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Not to mention the fact that if you put http://mikerowesoft.com/ into a browser, it takes you to... Microsoft's website.

Reverse cybersquatting?

The stupid thing is that everybody was against Microsoft on both counts.

Excuse me... but Microsoft LEGITIMATELY LOST IN COURT on the Lindows case. They lost for good reason. If you want to argue that the "slashbots" were wrong... and and that the court was wrong, well I guess we could run through that argument if you want. Microsoft then proceeded to engage in vexatious litigation by taking up the case in additional countries and threatening to spend the opponent to death in court costs. Microsoft only "won" in that the owner of Lindows said "Ok, I'll ALLOW you to pay me TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS to use a different name just so you stop harrasing me".

As for the MikeRowe case, once again there was some settlement with MICROSOFT PAYING... I'm not sure what the exact terms of the settlement were but.... wait... WHAT'S THIS? Why lookie here! It's Mike Rowe Forums! Whatever the settlement terms were... whatever settlement terms MICROSOFT PAID MONEY TO BUY, well those terms apparently did not even manage to prohibit the continued use of MikeRoweSoft.com.

Generally when a 270 BILLION DOLLAR MEGACORP attempts to squash a seventeen year old kid like a bug, they generally don't wind up allowing the "offending" domain to continue if they have the money and the lawyers and the law on their side. Hmmm, maybe Microsoft didn't have the law on their side? Maybe MikeRowe was not committing trademark infringment?

And if you look at that website, or if you look at the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com, and you're somehow confused into thinking that you are interacting with Microsoft, well then I have some very bad news for you.... you're seriously Dain Bramaged. Do not pass Go, do not attempt to tie your shoe laces, go directly out of the gene pool.

As for the current case, I'm certainly not going to claim that I like this guy or defend any malware he may have spewed from his sites.... however on the pure domain name issue I'd like to point out that (1) this was not a court ruling, merely an Arbitration Forum, one that almost always sides with big companies which bring these cases and one that has many times been reversed in court, and (2) for whatever reason they made their ruling WITHOUT EVEN CONSIDERING THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CASE. Now point #2 is quite possible the defendant's fault for failing to present a case... I don't have any idea what's up with that... but it does mean this is a especially hollow even for an arbitration proceeding.

Trademarks are good and useful things, and as you say they *do* need to be actively defended. However people should not be attacked unless they are actually infringing a trademark. There are important legal limits on what constitutes a valid trademark and what constitutes an infringment of that mark. It is a Very Bad Thing when companies abuse the legal system to crush individuals and small entities that cannot afford a legal fight even when they are in fact not commiting infringment.

-

This utility is provided by ZoneEdit.Com, the industry leader in DNS and domain mangement solutions.
Domain Name: MIKEROWESOFT.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.tucows.com/
Name Server: NS3.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS1.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS5.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS2.MSFT.NET
Name Server: NS4.MSFT.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 09-jun-2004

Now call me a cynic, but I think they have a point.

Whats that? That big corporations should always get their way? This guy is right up there with Mike Rowe in my books.

Hint: You could actually just visit the site instead of speculating!

http://www.mikerowesoft.com/

See for yourself:

R.I.P.?

I really find the opengl to be a far more worrying story, who will get linux for free, and pay EXTRA to play games on it because Microsoft want to huddle in opengl.

Someone should rule that Microsoft cannot buy openGL, just like big company ABC might not be able to buy other big company XYZ if they become to big.

Shocking.

I think Mike Rowe and Katie should get together.

Just ask this dude
I wonder if Linspire is going to get a free .NET developer license.

...mike

coz microsoft already takes on and threatens him.

The only company in recent memory to beat MS in direct competition? Your memory is betraying you.
Off the top of my head:
Sony in the video game console realm.
Linksys, Netgear et al in the networking realm.
EA, et al in the PC game market.
A Canadian kid in the domain name realm. (j/k)
*Nix in the highest rate of growth on corporate servers market.
Apache in the web page serving market.

Not viable? We Macintosh users are fiercely loyal. Do us right and we tell all our friends to buy your wares. We buy all sorts of gadgets. Do us right, or kind of right, and we will repay you in spades. We will be like %1 of your tech support calls. A simple "hey were not gonna make this software, but isync will be updated soon, making our software obsolete anyway" would have sufficed for us. This throws my PDA purchasing decision in limbo. No way I would get a Pocket PC (I switched for a reason), the Zaurus doesn't quite play nice with Mac yet, and now Palm is pussyfooting around. Software architecture issues, have you been living under a rock? They give you coding tools on the disc!! Hell, you could code it in Perl or Python for crying out loud!

I was very confused and kept going to this Mike Rowe guy's site instead. I tell ya. There oughta be a law.

Now that would actually encourage people to mix and match character sets just to create multicolored text in the address bar.

I don't know that is a good thing.

This homograph issue will open up a whole new can of worms. Companies will have to protect their IP (domain names) from even further abuse, in addition to the existing recent homonym IP cases.

(BTW, searching Slashdot for mikerowesoft, mikerowesoft.com, etc, returns no hits. Odd.)

Dan East

Three weeks ago he was a web developer with a few sample sites and a small little posting about his troubles with Microsoft. Now at his site its plastered with advertisements, and he's no longer developing web sites. Its a place for gamers and geeks, but not slashdot style. Weird what success will do to you. Luckily though he seems like a nice guy and is giving his donations for the lawyer to a charity. Its still amazing to see how something like this can change your life. Right now he has something like 5000 people playing games, on his forums, and just browsing his sight. That's impressive.
Regards,
Steve

Not sure where you heard that but according to MikeRoweSoft.com the site is staying up due to the kind offer of hosting from Deafening-Urge.net. So slashdot publicity helped the guy get new hosting after slashdot publicity caused him to lose his host. It all balances out in the end.

Thats why they call it Karma

Pssst, Darl.. Some 17 year old punk named Mike Rowe is running his website on Linux! You better file suit against him, too!

I just went to Microsoft.com and they completely revamped it. I'd say check it out but it seems to be /.'d right now. That's amazing, we /.'d Microsoft.com!!!

I just went to Microsoft.com and they completely revamped it. I'd say check it out but it seems to be /.'d right now. That's amazing, we /.'d Microsoft.com!!!

Then again, if enough people would be careful with their links to Microsoft, Google might start asking people, "Did you mean mikerowesoft.com?

Then again, if enough people would be careful with their links to Microsoft, Google might start asking people, "Did you mean mikerowesoft.com?