both names. Ford is still suing him. Ford tells him he can't crawl out of the soup until he pays Ford $6000.00 ($3000 per name). The fordsucks guy, evidently, decided it would be cheaper to pay the blackmail than to fight it out in court.

Read More

I thought that page was worth a read.

Ford Really Sucks

Reverse-engineering is fun. Reverse-engineering embedded systems is even more fun, because it's hard. Reverse-engineering safety-critical embedded systems is really challenging, and not for the stupid.

Now, what the author is talking about is reverse-engineering the systems that control AntiLock braking, ignition, and transmission control, among other things. It's a really cheap way to improve performance on a car.

Car companies (well, at least Ford) have a bad history when it comes to electronic civil liberties. At what point in reverse-engineering a throttle control system would you be "bypassing an access protection device"? Probably never. But consider that Adobe got someone jailed for breaking ROT13; Cuecat was XOR. If people start selling hot-rod software (and they are), how long will it be till auto manufacturers start answering Yes to the author's "is it encrypted" question. It might only be ROT13, but it would be enough to bust anyone who was selling firmware upgrades for a Mustang and put them out of business for good.

Anyone remember the 60 minutes Audi 5000 scandal? Where the car's fuel injection system was said to, in rare cases, cause the car to accelerate out of control, causing injury or death? Let your subconcious do the dreaming about the accidents that could come from improperly debugged ABS code or throttle control. Now imagine that someone hacks their car's firmware, crashes in a fireball, and their family sues the automaker. The automaker can't prove that the car was modified... at all.

My prediction: this stuff will scare automakers shitless, and they will fall all overthemselves to find a way to apply the DMCA to stopping the dissemination of reverse-engineering information.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Like fordreallysucks is going to be the pinnacle of unbiased journalism for this story.

And i'm linking to your modem! !!!!!!

I don't think I could sleep well tonight if i didn't mention the links that pissed Ford off so much that 2600 is now in a lawsuit (big news).

They registered fuckgeneralmotors.com which contains nothing but a single link to ford.com. You can find information about 2600's crusade here.

Just try to /. 2600

No, 2600 still owns FuckGeneralMotors.com and FordReallySucks.com. So, this might give them a leg up on the FordReallySucks.com site, but who knows about FuckGeneralMotors.com.

Ford sued 2600 for redirecting visitors of FuckGeneralMotors.com to Ford.com. Apparently visitors to the site might think that Ford is trying to harm GM. Ford's customers are stupid, I guess. They even have the transcript available on their website. However, the case is still pending.

According to Emanual Goldstein (aka Cereal Killer ;-) ), that the judge denied Ford an injunction on 2600's use of the domain is a good thing. They apparently don't want to be too heavy-handed.

Oh, and if you're feeling generous, you can donate from their online store. So far (11:45PM EST 19/06/01), donations have taken care of 23% of the fees.




kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.

Ford is suing 2600 for implying that Ford is sponsoring the www.fuckgeneralmotors.com domain because 2600 is pointing the domain to Ford.

This is a situation where Sony is actually stating that this non-existant person actually works for this newspaper.

You're ignoring the fact that, by fighting this case, they're setting a precident for future cases where someone tries to sue someone else over domain refferal. Read www.fordreallysucks.com. You'll then see that their fight dosen't have anything to do with ford's or gm's cars; it has everything to do with their behavior in regards to the internet; i.e. litigous, bullying, and irrational.

Linus has,in fact,grown,and explosively-JonKatz

If stopping people from thinking that they are the cause of this link were the only reason Ford were suing over domain names I would think it is okay. However as others have stated, there is proof to show that Ford is doing more than this.
I think this is a case where Ford, being a huge corporation, is throwing their weight around to try to scare others from doing the same. I think the fact that they are allowed to do this is only because of who they are.
My rights online are being threatened, not because I can't curse in a URL, or domain name, but because if someone has enough money they can sue me and people like you will defend them.

It's not funny. Don't laugh. Your online rights could be next...

DocWatson

read here.

Well - how about speaking ill of Ford Motor Company?

Did anyone know that our friends @ 2600 mag are being sued by Ford now? Please see fordreallysucks.com

If you are in Windsor/Detroit you can come to the Courthouse and support them tomorrow.

I Don't See Any Reason that 2600, Or Anyone At All, Shouldn't be Allowed To Point A Link To Ford. That Is, After All, What A DNS Entry Is: a Link. At No Point Did Anyone Claim To Be Ford, And Any Whois Database Will Clearly Point Out Who Does Control The Link, In This Case: WHOIS information for fuckgeneralmotors.com: Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS Organization: emmanuel@2600.com address: PO Box 99 Middle Island, NY 11953 US If I Were To Buy Some Land Across From A Ford Dealer, And Put Up A Sign That Said "Fuck General Motors!" With An Arrow Pointing Across The Street, Aside From A Possible Obsenity Charge From The State, I Should have Nothing To Fear, Especially Nothing From Ford, As I Haven't Done Anything By Point At Them. More Information On this Can Be Read At http://www.fordreallysucks.com, Which Is Also Registered By Emmanuel Goldstien.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|